Author: Harriet Steel
Kindle Edition
Category: Historical, Crime, Fiction, Cosy Mystery, Book Review
Inspector de Silva and Jane embark on a cruise to Egypt to visit the pyramids, excited at the prospect of two weeks of sun, sea and relaxation. With Nuala, and de Silva’s duties as a police officer, far behind them, what can possibly spoil their plans?
Author: Jan Edwards
Expected Publication in Paperback ~ 4th April by Penkhull Press
Category: Historical Fiction, Cosy Mystery, Book Review
Bunch Courtney’s hopes for a quiet market-day lunch with her sister are shattered when a Dutch refugee dies a horribly painful death before their eyes. A few days later Bunch receives a letter from her old friend Cecile saying that her father, Professor Benoir, has been murdered in an eerily similar fashion. Two deaths by poisoning in a single week. Co-incidence? Bunch does not believe that any more than Chief Inspector William Wright.
Author: Diane Setterfield
Published: December 2018 by Transworld Digital
Category: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Folklore, Suspense, Romance, Book Review
On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames, the regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open and in steps an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a child.
Hours later, the dead girl stirs, takes and breath and returns to life.
Is it a miracle?
Is it magic?
And who does the little girl belong to?
Author: Tony Riches
Published: December 2018 by Preseli Press
Category: Historical Fiction, Tudor, Book Review
Handsome, charismatic and a champion jouster, Sir Charles Brandon is the epitome of a Tudor Knight. A favourite of King Henry VIII, Brandon has a secret. He has fallen in love with Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the beautiful widowed Queen of France, and risks everything to marry her without the king’s consent.
Author: Graham Norton
Narrated by Graham Norton
Released: October 2018 by Hodder & Stoughton
Category: Fiction, Contemporary, Historical, Family Drama, Book Review
The mystery of Elizabeth Keane’s father is one that has never been solved by the people of Buncarragh – not for lack of speculation.
Now, as Elizabeth returns to the village after her mother’s funeral, bringing with her own regrets and wounds, she finds a thin pile of ribbon-bound letters at the back of a wardrobe that may at last hold the key to her past.
Author: W.C. Ryan
Published: October 2018 by Zaffre
Category: Historical Fiction, Murder, Crime, Mystery, Espionage, Supernatural, Book Review
Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives.
At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die.
Author: Carol Hedges
Published: September 2018 by Little G Books
Category: Historical, Crime Fiction, Book Review
When a young man’s body is discovered buried deep beneath the winter snow, Detectives Stride and Cully little realise where the discovery will take them. Is his murder a random, one-off event, or could the death be linked to the mysteriously elusive individual who has already brought down one of the City’s long-standing private banks?
Author: Nicholas Nicastro
Published: October 2018 by Endeavour Media
Category: Historical Fiction, True Crime, Book Review
A beautiful girl of 19 disappears from her home after bidding a fateful goodnight to her sweetheart. She is found dead in the Pasquotank River 36 days later. He is convicted TWICE for her murder – but is innocent. So what really happened…?
Author: Margaret Skea
Published: July 2018 by Corazon Books
Category: Historical Fiction, Saga, Book Review
1598. The French Wars of Religion are drawing to an end, the Edict of Nantes establishing religious freedom in all but Paris.
For the exiled Adam and Kate Munro, the child Kate carries symbolizes a new life free from past troubles, despite their lingering nostalgia for Scotland and the friendship of the Montgomeries.
Author: J. New
Kindle Edition
Category: 1930s Historical Fiction, Paranormal, Crime, Book Review
The glamour of the French Riviera quickly turns sour as Ella is caught up in an investigation which will have repercussions on both sides of the channel. But has she finally met her match?
‘The Riviera Affair’ is set in 1930’s England, and is the fourth of The Yellow Cottage Vintage Mystery series.
