Top Ten Tuesday: Destination Titles

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Destination Titles (titles with name of places in them. These places can be real or fictional).”

Here are ten books with real cities, countries or islands in the title. These are all books that I’ve read and reviewed on my blog. I would have liked to have been able to represent all of the continents but I couldn’t quite manage it – I had plenty of titles with European destinations to choose from, but not as many for other parts of the world.

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

2. The Lost Book of Salem by Katherine Howe

3. China by Edward Rutherfurd

4. To Calais, in Ordinary Time by James Meek

5. Death in Zanzibar by M.M. Kaye

6. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

7. The Mauritius Command by Patrick O’Brian

8. Night Train to Marrakech by Dinah Jefferies

9. The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato

10. Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

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Have you read any of these? What other books with destination titles can you think of?

Nonfiction November: Week 3 – Book Pairings

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Here’s this week’s topic for Nonfiction November:

Week 3 (11/11-11/15) Book Pairings: This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like! (hosted by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home).

The nonfiction title:

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

Because I’m currently reading Kate Summerscale’s new book, The Peepshow, I decided to focus on her previous book, The Haunting of Alma Fielding, which was published in 2020. Here’s how I described the book in my review:

Like Summerscale’s others, this is a non-fiction book based on a true story, in this case the story of an ordinary thirty-four-year-old woman, Alma Fielding, who becomes the centre of paranormal activity in her London home. The book follows Nandor Fodor of the International Institute for Psychical Research as he investigates Alma’s claims, desperately hoping that this time – after being disappointed by a long line of frauds – he has finally come across a genuine haunting.

At first, having witnessed for himself the smashed glasses, spinning teacups, moving furniture and broken eggs, Fodor is convinced that a poltergeist is at work in the Fielding household. The more he learns about Alma’s abilities, which include producing live animals out of thin air and transporting herself from one area of London to another, the more intrigued he becomes…until, eventually, he begins to have doubts. Is this a real paranormal phenomenon he is investigating or is Alma haunted by something very different?

The fiction titles:

I couldn’t decide on just one book to pair with the Kate Summerscale, so I’ve picked three of them:

The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker is set in Victorian London and is the story of a fraudulent but successful medium who, like Alma Fielding, is able to ‘apport’ (transport by spiritual means) herself and other objects.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters also features a house – Hundreds Hall in Warwickshire – that appears to be haunted by a poltergeist. Is the ghost real or is there a more rational explanation?

In Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis, two sisters in 19th century Paris trick grieving victims out of their money by convincing them they are being haunted by departed family members – and then promising to lay the ghosts to rest.

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Have you read any of these books? What else would you pair with The Haunting of Alma Fielding?

Fire by John Boyne – #NovNov24

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This is the third book in John Boyne’s Elements quartet and it’s the darkest and most powerful so far. Each book can be read as a standalone story, but if you’ve read the previous two – Water and Earth – you’ll see some links between the characters and plots. I would still recommend reading them in order if possible, although it’s not essential.

Fire, like the other books, is novella-length – in this case 163 pages – but as usual, Boyne manages to pack a huge amount into those pages, more than you would often find in a much longer novel. Our narrator this time is Freya Petrus, a renowned surgeon who works with burns and skin grafts. She’s only in her thirties but has already established herself as one of the best in her field. What Freya gets up to in her private life, however, is much less admirable…in fact, it’s horrible. To understand what has made her the person she is – both the good side and the bad – we have to go back to Freya’s childhood and witness the traumatic experiences that shaped her future.

It’s difficult to really discuss the issues a book like this raises without spoiling things, so I’ll just say that what Freya experiences as a child leaves her badly damaged and, in her mind, justifies the harm she does to other people as an adult. I did have some sympathy for the young Freya, but that was surpassed by the loathing I felt for the older Freya. John Boyne is never afraid to tackle unpleasant and controversial subjects in his books, but the things Freya does are particularly shocking and I found it a very uncomfortable book to read. It’s also fascinating and completely gripping, so I do recommend it as long as you’re prepared!

As with the themes of water and earth in the previous two books, the element of fire plays a part in this one in several different ways: not only does Freya work with victims of fire, it could be said that she’s also playing with fire in her personal life. Other important themes running through the story include the question of nature versus nurture and which has the biggest role in forming our character, the level of responsibility each of us has to do what we know is right, and the different expectations society has of men and women. It’s a book that leaves you with a lot to think about after reaching the final page.

