Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife by Martin Edwards

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I was drawn to this book by the title and cover and as I’d been wanting to give Martin Edwards another try – I didn’t really get on with Mortmain Hall – I decided to read it. I’m pleased to say that I really enjoyed this one!

Harry Crystal, who narrates part of the story, is the author of thirty-two mystery novels. When online influencer Carys Neville describes his books as ‘dozy crime’ and accuses him of being an Agatha Christie copycat, Harry finds himself dropped by his publisher. Receiving an invitation from the Midwinter Trust inviting him to spend Christmas in the village of Midwinter and participate in a murder mystery game with a cash prize for the winner, Harry decides to accept. After all, he doesn’t have much else to do and winning something would help him to feel less of a failure.

Midwinter, considered one of the most remote settlements in England, is a tiny former mining village in the North Pennines. Privately owned by the Midwinter Trust, it’s advertised as a place to retreat from the outside world. Harry arrives during a period of heavy snow to find that the village really has been completely cut off from the rest of the world, with no phone or internet access. To his dismay, Carys Neville is one of the other contestants, along with four other people, all of whom are involved in some way with publishing or crime writing. Winning the prize isn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped!

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife is the title of the mystery put together by Trust director Bernadette for the six guests to solve. Clues and evidence relating to this fictional mystery are given in separate chapters titled Bonus Puzzle Content. The reader can try to solve this mystery for themselves, as well as a ‘real’ mystery which begins to unfold involving the guests, staff and Trust members. However, this structure didn’t work quite as well as I expected; the mystery-within-a-mystery feels undeveloped and is referred to less and less often as the book goes on so that when the solution was eventually revealed, I didn’t really care – and it seemed that the players didn’t either.

The Midwinter storyline was much more compelling than the Miss Winter one. I loved the setting and Edwards does a great job of conveying how remote and isolated the village is, beginning with the atmospheric drive from the station across deserted snowy moorland. Although I felt that some of the characters could have been stronger, I enjoyed the sections written from the perspectives of Harry Crystal and another of the guests, the publicist Poppy de Lisle. It’s not clear who can and can’t be believed, what the true motives of the Trust are or why these particular six guests have been invited to Midwinter, so there’s a lot to unravel.

Edwards is clearly a big fan of Golden Age mysteries (he’s the editor of the British Library Crime Classics series) and the influence of Christie and other authors is obvious here. He also includes a Cluefinder – a device sometimes used in GA mysteries – at the end of the book, listing all the clues that appeared throughout the story with references to the chapter they are found in. Unfortunately, I hadn’t spotted many of those!

I didn’t love everything about this book, then, but I did find it very entertaining and was surprised by some of the plot twists towards the end. It would be a perfect book to read during a winter snowstorm.

Thanks to Aria & Aries for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 1 for RIP XX

Historical Musings #92: HWA Crown Awards 2025

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Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction!

This month, I want to highlight the books nominated for this year’s HWA Crown Awards. The longlists were announced last Wednesday by the Historical Writers Association (HWA) and you can find all the details here. There are three separate awards – one for debut novels, one for non-fiction and the other (the Gold Crown) for authors who have previously published. The shortlists will be announced in October and the winner in November. Although I don’t have any plans to try to read all of these books, I thought it would be interesting to look at what I’ve read so far from each list and what else I might like to read.

Debut Crown 2025 longlist

The Wicked of the Earth by AD Bergin
Costanza by Rachel Blackmore
The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable
Nephthys by Rachel Louise Driscoll
Murder in Constantinople by AE Goldin
Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis
Winter of Shadows by Clare Grant
A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp
The Eights by Joanna Miller
A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike
They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar
A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith

I’ve read four of these and enjoyed all of them, particularly A Little Trickerie and A Case of Mice and Murder. I’ve already read the second book in Sally Smith’s series as well, and would be happy to read more books by the other three authors. Most of the others on the list are books that I’ve heard of but haven’t had a chance to read yet, with one or two that are new to me.

Non-Fiction Crown 2025 longlist

Lionessheart by Catherine Hanley
The Scapegoat by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Endless Country by Sami Kent
Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
Naples 1944 by Keith Lowe
Storm’s Edge by Peter Marshall
Agent Zo by Clare Mulley
Moederland by Cato Pedder
Every Living Thing by Jason Roberts
The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz by Anne Sebba
The Many Lives of James Lovelock by Jonathan Watts
The Grammar of Angels by Edward Wilson-Lee

Not surprisingly I’ve read none of the books on this list and have only heard of one or two of them. The subjects seem a lot more varied than last year’s list and there are a few books here that interest me, particularly The Scapegoat, about the life of the Duke of Buckingham.

