Tag: Nancy Bilyeau

The Heiress of Northanger Abbey by Nancy Bilyeau

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Although I like Jane Austen’s novels, I’ve never had much interest in reading any of the many sequels, prequels or retellings written by other authors. However, I’ve read and enjoyed all of Nancy Bilyeau’s other books, so was happy to give this one a chance. As the title suggests, it’s inspired by Northanger Abbey, not my favourite Austen novel (that would be Persuasion), but one that I found entertaining and amusing. Those of you who have read it will remember that the heroine, Catherine Morland, is obsessed with Gothic novels; The Heiress of Northanger Abbey pays tribute to this with plenty of Gothic touches of its own!

The novel opens twenty-two years after the events of Northanger Abbey. Catherine has settled into married life as the wife of clergyman Henry Tilney and they have two daughters, Phoebe and Susan. Seventeen-year-old Phoebe, the eldest, is away from home accompanying her uncle and aunt, Frederick and Aurelia Tilney, who have gone to Bath to take the healing waters. Catherine is aware that as Frederick and Aurelia have no children of their own, they are considering making Phoebe their heiress, which means she would eventually inherit Northanger Abbey. However, in the 19th century being an heiress can be dangerous – as Catherine herself discovered twenty-two years earlier when a misunderstanding made her the target of fortune hunters John and Isabella Thorpe.

Catherine’s sister-in-law Eleanor Granville has come to visit for a few days with her children and Catherine offers to read Phoebe’s latest letter from Bath to them. She’s horrified when Phoebe mentions that the Thorpes are in Bath and that John Thorpe has suggested Phoebe go out riding with his son, Jack. Have Isabella and John set their sights on Phoebe and her possible fortune this time? Leaving eleven-year-old Susan in Eleanor’s care, Catherine heads straight for Bath to investigate – but is she right to distrust the Thorpes or is she just letting her imagination run wild again?

I really enjoyed this book, despite my usual aversion to Austen sequels. If you’ve never read Northanger Abbey, I don’t think that would be a problem at all; Bilyeau doesn’t just assume that you’ve read it and provides enough background information to make it easy to follow what’s happening and to understand Catherine’s history with the Thorpes. The writing style and use of language aren’t exact imitations of Austen’s, but still feel appropriate for the time period and the book can easily be read as an entertaining novel in its own right.

I loved the way we are kept guessing, at least for a while, about whether Catherine is correct about the Thorpes and Phoebe really is the target of their schemes or whether Catherine is judging them based on their actions all those years ago rather than the people they are now. I had my opinion and was proved right, but the story could have gone in different directions and been just as interesting. My favourite thing about the book, though, was the way Bilyeau uses Gothic elements to create suspense and atmosphere: a beautiful heiress who is (possibly) in danger; a mysterious villain; a lonely house on the moors; noises at night; and plenty of discussion of various Gothic novels, particularly John Polidori’s The Vampyre, published the year before the book is set.

My favourite Nancy Bilyeau novels are still the Genevieve Planché thrillers (beginning with The Blue), but this one was also very enjoyable and I’m happy to recommend it, whether or not you’re an Austen fan.

Thanks to the author for providing a copy of this book for review.

I’m linking this to RIPXXI hosted by @perilreaders

The Versailles Formula by Nancy Bilyeau

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Having loved Nancy Bilyeau’s The Blue and The Fugitive Colours, I was excited to read the new book in the Genevieve Planché series. The Versailles Formula is published this week by Joffe Books and I’m pleased to say that I found it as good as the first two. If you’re new to the series, I would recommend reading the books in order if you can, but there’s enough background information in this one to allow you to start here if you wanted to.

The Versailles Formula is set in 1766 and, like the other books, is narrated by Genevieve Planché, a Huguenot woman who grew up in London after her family left France due to religious persecution. She’s also an aspiring artist who is finding it frustratingly difficult to be taken seriously in a field still dominated by men. As the novel opens, Genevieve is teaching watercolours to a group of young ladies while her husband, the chemist Thomas Sturbridge, is away from home working on a new research project with a scientist friend. Several years earlier Thomas had created a formula for a beautiful new shade of blue – an invention that powerful people in both France and Britain would stop at nothing to obtain. The race for the blue led to murder and treason before an agreement was finally reached that both sides would stop attempting to develop the colour.

Genevieve’s painting lesson is interrupted by the arrival of Under-Secretary of State Sir Humphrey Willoughby, husband of her friend, Evelyn. Sir Humphrey’s appearance sets in motion a chain of events that lead Genevieve to Strawberry Hill, home of the author Horace Walpole. Here she and Sir Humphrey make the shocking discovery that someone has begun producing the blue once more. Have the French broken the treaty they agreed to or is this someone acting alone? How did the blue find its way into Walpole’s home? Accompanied by an army officer, Captain Howard, Genevieve travels to Paris in search of answers.