Although each book in this quartet does work on its own, a minor character from each one becomes the main protagonist of the next. It seems that Aaron, who works with Freya at the hospital, is going to be the star of the final book, Air. It will be published in May 2025 and I’m looking forward to seeing how Boyne brings the series to an end.

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

I’m counting this book towards Novellas in November, hosted by Cathy of 746 Books and Rebecca of Bookish Beck

Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken – #WitchWeek2024

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This week Chris of Calmgrove and Lizzie Ross are hosting their annual Witch Week, an event inspired by the Diana Wynne Jones book, Witch Week, and this year they are celebrating the work of Joan Aiken. I’ve had the second book in Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles series on my TBR since reading the first, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, last year and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to pick it up.

Black Hearts in Battersea was first published in 1964 and while I would recommend reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase first, you don’t really need to as this book would also work as a standalone story. It begins with Simon (the boy we first met living in a cave in the woods near Willoughby Chase) searching the streets of London for his friend, Dr Field. Simon is hoping to study at the Art Academy in Chelsea and Dr Field has invited him to share his lodgings in Rose Alley. However, Rose Alley proves very difficult to find, and when Simon does eventually stumble upon the right address he discovers there’s no trace of the doctor – the house is inhabited by the rather unpleasant Mr and Mrs Twite and their daughter, Dido, ‘a shrewish looking little creature of perhaps eight or nine’.

What has happened to Dr Field and will Simon manage to track him down? This is only one small part of this imaginative, action-packed novel which, like the previous book, is obviously intended for a younger audience but is still an entertaining read for those of us who are older. There are missing children and mistaken identities, kidnappings, shipwrecks and balloon rides, and a plot to kill the King – the King in this case being James III as we are in an alternate history where the Stuarts are still on the throne in the early 19th century and are the target of Hanoverian conspiracies. The other significant difference between this fictional world and the real one is that a large number of wolves have crossed from Europe into Britain and although we didn’t see much of them in Willoughby Chase, they do get alarmingly close to Simon and his friends on several occasions in this book!

Black Hearts in Battersea feels almost like a Charles Dickens novel for children, with the 19th century London setting and the array of larger-than-life characters – who include Dido and the Twite family, the eccentric Duke of Battersea, the excitable Dr Furneaux, who runs the academy Simon attends, and the book’s main villain, Eustace Buckle. I wish I had read this as a child, but as an adult I still found it a lot of fun and I’m sure I’ll read the next book in the series at some point, particularly as this one ends with Dido’s whereabouts unknown!

Book 49/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with fire on the cover

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Covers with [Item] on the Cover (You choose the item! It can be anything at all.)”

Tonight is Bonfire Night here in the UK (also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Fireworks Night), where we remember the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Here are nine books I’ve read and reviewed on my blog – and another that I’m reading now and haven’t reviewed yet – which all have fire or flames on the cover.

1. Fire by John Boyne

2. Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

3. The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

4. Dance of Death by Helen McCloy

5. Fire by CC Humphreys

6. Villette by Charlotte Brontë

7. Priestess of Ishana by Judith Starkston

8. The Trap by Dan Billany

9. There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes

10. The Progress of a Crime by Julian Symons

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Have you read any of these? Can you find any other books with fire on the cover?

The Lost Queen by Carol McGrath

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Berengaria of Navarre is one of the Queens of England I know least about and I’m sure I’m not alone in that as so little has been written about her. I’ve read novels in which she appears briefly as a secondary character, but with the exception of Martha Rofheart’s Lionheart, nothing where she takes a more central role. In The Lost Queen, Carol McGrath builds Berengaria’s story around the small amount of factual information we have about her, taking us through the early days of her marriage to King Richard I and her time spent in the Holy Land, where she accompanied Richard on the Third Crusade.

Like the other McGrath books I’ve read, there’s also a fictional heroine whose story takes place alongside the real historical one. In this case, it’s Lady Avelina of Middleton, whose husband William has disappeared after leaving for Outremer three years earlier to claim his father’s estate. William’s half-brother, Walter, is insisting that William must have become caught up in the Crusades and killed in battle, but Avelina suspects that Walter simply has his eye on herself and Middleton. Avelina is determined to prove that her husband is still alive and sets off to look for him, attaching herself to a party of nuns who are travelling to Jerusalem in search of a religious relic to bring back to their abbey.