Gold Crown Award 2025 longlist

The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley
Man of Bones by Ben Creed
Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans
Arthur by Giles Kristian
The Maiden of Florence by Katherine Mezzacappa
Hold Back the Night by Jessica Moor
The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse
The Stolen Daughter by Florence Olájídé
The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Time of the Child by Niall Williams

I can’t believe I’ve only read one of these! I’ve read the sequel to The Small Museum, The Surgeon’s House, which was published this year and am not really interested in going back to read the first one, and I’ve struggled with Kate Mosse in the past, but the rest of the books all sound interesting.

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What do you think of this year’s longlists? Have you read any of these books or would you like to read them?

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor

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I’m ashamed to say I had never come across this classic American children’s novel until Constance of Staircase Wit recommended it when I commented on one of her reviews that I would like to read more about life on New York’s Lower East Side. Constance kindly sent me a copy, which I have now read and enjoyed!

First published in 1951, the book follows five young sisters through a year of their childhood in 1912. Ella, at twelve, is the oldest and four-year-old Gertie is the youngest, with Henny (Henrietta), Sarah and Charlotte in between. They are known as an ‘all-of-a-kind family’ due to being all girls – or, as the librarian refers to them, a ‘step-and-stairs family’ because of their evenly spaced ages. They live in an apartment on the Lower East Side and Papa runs a junk shop nearby while Mama looks after the children and their home.

In the first chapter, Sarah is upset because a friend has borrowed her library book and lost it. She’s sure she’ll be in big trouble and banned from going to the library ever again. However, the librarian, Miss Allen, is sympathetic and, knowing that the family would be offended by charity, she agrees to let Sarah pay for the book one penny a week. Miss Allen becomes a good friend to the girls after this and we meet her again later in the book, but meanwhile there are lots of other adventures to be had – including making a fun game from dusting the apartment, going to the market with Mama, and getting lost at Coney Island.

This is such a charming book, I’m sure I would have loved it as a child. The five girls are all very endearing and Taylor gives them all individual personalities of their own. Ella, being nearly a teenager, is the most mature of the sisters and is beginning to form romantic attachments; ten-year-old Henny is independent and rebellious, while Sarah is more studious. The two youngest girls are less well developed, but Gertie, the baby of the family, looks up to Charlotte who is two years older and they have a particularly close relationship.

One of the most interesting things about this book is that the girls belong to a Jewish family, so we are given lots of descriptions of them preparing for Jewish holidays such as Purim and Passover (as well as celebrating the Fourth of July) – and because the girls are so young, Mama and Papa explain to them the meanings of each custom and tradition, which can be very helpful for non-Jewish readers! Not many of the books I remember reading as a child featured children who were anything other than Christian, so it’s good to know that this book existed even if I wasn’t aware of it.

This is a lovely book (and also the first in a series). Thanks to Constance for introducing me to it.

The Elopement by Gill Hornby

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This is the third novel Gill Hornby has written based on the lives of members of Jane Austen’s extended family. I loved Miss Austen and Godmersham Park, so I was looking forward to reading The Elopement, which focuses on Jane’s niece, Fanny Knight, and Fanny’s stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea Knatchbull.

Fanny’s father is Jane’s brother Edward, who was made the legal heir of their wealthy Knight relatives and inherited three estates at Steventon, Chawton and Godmersham (Fanny appears as a secondary character in Godmersham Park). For a long time it seems likely that Fanny is going to remain a spinster until, in 1820, she marries Sir Edward Knatchbull of Mersham-le-Hatch at the age of twenty-eight. She doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her, but Fanny has always been a practical person and decides that it could still be a marriage that works well for both of them.

Sir Edward has five children from his previous marriage and Fanny is sure she can be a good stepmother to them. However, there’s tension between Fanny and the only daughter, Mary Dorothea, from the beginning. Fanny is not a naturally loving or compassionate person and Mary finds it impossible to warm to her, viewing her as aloof and distant. Things come to a head when Mary falls in love with a man her father considers unsuitable. She knows she can expect no empathy or understanding from Fanny, so is forced to do something drastic.

It took me a while to get into this book. The pacing is uneven, with the first half being very slow and the second much more gripping. The title is maybe slightly misleading, as the elopement doesn’t happen until late in the book and doesn’t really play a big part in the story, although the buildup and consequences do. I think I would have preferred not to have known there was going to be an elopement so I wouldn’t have spent most of the book wondering when it was going to happen.