This book definitely lived up to my expectations and was worth the three year wait since the last one! It was good to catch up with Genevieve again and although I would have liked to have seen more of other recurring characters such as Thomas Sturbridge, there’s a wonderful new character to get to know in the form of Captain Howard. Genevieve is wary of Howard at first, disliking him on sight and unsure as to why Sir Humphrey is entrusting him with such an important mission, but her opinion gradually begins to change and I loved watching their relationship develop as they travel across France.

Although many of the characters in the novel are fictional, there are also some who are real historical figures, most notably Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto. I particularly enjoyed the section of the book where Genevieve visits Strawberry Hill, his Gothic-style mansion in Twickenham and experiences its ‘gloomth’ – a term coined by Walpole himself to describe his home’s atmosphere of gloom and warmth.

The book is well paced, with tension building as Genevieve begins to wonder exactly who can and can’t be trusted – and whether anyone will see through the false identity she has adopted for her return to France. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but I did feel that some things were left unresolved at the end, so I hope that means there could be a fourth Genevieve Planché book to look forward to. If so, I’ll certainly be reading it.

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

The Ghost of Madison Avenue by Nancy Bilyeau

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Christmas is always a good time to read ghost stories, I think! This one is even set in December – and is also a novella, which makes it a good choice if you’re looking for something quick to read over the Christmas holidays.

The story takes place in New York in December 1912. Helen O’Neill is part of an Irish-American family from the Bronx and since being widowed several years earlier she has been living with her two older brothers. Helen is determined not to be a financial burden on her family and has been working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she has proved to have a talent for restoration. She’s so good at it, in fact, that she catches the attention of the librarian Belle da Costa Greene, who entices her away from the museum with the offer of a job in the private library of the financier J.P. Morgan.

Starting work at the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue, Helen is captivated by the beautiful building with its thick bronze doors, marble rotunda and exquisite murals. But in the street outside, she sees something even more memorable – a young woman in old-fashioned dress, inappropriate for the cold winter weather, who suddenly disappears without trace. As the days go by, Helen has several more encounters with this strange girl whom only she seems able to see. Eventually, she begins to ask herself whether the girl could be a ghost and if so, is she trying to tell Helen something?

Even without the supernatural element, The Ghost of Madison Avenue is a fascinating piece of historical fiction. Morgan, of course, was a real person and his library on Madison Avenue can still be visited, but so was Belle da Costa Greene, a woman I’d never heard of but who seems to have led an interesting life. As I read, I kept thinking that she really deserved a novel of her own, then I discovered that at least two have already been written! They are The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray and Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre.

As a ghost story, I thought the book was less successful. Not all ghost stories are scary (and not all need to be), but I didn’t find this one even a little bit eerie. It’s more of a story about Helen’s grief – she has never really come to terms with her husband’s death – and laying to rest the ghosts of her past so that she can finally move on with her life. I also found the book too short to be completely satisfying. A longer novel would have allowed Bilyeau to expand on some of the other topics she touched on, such as the aes sidhe of Irish mythology, and Helen’s relationship with her sister Bernadette, who has become a nun.

Still, I enjoyed this book and it didn’t take long to read! I’ve now read everything currently published by Nancy Bilyeau and will look forward to her next book in the Genevieve Planché series, hopefully coming next year.

Book 54 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

The Orchid Hour by Nancy Bilyeau

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I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read by Nancy Bilyeau – her Joanna Stafford Tudor Trilogy, her two Genevieve Planché thrillers set in the world of 18th century art, and Dreamland, her novel about a Coney Island theme park – so I couldn’t wait to start reading her new book, The Orchid Hour. The setting sounded intriguing: New York’s Little Italy during the 1920s, the Prohibition Era, so I was anticipating another good read.

The novel opens in 1923 and introduces us to Audenzia de Luca, known as Zia, a young Sicilian woman whose husband was killed in the Great War. Zia is trying to build a new life for herself and her son and has started working at the Seward Park branch of the New York Public Library while also helping out in her in-laws’ cheese shop in Little Italy. At work one day, she is approached by a regular visitor to the library who asks if she could translate an Italian text into English for him. Zia agrees, but before she can begin the task, the man is found shot dead outside the library.

When a second murder follows the first, a sequence of events is set in motion that leads Zia to the doors of The Orchid Hour, an elegant nightclub that also operates as a speakeasy, selling illicit alcohol in defiance of Prohibition. With the police investigation into the murders going nowhere, Zia decides to do whatever she can to uncover the truth. She believes The Orchid Hour holds the key to the mystery but when she discovers that her cousin Salvatore, to whom she is very close, is mixed up with the criminal underworld, she must find a way to bring the killer – or killers – to justice without endangering her own loved ones.

