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My Review - Death and the Harlot by Georgina Clarke I was completely absorbed into this book which I received through Netgalley, with its extremely likeable heroine Lizzie Hardwicke, Harlot of the title. A high-class London prostitute working out of a mid 18th century Soho pleasure house. When one of her "customers" is found murdered she faces inevitable suspicion, so, keen to clear her name she joins forces with an investigator and becomes amateur sleuth. Set in the back streets of London, among the seediest pubs, the coffee houses and bathhouses where no respectable girl would be seen, as a lady of the night Lizzie can pass through, if not completely unnoticed, at least accepted. She uses her keen skills of observation and an understanding of peoples motives gained from her questionable trade, to great advantage. What emerges is a complicated tale of blackmail, and revenge, where everyone has either a hidden past or leads a double life, nobody can be taken at face value and...

The Almanack by Martine Bailey My Review The Almanack is a luscious and vibrant journey into the past via the predictions and riddles of an almanack. One of the first things I notice when I sink blissfully into a Martine Bailey book, is how quickly she transports me to another era and how evident it is that she has deeply researched everything to do with the era she is writing about. Which, in this case, is the mid 1700s. The whole book is cleverly constructed around an Almanack of the very year in which the book is set and is so authentically woven I can only surmise that the Author had such a real document in her hands at the time of writing.  An Almanack is a printed yearbook containing dates and events for the coming year, more detailed than a calendar or a diary it would contain notable festival dates, sunrise and sunset times, tide tables and other information invaluable, especially to country folk, farmers and the like. Some are still printed every year to this very day, for...

Beadyjans favourite books 2018 My top 10 We're all doing it - frantically compiling lists of our favourite reads in 2018.  I don't know why we readers feel compelled to make lists of everything but its a common trait, and we love reading other peoples lists too. So while I should really be making a shopping list, a packing list for my festive break etc, here's a list of my very favourite reads over the past 12 months. UPDATE: - Already I'm fretting that I missed a few books I adored and then I've just finished reading yet another which really blew me away. Do not view this as a definitive list!! 2018 has been a year of change for me, we bought a little holiday home in the sun which has proven to be rather a mixed blessing and I finally escaped the job I loathed and have landed firmly on my feet working for the most amazing and lovely small family business, who have all but adopted me, not just employed me. I only wish I'd started working for them donkeys year...

Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield Today sees me taking part in the blog tour for a new book that I predict is going to be HUGE. It is the long-awaited new title from Diane Setterfield, noted author of the bestseller The Thirteenth Tale. My thoughts: Already being hailed as a masterpiece of storytelling Once upon a River is an otherworldly tale of myth and legend woven around the winding river Thames in times gone by. It's a book-lovers book based on traditional storytelling, with a touch of magic, a hint of the supernatural and a lot of twisting and turning. As the river meanders so does the tale. Although its a relaxing piece of escapism, don't get too comfortable, this is a book with depth and needs a good level of concentration to follow it, constructed as it is from lots of separate stories which weave together to become a book. This clever and mysterious book is set in various hostelries and Inns along the river in an indistinct past era, where storytellers gather and...

My Review of When Winter Comes by V.A. Shannon. Wonderful, epic, historical fiction, I loved it and couldn't put it down. I consider myself very fortunate to have been chosen as one of the recipients of a copy in advance of publication. My advance review copy is now well creased, as I read this remarkable novel in bed, on the bus and crammed it in my handbag to take to work, I was so engrossed in the story. Quite recently I read another fictional book with a supernatural angle The Hunger based on the same true subject, the Donner party of pioneers who came to grief, back in the mid 19th century when thousands of brave and some plain foolhardy, folk set off with their wagon trains to cross the Sierra mountains from Cincinatti, headed West towards California to try and build a better life. What bravery, how hard it must have been in these days centuries before tripadvisor and google maps and without even any real trail or markers to follow. Both these books are wonderful, yet rather ...