Hornby focuses less on Mary Dorothea’s romance and more on the relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter, which gets off to a bad start and worsens throughout the book. I went from feeling sympathetic towards Fanny to disliking her more and more as she tries to align herself with her husband’s views and closes her mind to Mary’s feelings. Still, the portrayal of Fanny and Sir Edward’s marriage illustrates the limited options available to 19th century women who would often marry out of duty, necessity or to meet society’s expectations. Mary is trying to do something different and marry for love.

In her author’s note at the end of the book, Hornby explains that she has based the novel on Fanny Knight’s own diaries which she kept from 1804 to 1872. I haven’t read the diaries so I don’t know how the personality of the real Fanny compares to the fictional one, but I was sorry not to have liked her more considering that Jane Austen apparently described her as her “favourite niece”.

I’ve learned that following the recent TV adaptation of Miss Austen which was shown earlier this year, The Elopement is also going to be adapted under the title Miss Austen Returns (I’m not sure why they’ve missed out Godmersham Park). Cassandra Austen, the star of Miss Austen, only appears once or twice in this book so I imagine she’s going to be given a much bigger role in the new adaptation. I’ll be interested to see what Gill Hornby’s next book will be about; I’m sure there’s still more she could write about the Austen family and there seems to be a never-ending appetite for it by readers and TV viewers!

Thanks to Random House UK, Cornerstone for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: Literary Candles

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Literary/Bookish Candles I’d Make (Pick a book and assign it a fragrance or fragrance combo that would make a nice candle.)” (Submitted by Heather @ The Frozen Library)

I thought this would be difficult, especially as I’m not someone who buys a lot of candles, but I actually found it surprisingly easy and fun to do. I’ve picked a combination of two or three scents for each of the books below, based on either the title or the setting. Let me know what you think!

1. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh is about a young woman who works as a florist and learns how to communicate using different flowers to represent emotions. As a companion candle, I’ve chosen a floral fragrance of rose, lily and violet.

2. In Tracy Chevalier’s At the Edge of the Orchard, a couple try to establish an orchard in the Black Swamp of Ohio. An apple and cinnamon candle quickly came to mind!

3. The next one is obvious. I’ve matched Wild Strawberries, the second book in Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire series, with a strawberry candle. I wasn’t sure which other scents would go well with strawberry, but a quick google search suggested rhubarb.

4. Shadow of the Moon by MM Kaye, a book I loved, is set in India during the Sepoy Mutiny. This made me think of two scents associated with India: jasmine and sandalwood.

5. Moving away from floral and fruity scents for a while, my next candle combines chocolate, vanilla and almond. It represents Midnight in Everwood by MA Kuzniar, a retelling of The Nutcracker set in a sugar-filled fantasy land.

6. In The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the first in Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series, Sherlock Holmes has retired to the Sussex countryside to become a beekeeper. I’ve paired a honey and lemon candle with this one.

7. The Seas by Samantha Hunt is set in a lonely coastal town and features a girl who believes she is a mermaid. I think a seaweed and samphire candle is appropriate!

8. Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie is a Poirot novel in which a murder takes place at a children’s Halloween party. I’ve put together a warm, autumnal candle of pumpkin, ginger and caramel.

9. In A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton, an elderly woman reflects on her life in Nagasaki and her memories of the atomic bombing. It’s a beautiful novel with some very moving moments. My candle combines Japanese fragrances of cherry blossom, mimosa and pear.

10. I hope it’s not too early to mention Christmas! Inspired by a true classic, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, a suitable candle could include pine, balsam and nutmeg.

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What do you think? Would you buy any of these candles? And have you read any of the books associated with them?

Katabasis by RF Kuang

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Alice Law is an American PhD student who is studying Analytic Magick under the guidance of Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge University. Along with her equally brilliant rival, Peter Murdoch, Alice is considered the most gifted student in the department, but sometimes spells can still go wrong and she is horrified when Professor Grimes steps inside one of her pentagrams and is whisked away to hell. How will she finish her degree without Grimes to advise her? The only thing to do is to enter hell herself and bring him back.

A decision to go to hell is not something that should be taken lightly, particularly as the price of going and coming back again is half of a person’s remaining lifespan, but Alice feels she has no choice, especially as she was responsible for the disaster. However, she’s not at all pleased when Peter Murdoch insists on coming with her. She and Peter were once friends but their academic rivalry has driven them apart. Will they be able to work together to navigate their way through hell and rescue Professor Grimes?