This is not my favourite of Nancy Bilyeau’s books, but with such a range of plots and settings, it’s inevitable that I’ll like some of them more than others and this was still a very enjoyable novel. It was interesting to read about Zia and her family and I found that I was learning a lot about the lives of Italian immigrants in 1920s New York, the way they were treated and the type of jobs open to them, as well as the constant threat of the Society of the Black Hand, who extorted protection money from their fellow Italians. The novel also explores other issues, such as attitudes towards Prohibition and why the police would sometimes turn a blind eye, and the best conditions for growing delicate orchids. Bilyeau’s Author’s Note at the end of the book describes some of her research and sources and tells us which of the characters were fictional and which were based on real people.

I found the mystery element of the book slightly less successful, particularly as several chapters are written from the perspective of one of the gangsters, so we knew who was involved in at least one of the murders right from the beginning. Still, I enjoyed this book for the historical detail and because it immersed me in a world I previously knew very little about.

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

This is book 31/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Fugitive Colours by Nancy Bilyeau

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A new Nancy Bilyeau book is always something to look forward to. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by her so far: her Joanna Stafford trilogy, about a nun displaced in Tudor England after the dissolution of the monasteries; Dreamland, set in a Coney Island amusement park; and The Blue, a wonderful historical thriller involving spies, art and the race to create a beautiful new shade of blue. The Fugitive Colours is a sequel to The Blue and another great read; the two books stand alone, so it’s not necessary to have read the first novel before beginning this one, although I would recommend doing so if you can.

It’s 1764 and Genevieve Planché, heroine of The Blue, is now a married woman running her own silk design business in Spitalfields, London. With the help of her two young assistant artists, Caroline and Jean, Genevieve is beginning to find buyers for her silk designs and is determined to make the business a success. However, she has not given up on her dream of becoming a serious artist and when she is invited to a gathering at the home of the portrait painter Joshua Reynolds, it seems she could still have a chance of achieving her ambition.

This in itself would have been the basis for an interesting novel – a woman trying to build a career for herself in what was still very much a male-dominated field – but there’s a lot more to the story than that. Due to the parts played by Genevieve and her husband in the recent search for the blue, their names have come to the attention of some very powerful people who are hoping to enlist them in further conspiracies. Yet again Genevieve is forced to wonder who she can and cannot trust, but this time one wrong decision could mean the end of her dreams, the loss of her business and even the destruction of her marriage.

The Fugitive Colours is perhaps not quite as exciting and fast-paced as The Blue, but I found it equally gripping. Set entirely in London, it’s a very immersive book taking us from the Spitalfields workshops of the Huguenot silk-weaving community to the grand homes of the rich and famous and the nightlife of Covent Garden. While Genevieve and most of the other main characters are fictional, we do meet some real historical figures too – not just Joshua Reynolds but also Giacomo Casanova, the Earl of Sandwich and the fascinating Chevalier d’Eon. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of the 18th century art world, the snippets of information I picked up (not coming from an art background myself, I didn’t know what ‘fugitive colours’ were, but now I do), and the insights into how difficult it was for women like Genevieve and the real-life Frances Reynolds, Joshua’s sister, to gain recognition for their work.

I hope there will be another book in the Genevieve Planché series as I think there’s certainly a lot more that could be written about her. If not, I’ll look forward to seeing what Nancy Bilyeau decides to write next.

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

This is book 21/50 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

Dreamland by Nancy Bilyeau

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I loved this! I have read all of Nancy Bilyeau’s previous novels – The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry, set in Tudor England, and The Blue, about an 18th century porcelain painter – and enjoyed them all, but I think Dreamland, her new historical thriller, is her best yet.

It’s the summer of 1911 and twenty-year-old Peggy Batternberg, one of America’s wealthiest heiresses, has just started an unpaid job at New York’s Moonrise Bookstore. Her family disapprove, but Peggy has been feeling uncomfortable with her sheltered, privileged lifestyle and is enjoying the experience of doing something useful for a change and getting to know people from different backgrounds. However, she has hardly had time to settle into her new job when she is ordered to join the rest of her family at the Oriental Hotel near Coney Island to spend the summer there at the invitation of her sister’s fiancé, Henry Taul.

