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My Review As soon as I saw this book on a friends tbr pile I knew it was exactly my kind of read. Historical literary fiction set in a bleak and harsh alien wilderness with its attendant dangers, brings the opportunity to step back in time and slip into someone else’s shoes and I wasn’t disappointed with the time travel experience this beautifully written, wonderful, haunting novel presented. Salt Creek begins in England in the 1870s where Hetty is reminiscing about the years she spent living in the Coorong Australia with her parents and siblings. Coorong is the absolute back of beyond and Salt creek is its armpit! A harsh, bleak and very lonely place, yet it haunts her very existence. Her intractable Papa is a feckless and reckless soul who never quite manages to make a success of any venture he tries yet he is full of big ideas and will never admit defeat. So in 1955 when his life in Adelaide begins to crumble he drags his unwilling family across the plains of Australia to live in a ...

Tall Chimneys by Allie Cresswell Once in a while a book comes along whose description ticks all my boxes and Tall Chimneys is one such novel, so I was delighted to be offered the chance to take part in the blog tour organized by Rachels Random Resources Read on to read my review and an extract. Please join me by reading an enticing extract and please visit some of my fellow bloggers on this tour too. My Review Tall Chimneys is an engaging literary historical novel set in a rambling tumbledown old country house set in a remote dip in a brooding moorland setting which sets the perfect bucolic scene for this nostalgic tale with a dual time twist. With plenty of characters to dislike and the antiquity of the location it sets out to draw us into the baleful world of Tall Chimneys, a book about a house and the people who lived there. Almost as soon as I began reading this book I was reminded of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. It has the same sombre, brooding, feel of time passing by beh...

Blog Tour and Review – The Man in the Needlecord jacket – Linda MacDonald My thanks go to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the blog tour for this new novel. Here are my thoughts after reading it… All the lead characters in this book are the same side of 50 as me, making it hold great appeal. They are all also putting behind them failed relationships and trying to build new ones and galloping towards old age with dread and disbelief (well I know how that feels!). The eponymous Man in the Needlecord jacket is Coll, an artist, self-centred and in my eyes a dislikeable arrogant absolute prat. We view him through the eyes of 2 of the women in his life. Sarah, who was widowed young and has been developing a long term relationship with Coll over quite a few years. It’s rapidly apparent that her self-esteem is low and no wonder, she is involved with this revolting man who sneakily manipulates and undermines her, so she is barely aware he is doing it. She loves this d...

Widdershins by Helen Steadman  The Blurb ‘Did all women have something of the witch about them?’ Jane Chandler is an apprentice healer. From childhood, she and her mother have used herbs to cure the sick. But Jane will soon learn that her sheltered life in a small village is not safe from the troubles of the wider world. From his father’s beatings to his uncle’s raging sermons, John Sharpe is beset by bad fortune. Fighting through personal tragedy, he finds his purpose: to become a witch-finder and save innocents from the scourge of witchcraft. Inspired by true events, Widdershins tells the story of the women who were persecuted and the men who condemned them. My Review: I am inexorably drawn to stories of witchcraft and the notorious Witch trials of the 17th century and this one in particular called out loudly to me, especially as it is set in the North East of England, as am I. It is based on factual events that will quite frankly make any womans blood run cold! Narrated in 2 ver...

Midnight Blue by Simone Van Der Vlugt Blog tour and review. Description: Amsterdam, 1654: following the sudden death of her husband, twenty-five year old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Her new life is vibrant and exciting in a city at the peak of its powers: commerce, science and art are flourishing and the ships leaving Amsterdam bring back exotic riches from the Far East. When an unwelcome figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to Delft. There, her painting talent earns her a chance to try out as a pottery painter. Slowly, the workshop begins to develop a new type of pottery to rival the coveted Chinese porcelain – and Delft Blue is born. But when tragedy strikes, Catrin has a hard choice to make. Rich and engrossing, Midnight Blue is perfect for fans of Tulip Fever and Girl with a Pearl Earring My Review: Every now and again a novel comes along that so clearly calls out to me it might b...