Author: Harriet Steel
Published: July 2018 by Stane Street Press
Category: Historical Fiction, Cosy Mystery, Murder, Crime, Book Review
In this fourth instalment of the Inspector de Silva mysteries, it is monsoon season in the Hill Country. One stormy night, a ghostly encounter on a lonely road leads de Silva into a case of murder, and a mystery that stretches back to Ceylon’s distant past. To uncover the truth, he will have to face death and his inner demons.
Author: Margaret Skea
Published: May 2017 by Corazon Books
Category: Historical, Saga, Fiction, Book Review
Eleven years on from the Massacre of Annock, the Cunninghame / Montgomerie truce is fragile.
For the Munro family, living in hiding under assumed names, these are dangerous times.
While Munro risks his life daily in the service of the French King, the spectre of discovery by William Cunninghame haunts his wife Kate. Her fears for their children and her absent husband realized as William’s desire for revenge tears their world apart.
The keeper of family secrets, Patricia Roberts grows up isolated and lonely. Trust no one and you won’t be disappointed is her motto. Three men fall in love with her and she learns to trust, only to find that their agendas are not her own. With secrets concealed from her by the ultimate love of her life, and with her own secret to keep, duplicity and deceit threaten their relationship. In a coming of age story set against the sweeping backdrop of the Second World War – evacuation, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, buzz bombs and secret war work – Patricia ultimately has to decide whether to reveal her deepest held secret for the sake of her future happiness.
Author: Kristin Hannah
Performed by Julia Whelan
Released: February 2018 by Macmillan Digital Audio
Category: Family Drama, Historical, Fiction, Romance, Book Review
Alaska, 1974.
Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.
Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.
Author: Ryan K. Nelson
Published: December 2016 by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Category: Historical, Fiction, Romance, Action, Adventure, Book Review
When FBI Agent Alex Travis receives an anonymous phone call on a September morning in 1954 with a tip concerning the now cold case of the Cache County Bank robbery, it has his undivided attention. The tip leads Travis to the top of the secluded Green canyon in Logan, Utah, where a young man named Jack Pepper proceeds to tell a story spanning the two years from the time of the robbery, when he and his girlfriend, Kate Austin, stumbled upon the crime of the century for the Cache Valley.
Author: J New
Published: January 2018 by Phantom Press
Category: Cozy Mystery, Paranormal, Book Review
Ella Bridges faces her most challenging investigation so far when the vicar dies suddenly at the May Day Fete. But with evidence scarce and her personal life unravelling in ways she could never have imagined, she misses vital clues in the investigation.
Author: J. New
Published: January 2017 by Phantom Press
Category: Cozy Mystery, Paranormal, Historical Fiction, Book Review
One ghost, one murder, one hundred years apart. But are they connected?
Ella has discovered a secret room in The Yellow Cottage, but with it comes a ghost. Who was she? And how did she die? Ella needs to find the answers before either of them can find peace. But suddenly things take a nasty turn for the worse.
Author: J. New
Published: March 2015 by Phantom Press
Category: Paranormal, Cozy Mystery, Historical Fiction, Book Review
Young widow, Isobella Bridges discovered and fell in love with The Yellow Cottage as a child. Many years later she returned to the Island, discovered it was for sale and bought it on a whim. Or so she thought.
She had no idea at the time how much it would change her life, nor that it was yet to reveal all it’s secrets. Ones that even Ella couldn’t imagine.
Author: Carl Rackman
Published Independently November 2017
Category: Historical Fiction, Suspense, Thriller, Book Review
The North Atlantic, 1940. A British destroyer pounces on a seemingly abandoned U-boat, leading to a spine-chilling encounter.
Five years later, the US Navy destroyer Brownlee grimly prepares to battle a swarm of Japanese kamikazes at Okinawa.
Mitch “Lucky” Kirkham, a young gunner on the Brownlee, wakes up miraculously unscathed after his crewmates are killed in a fearsome kamikaze strike.