The Corset by Laura Purcell My Review WOW - brilliant, loved every word of this ravishing historical thriller. I do wish I hadn't read this book!! Only because I'm pretty darned certain it's going to such a hard act to follow that I'm going to find each and every new book I pick up for months, lacking in comparison and I'm saddened and green with envy that everyone who is yet to read this, still has it's delights to look forward to. The description had me chomping at the bit, the cover had me swooning and I KNEW without doubt that it was my kind of book to a T. Yet still I didn't know what absolute reading PERFECTION this completely spectacular book was going to be. Reminding me very much of two of my all time favourite reads Affinity and The Observations I am almost lost for words, to describe my feelings adequately after reading this. It is a historical twisty mystery which is deviously dark and devilishly delectable. Featuring two very different young wom...

The House on Half Moon Street - Alex Reeve My Review: I feel a bit embarrassed that it took me a while to get around to reading this fabulous historical mystery with a difference. And my only excuse is that it arrived on my tbr accompanied by so many other great tales it took me lonegr than I wanted to get around to reading them all. This was worth the wait! 2018 has been for me THE year of the historical novel, with a plethora of wonderful, tempting new titles to entice and beguile me, and a delightful profusion of new historical fiction. This one is no exception. A most entertaining, heartfelt and gripping murder mystery with twists aplenty and characters who entranced me. This intriguing new title, features a hero I was a little unsure whether I'd relate to at first, but have to admit i fell head over heels in love with. Leo, born in a girls body has always known he is a man and left his family and his former female identity to live as a man, in the city of London. An inevitable...

A Gathering of Ghosts by Karen Maitland My review: Karen Maitland smashes the bar again with another fabulous, bewitching medieval masterpiece. She populates her latest book with a cast of superbly memorable characters. A group of holy sisters in an isolated Priory, ruled by the indomitable Prioress Johanne assisted by a group of sisters including the wonderful sister Basilia (I must confess I instantly pictured her as the wonderful actress Patsy Byrne - most famous for her role of Nursie in Blackadder, and wonder if the author had this character in mind when she created her?) Knights of St John, tinners working on Dartmoor living in impoverishment I shudder to imagine, and some wonderful mystical and magical pagan women. The whole story is woven around survival, the battle between pagan beliefs versus Christianity, magic, ancient lore, the wisdom and fortitude of women from different walks of life entwined with the occult. Combine this with a stunningly believable storyline and strang...

Wrecker by Noel O'Reilly My review I can't resist a trip into the dark and murky past of our forbears and Wrecker plunged me into the world of bygone coastal Corwall. (I must admit the beautiful cover drew me in like a moth to a flame) This is a take of poverty stricken fishing folk who often struggle to put another pilchard on the table and whom desperation makes reckless. These villagers live in crude hovels with naught to their names but the hand me down pagan beliefs they have inherited. They eke out the meagre living they try to sustain with fishing and farming, by scavenging goods which have been washed up from the many shipwrecks which occur in the area. In this twisty tale of times gone by we meet Mary Blight, a feisty feckless heroine, who lives with her ailing Mam and her beloved sister. Mary wants to better herself and is about to seize any opportunity that comes her way, but she is apt to make a bad decision or two: like the time she goes to the beach to see what pi...

Today I join the blog tour for The Black Earth by Philip Kazan. Look at the beautiful cover doesn't it just make you want to know who the people are and what is happening in their lives? well you can find out by reading this book. I still have that to look forward to but as the book is set in Greece I am really looking forward to reading it this summer. Here is a post The author, Philp wrote for my blog when I asked what led him to write his latest novel: Guest Post: by Philip Kazan The Path to The Black Earth My latest novel, The Black Earth, is my seventh, but strangely enough it was the thing I began when I first decided to see whether I could write, about twenty years ago.  My wife and I had moved into my grandmother’s old house in West London, which had been neglected since her death a decade earlier. It was a temporary arrangement: we were living there rent-free in return for renovating the place, so the two of us were knocking around in this enormous late-Victorian red brick...