Peggy is disappointed and angry. She resents having to leave her position at the Moonrise and she dislikes Henry, so it is with a lot of reluctance that she agrees to change her plans. Shortly after her arrival at the hotel, she slips away from her Batternberg relatives and ventures through the gates of Dreamland, the newest and most impressive of Coney Island’s three huge amusement parks. It is here that she meets and falls in love with Stefan, a Serbian artist who sells hot dogs from a cart – definitely not the sort of man considered suitable company for a Batternberg heiress! Her family would be even more shocked if they knew that she had become mixed up in a murder investigation, but that’s exactly what happens when the body of a young woman is found on the beach near the hotel…

There was so much to enjoy about this book. First, the setting. I have never been to Coney Island but Nancy Bilyeau describes it all so well – the luxurious hotels, the beach and, most importantly, the rides, shows and other attractions of Dreamland itself – that I could form a clear picture of everything in my mind. In reality, the events that take place towards the end of the novel happened in May 1911, but Bilyeau plays around slightly with the dates so that the story unfolds during the summer heatwave instead, adding even more atmosphere to the novel.

Although Peggy is a fictional character, she is loosely based on the real American heiress and art collector, Peggy Guggenheim. It was interesting to follow her personal development over the course of that summer at Coney Island as she becomes increasingly aware of the disparity between the world in which she has grown up and the world populated by those who are less advantaged. Her visits to Dreamland open her eyes to a whole different way of life and her relationship with Stefan shows her the difficulties faced by immigrants in a society where they are viewed with suspicion and distrust.

I think the mystery aspect of the novel was actually my least favourite part of the book. There were only a few suspects and the eventual solution didn’t surprise me. What interested me more was the prejudiced way in which the investigation was handled by the police and the assumptions they made about various people based on factors such as name, nationality, gender and level of wealth.

The way Dreamland ended seemed to leave things open for another book about these characters; I would love to read a sequel, but if there’s not going to be one then I’m sure Nancy Bilyeau will find another equally fascinating setting and time period to write about next!

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

The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau

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Since reading the Joanna Stafford trilogy (The Crown, The Chalice and The Tapestry) a few years ago, I’ve been waiting and hoping for a new book from Nancy Bilyeau and here it is at last: The Blue. Bilyeau wrote so convincingly about Tudor England in the Joanna Stafford books that I was surprised to find she was switching to an entirely different period for this latest novel – the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763, a war which involved most of Europe, with Britain and France on opposite sides. Set against this backdrop, The Blue is an exciting, thrilling tale of espionage, art, religious persecution – and the race to create a new and beautiful shade of blue.

Our heroine, Genevieve Planché, is a young Huguenot woman whose family fled France when it became impossible for them to openly practise their religion. Despite her French ancestry, Genevieve has grown up in London among the silk weavers of Spitalfields and considers herself to be English, viewing the French king as someone to be feared. As a talented artist, she longs to have the chance to study painting and develop her skills, but as a woman she discovers that most of the opportunities open to men are closed to her. Her grandfather has made plans for her to go to a porcelain manufactory in Derby where she can paint pretty designs on plates and vases, but that’s not what Genevieve wants out of life. Then, just as she’s losing hope, she meets Sir Gabriel Courtenay at a party and receives a very tempting offer…

Sir Gabriel urges her to take up the position she has been offered at the Derby Porcelain Works and track down their chemist who is working on the development of a new colour blue. If Genevieve can steal the formula for blue and pass it to Sir Gabriel, he will help her travel to Venice where, he tells her, she will be taken seriously as a female artist. Genevieve is quick to agree, but once she is in Derby and the true scale of her mission becomes apparent, she begins to have doubts. Why is Sir Gabriel so desperate for the blue? What is the colour’s significance? And what will happen if she is caught?

The Blue is a fascinating novel – I learned so much about the production and decoration of porcelain, the meanings of different colours, and the ways in which art and science can combine to create things of beauty – but it is also a gripping and suspenseful historical thriller. One of the things I enjoyed most about the story was that it was so difficult to decide who could and could not be trusted. From the young woman Genevieve shares a room with at the Porcelain Works to Sir Gabriel himself, she has no idea who is on her side and who is likely to betray her. Although she sometimes makes silly mistakes, that is to be expected when she is faced with trying to navigate her way through so many dangerous situations!

This is the first book I have read via The Pigeonhole, a website/app which makes books available in daily instalments (referred to as ‘staves’). Each stave ended on a cliffhanger which left me desperate to get back to the story the following morning and reading it over a period of ten days was a wonderful experience. The book is written in present tense, something I usually find off-putting, but it seemed to work much better in the serialised format because it helped me to feel closer to Genevieve, almost as if I was sharing in her adventures as they happened.

I would love to read a sequel to The Blue, but if that doesn’t happen then I will look forward to whatever Nancy Bilyeau chooses to write about next.

Thanks to The Pigeonhole and Endeavour Quill for the opportunity to read this novel.