During the journey, Avelina’s path crosses with Berengaria’s, who is on her way to her wedding with Richard. Richard’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, escorts Berengaria as far as Sicily, then Eleanor’s daughter Joanna accompanies her from there to Cyprus and then the Holy Land. Avelina and the nuns join them along the way and a friendship forms between Avelina and the new queen.

Berengaria is known as the only English queen never to visit England (although it’s now thought that she may have done after Richard’s death). This means that, apart from a few chapters involving Avelina, most of the novel is set elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of all the adventures the characters have on the journey: crossing the Alps in the middle of winter; surviving assassination attempts; being shipwrecked off the coast of Cyprus and held prisoner.

As I know so little about Berengaria I can’t really comment on the accuracy of the novel. McGrath does include an author’s note, in which she explains some of her decisions and how she worked with the available information to create the story. We do know that Berengaria never had children, for example, but McGrath suggests that she may have been pregnant with Richard’s child and had a miscarriage. The Avelina chapters of the book obviously allow for a lot more invention and imagination and there are also a few sections here and there narrated by other characters such as Blondel, the troubadour, or Ursula, one of Berengaria’s ladies. I can understand why these perspectives were included, as they fill in some of the gaps, showing us things that Berengaria and Avelina don’t witness for themselves, but I didn’t feel they really added much to the story and we don’t spend enough time with these characters to form any kind of emotional connection.

The book ends before the death of Richard I and I was sorry that we didn’t continue with Berengaria’s later years as it would have been interesting to see how she dealt with being a widow and queen dowager. However, even less is known about that period of Berengaria’s life, so maybe it was the right decision for the book to end when it did. I’ll be looking out for news on which historical figure Carol McGrath is writing about next!

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

Book 48/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

Six Degrees of Separation: From Intermezzo to Murder to Music

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read, but here’s what it’s about:

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties – successful, competent and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women – his enduring first love Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude – a period of desire, despair and possibility – a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

The description of Ivan as a ‘competitive chess player’ makes me think of Adam Strauss, a character in Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz (1). Adam is a chess grandmaster and he and his neighbours become suspects in the murder of Giles Kenworthy, who has been making life difficult for them all since moving into their quiet London street. This is the fifth in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, in which the author uses himself as a character in the books.

Another author who appears as a character in his own books is Akimitsu Takagi. I loved The Noh Mask Murder (2), which I read earlier this year in a new English translation by Jesse Kirkwood. First published in 1949, this is a very enjoyable locked room mystery and I found it interesting to learn about Japan in the post-war period, as well as the different types of masks used in Japanese theatre.

Next, a simple link using a shared word in the title. The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas (3) is the final book in the d’Artagnan series which begins with The Three Musketeers. A lot of people go straight from the first to the last without reading the middle books, but I would recommend not skipping any of them. In The Man in the Iron Mask, d’Artagnan and his three friends, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, become involved in a plot to free a prisoner from the Bastille who closely resembles the King of France.

The word Bastille leads me straight to The Bastille Spy by CS Quinn (4), a fast-paced historical thriller set during the French Revolution and featuring a female spy, Attica Morgan. I described this in my review as ‘a cross between The Scarlet Pimpernel, James Bond and Pirates of the Caribbean’. It’s a book not to be taken too seriously and I’m sure a lot of readers will find it fun, but it wasn’t really for me and I haven’t continued with the sequel.

I’ve read and reviewed several other books by authors with the surname Quinn (Kate Quinn, Frances Quinn and Anthony Quinn). Apart from the Quinns, the only other author I’ve read and reviewed on my blog whose name begins with a Q is Sarah Quigley, who wrote The Conductor (5). This is a fascinating novel about the conductor Karl Eliasberg who is given the task of performing the Seventh Symphony by Shostakovich to raise morale during the Siege of Leningrad.

In Murder to Music by Margaret Newman (6), a conductor is shot dead during a choir’s performance of a new mass. Detective Superintendent Simon Hudson happens to be present in the audience and begins to investigate. However, his own girlfriend, Delia, is on the choir committee and can’t be ruled out as a suspect! This entertaining 1959 novel could have been the start of a new mystery series, but Newman changed direction and began writing romance and family sagas under other pseudonyms.

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And that’s my chain for November. My links included: competitive chess players; authors using themselves as characters; the word ‘mask’; the Bastille; Q authors; and conductors. Intermezzo is a musical term, meaning ‘a short connecting instrumental movement’, so by finishing with Murder to Music I have managed to bring the chain full circle!

In December we’ll be starting with Sandwich by Catherine Newman.