Blog Tour - The Sapphire Widow by Dinah Jefferies It's great to be  part of the blog tour for another gorgeous historical title by the delightful Dinah Jefferies. The cover is absolutely gorgeous - but what about the story? Read on for my own thoughts about this luscious new book set in 1930s Ceylon. My Review Dinah Jefferies has become my go-to author for sheer indulgent escapism. With all her books you know in advance exactly what you’re going to get: A stunning location beautifully described so well you can feel the heat and smell the spices and a haunting love story with a realistic and likeable heroine. Intricately researched details and a gripping historical read with a timeless quality which blends factual knowledge with a rich and vivid imagination to create a luscious book to transport the reader away from everyday humdrum life. This latest offering is a cornucopia of glittering gems, garnished with pungent spices and wrapped in a silken bow of emotions. In the Sapphire wi...

My Review Oh My Goodness! This book packs a powerful punch that smacked me in the gut, there's a real shocker of a twist that I really didn't anticipate until just a chapter or two before it is to be revealed I began to have a nauseous sense that there was something coming that I hadn't been expecting .... then wham! But I digress, it's hardly surprising that my thoughts are a little muddled having just spent several days locked in the mind of a woman incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. This woman is Edith Potter, daughter of the renowned Dr Potter leader in the field of examining the psychological impact of shell shock following the first world war. Spinster Edith lives alone, since her father was murdered by an unknown intruder, no wonder she is jumpy and nervous living in the very house where he was killed. It's clear from the onset that Ediths mind is a little disturbed, she has secrets and has built a wall to keep them away, but this is to become her undoing and ...

WEST by Carys Davies - my review This book was, for me a very fast read, it's a short book with a big punch. It tells the story of Cy Bellmann, a pioneering Brit who has previously emigrated to Pennsylvania to farm mules and horses, this act alone tells us he is man not averse to taking a great risk to achieve what he wants in life even if it is to the cost of those dear to him, you'd think he'd be satisfied with what he has! Now widowed and left alone with just his young daughter Bess who is now 10, for company, like many of us, he knows there must be something greater than his humdrum life. He's only 35 but boy does this guy have a sudden mid life crisis. He hears news of a momentous discovery far away in Kentucky, a pile of colossal animal bones. He is convinced this skeleton reveals the presence of a yet undiscovered wondrous living creature and it ignites a fire in him he hasn't felt since before his wife died, he burns to be the one to find this huge animal. T...

My review of Eliza Waite by Ashley Sweeney This is a very enjoyable work of historical fiction which however reads like 2 separate books! Both of which I hasten to add I enjoyed. Eliza Waite, the eponymous heroine of the tale is a strong and resourceful character. Considered big and clumsy and even unattractive she makes her way in life the best she is able with the few skills she has and the ones she hasn't already got she learns or adapts to. The first part of the book tells of her time living mostly alone on a remote island off Washington in the late 19th century. Recently widowed she is loath to mourn the death of a man she never loved, but when fate saw fit to take her beloved only son as well it's hardly surprising she becomes almost unhinged in her grief and decides to remain on this virtually uninhabited isle and forge a living surviving the best way she can. I think I liked this part of the book best, with its air of pioneering and survivalist minimalism in a natural e...

I'm happy to draw your attention to this new historical fiction title by author Tamar Anolic which is entitled Triumph of a Tsar It is available now to buy  for your kindle or in paperback. Book Description: Triumph of a Tsar is a work of alternate historical fiction in which the Russian Revolution of 1917 is averted, and the hemophiliac Alexei, son of Tsar Nicholas II, comes to the throne. In August, 1920, sixteen-year-old Alexei is enjoying his birthday celebrations when Nicholas dies suddenly. Overnight, Alexei becomes tsar of an empire that covers one-sixth of the world’s landmass. The Great War is over, but Russia is still suffering from the devastation and poverty that it brought. Communists such as Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky view the political situation as ripe for revolution, but they realize that the popular Alexei stands in their way. To make matters worse, Alexei’s hemophilia, the disease that has threatened him his whole life, returns to haunt him. With his life in const...