RF Kuang is an author I keep seeing on other blogs I follow, but I’ve never tried one of her books myself until now. Whether this was the best one I could have started with I don’t know – the premise certainly sounded fascinating and there were plenty of things I enjoyed about the book, but overall it didn’t quite deliver for me. I think a big part of the problem is that I found Alice difficult to like; Peter was a more engaging character, but apart from some flashbacks to his early life, we don’t see much of the story through his eyes. Professor Grimes was even less sympathetic – the more I learned about him, the less I cared whether he was rescued or not and the weaker Alice’s motive for following him into hell became.

Hell is an unusual setting, although there have obviously been several classics set there, including Dante’s Inferno, which are referred to repeatedly throughout the book as Alice and Peter discuss the experiences of those who have visited the underworld before them. Kuang’s portrayal of hell draws on many different sources, including Dante with his circles based on various sins, and elements of Greek, Chinese and other mythologies. I particularly enjoyed reading about the Weaver Girl who presents Peter and Alice with a challenge to determine whether one, both or neither will cross the River Lethe, as well as their first encounters with Shades and creepy ‘bone-things’. I was a bit confused, though, because the entire underworld seems to be populated by students and magicians and as our protagonists wander through the ‘Eight Courts of Hell’, they find that one resembles a library and another a campus. Where did all the people from other walks of life go? Was there a separate hell for everyone else?

Katabasis (the title is from the Ancient Greek term for a descent into the underworld) falls firmly into the ‘dark academia’ subgenre as well as fantasy. As well as all the characters being academics and hell resembling a university, Alice and Peter also have lots of long, detailed discussions about algorithms, paradoxes and the science of magic. None of this interested me very much and I felt it slowed the story down, but I’m sure other readers will get more out of these sections than I did. One thing that did intrigue me was the time period in which the book is set. I assumed at first that it was a contemporary setting, but then came across lots of references to music, culture and scientific developments that seem to place the book in the late 1980s. It didn’t seem to have any actual relevance to the plot, so I’m curious to know why Kuang chose this particular period.

I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to try a book by Kuang at last, but based on this one I don’t think she’s an author for me.

Thanks to HarperVoyager for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The House of Seymour by Joanna Hickson

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I’ve enjoyed some of Joanna Hickson’s previous historical fiction novels, so I was looking forward to reading her latest one, The House of Seymour, which is the first in a new trilogy. Sadly, I found it disappointing and I probably won’t be continuing with the next two books, but there were still enough things to like that I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time.

This book is not about Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour as you might expect, but her ancestors – specifically her great-great-grandmother, Isabel Williams, and her husband, John Seymour. We first meet Isabel, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, in 1424 when she becomes betrothed to John, the ambitious Lord of Wolf Hall in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. From very early in their marriage, it becomes clear that their relationship is not going to be a happy one. John is a cruel and ruthless man preoccupied with political advancement and winning the support of the Duke of Gloucester, protector of the young king, Henry VI.

Isabel finds some solace in her relationship with John’s young cousin Edmund, a much kinder man than her husband, and also a new friendship with Jess, a shepherdess who has been forced to leave her home near the village of Avebury. Jess and a farm hand, Addy (Adhelm), had taken shelter from a storm in the Long Barrow – an ancient burial chamber – only for Addy to disappear without trace. Accused of witchcraft, Jess takes refuge at Easton Priory where she meets Isabel and is given a position in her household.

The narrative is divided mainly between Isabel and Jess, although we also occasionally see things from the perspective of John and other characters. The voices and attitudes of both women felt too modern for my taste – I prefer to feel fully immersed in the period when I read historical fiction – so I couldn’t quite manage to believe in them as convincing 15th century people. As my blogging friend Jessica of The Bookworm Chronicles explains in her review, even using the name Jess is an anachronism.

I did love the setting – or rather settings, as there are two main ones. The first is Wolf Hall, or Wulfhall to use the spelling of the time, which becomes home to Isabel’s family after John inherits the wardenship of Savernake Forest. The other is Avebury, an atmospheric place with its Neolithic stone circles, ancient barrows and monuments. Although the characters do sometimes cross paths with members of the royal court, most of the book takes place in these two settings and the surrounding areas so the focus is mostly on Isabel’s household and Jess and her family. The problem here is that none of the characters really came to life for me and most of them lacked depth. The book as a whole felt a lot lighter and less substantial than Hickson’s other recent ones.

Although I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I would have liked, it was still good to learn a little bit about the Seymour family and their history. I’m probably not going to read the second book when it comes out, but I’ll be interested to hear whether it’s stronger than this one.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.