Author: Margaret Skea
Published: October 2017 by Sanderling Books
Category: Historical Fiction, Book Review
Following the death of her mother and her father’s remarriage, five-year-old Katharina is placed in the convent at Brehna. She will never see her father again.
Sixty-five miles away, at Erfurt in Thuringia, Martin Luder, a promising young law student, turns his back on a lucrative career in order to become a monk.
The consequences of their meeting in Wittenberg, on Easter Sunday 1523, will reverberate down the centuries and throughout the Christian world.
Author: Harriet Steel
Kindle Edition
Category: Historical Fiction, Cosy Mystery, Book Review
In this third instalment of The Inspector de Silva Mysteries, there’s great excitement when a professional theatre company comes to Nuala. However matters take a dark turn when the company’s actor manager is murdered. Inspector de Silva has a new case to solve and he has to consider some very unpalatable motives for the crime. He will need all his persistence, coupled with his wife, Jane’s, invaluable help to unmask the villain of the piece.
When young and beautiful Mary Molesworth is forced to marry Robert Rochford, widowed heir to the earldom of Belfield, she finds that her idea of love is not returned. Jealous, cruel and manipulative, Robert ignores her after she has provided him with a male heir, preferring to spend his nights with his mistress. Power-hungry, Robert builds up a reputation that sees him reach for the highest positions in Ireland. Caught in an unhappy marriage, Mary begins to grow closer to Robert’s younger brother, Arthur. Acknowledging their love for each other, they will risk everything to be together. But Robert’s revenge threatens their lives and tears them apart.
It’s 1911 and Winifred Duffy is a determined young woman eager for new experiences, for a life beyond the grocer’s shop counter ruled over by her domineering mother.
The scars of Bill Howarth’s troubled childhood linger. The only light in his life comes from a chance encounter with Winifred, the girl he determines to make his wife.
1864 marks the arrival of a brand new department store right in the shopping heart of Oxford Street. What owner John Gould does not expect, is the presence of a dead man in one of his display windows. How did he get there? And why has Gould’s store been picked out as a murder location?
Meanwhile Sir Hugh and Lady Meriel Wynward are not expecting to hear from their daughter Sybella, who died in a railway accident two years ago. So when a letter written in her hand arrives unexpectedly, on what would have been her eighteenth birthday, it throws them into turmoil. What is going on?
1348. A bone-sculpted angel and the woman who wears it––heretic, Devil’s servant, saint.
Midwife Héloïse has always known that her bastard status threatens her standing in the French village of Lucie-sur-Vionne. Yet her midwifery and healing skills have gained the people’s respect, and she has won the heart of the handsome Raoul Stonemason. The future looks hopeful. Until the Black Death sweeps into France.
The story begins in the year 1334 and focuses on Héloïse, growing up in Lucie-sur-Vionne and cared for by her aunt, the village midwife Isa, her dead mother’s twin. She’s taunted mercilessly about being a ‘non-born’ by some of the superstitious village folk. Continue reading
Author: Simon MichaelThe Lighterman is the third book in the bestselling series of legal thrillers starring barrister Charles Holborne. Simon Michael’s follow up to the bestselling The Brief and An Honest Man, continues the adventures of criminal barrister Charles Holborne.
A copy of The Lighterman came to me through a giveaway in conjunction with Matthew at Urbane Publications and Jo’s Book Blog. Not having read the first two books I was a little concerned, but happily there was enough back information woven into the story so that I didn’t feel confused at all or unable to follow the plot.
The story opens with a short prologue going back to September 1940 and the blitz. Charles Horowitz along with his brother, David, and parents, Harry and Millie, live in the East End and are taking shelter from the bombs in the depths of the school. When one of the bombs lands too close for comfort the family risk a race across the playground and just make it before the school suffers a direct hit. The Horowitz’s are evacuated to Carmarthen but after four weeks Charles runs away, back to London where he spends his formative years as a Lighterman with his cousin, Izzy. Continue reading
