Good afternoon everyone. I was lucky enough to get a copy of Loot by Tania James last week. Historical fiction is one of my favourite genres and I always love books about different periods as I enjoy learning something new.

Huge thanks to Carmella from Vintage publishing for my copy of this book. I can’t wait to read it!

Out 25th January 2024!

Book Synopsis:

An epic tale of plundered treasure, savage empire, lasting love and a young man’s dream to make his mark on the world.

Meet Abbas. Woodcarver, toy maker, dreamer. Abbas is seventeen when he is whisked away to Tipu Sultan’s glorious palace in Mysore. Apprenticed to the legendary clockmaker Monsieur Du Leze, he is ordered to create an ingenious musical tiger to delight Tipu’s sons.

In the eccentric Du Leze, Abbas finds an unexpected friend who encourages his skill and hunger for learning, and through whom he also meets the unforgettable Jehanne, who has questions and ambitions of her own.

But when British soldiers attack and loot Mysore, Abbas’s world is turned upside down and his prized tiger is shipped off to a country estate in England. In order to carve out his place in the world, he must follow.

A hero’s quest, a love story, an exuberant heist novel that traces the bloody legacy of colonialism across the world, Loot is a dazzling, wildly inventive and irresistible feat of storytelling from a writer at the height of her powers.

About The Author:

Tania James is the author of three works of fiction, most recently the novel The Tusk That Did the Damage (Knopf). Tusk was named a Best Book of 2015 by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, and NPR, and shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Financial Times Oppenheimer Award. Her short stories have appeared in One Story, The New Yorker, Granta, Freeman’s Anthology, Oxford American, and other venues. James is an associate professor of creative writing at George Mason University, and lives in Washington DC. Her fourth novel, Loot, will be published by Knopf in June 2023.

Good morning everyone! Today on Two For Tuesday I’m featuring two of my bookclub reads for this month.

Shark Heart is for the lovely @bestbookforward ‘s new book club. It’s been getting lots of good reviews on here so I’m very excited to read it. It sounds slightly unusual so I’m very intrigued. That Bone Setter Woman is for the #hfbookclub I’m part of run by the lovely @r4ch4elreads and @thebookdiaryofmisshewlett . I absolutely loved The Smallest Man so I’m very excited to read this one.

I will also have my book club read for the Rossiter book club which is Stone Blind by Natalie Hayes. I thought I’d bought it in hardback but I can’t find it anywhere so I think I’ll have to re-buy.

Do you belong to a book club? What’s your book club read for this month?

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last.

A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He’s turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human. At first, Wren resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms?

But as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn’t the first time she’s lost a loved one.

An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human?

That Bonesetter Woman by Frances Quinn

It’s usual, they say, for a young person coming to London for the first time to arrive with a head full of dreams. Well, Endurance Proudfoot did not. When she stepped off the coach from Sussex, on a warm and sticky afternoon in the summer of 1757, it never occurred to her that the city would be the place where she’d make her fortune; she was just very annoyed to be arriving there at all.
 
Meet Endurance Proudfoot: clumsy as a carthorse, strong as an ox, with a tactless tongue and a face she’s sure only a mother could love. Durie wants one thing in life: to become a bonesetter like her father. It’s physically demanding work, requiring nerves of steel, and he’s adamant it’s not a job for a woman.

Strong-willed and stubborn, Durie’s certain that in bonesetting, her big, usually clumsy hands have found their natural calling. So when she’s bundled off to London with her beautiful sister, she won’t let it stop her realising her dream. As her sister finds fame on the stage, Durie becomes England’s most celebrated bonesetter – but what goes up must come down, and her success may become her undoing.

Inspired by the true stories of two of Georgian England’s most famous celebrities, That Bonesetter Woman is an uplifting tale about finding the courage to go your own way, when everyone says you can’t – and about realising that what makes you different can also make you strong.

Book Synopsis:

LONDON. EARLY MORNING.

A body is found in a padlocked suitcase.

Investigator Emma Makepeace knows it’s murder. And it’s personal.

She quickly establishes that the dead man had been shadowing two oligarchs suspected of procuring illegal weapons in the UK. And it seems likely that an insider working deep within the British government is helping them.

To find out who the traitor is, Emma goes deep undercover on a superyacht owned by one of the oligarchs.

But the glamorous veneer of the rich hides dark secrets. Out at sea, Emma is both hunter and prey, and no one can protect her.

Never has the turquoise sea and golden sands of the Rivera seemed so dangerous.

As the hunt intensifies, Emma knows that she is in mortal danger. And that she needs to find the traitor before they find her . . .

My Review:

The Traitor is a fast paced, gripping read from a new author for me . It’s going to be a difficult book to review as I don’t want to give anything away.

Firstly I loved the main character Emma and enjoyed following her throughout the book. She was such a strong, feisty character and I loved that she wasn’t afraid to throw her self into dangerous situations. Her team were all wonderful creations and I loved how different they all were each bringing different things to the table.

The closed room setting of the yacht was very clever and helped create a lot of tension in the book, especially when the reader becomes aware of the unsavoury characters Emma is stuck at sea with. I must admit my heart was in my mouth at some parts of her investigation and I quickly found the book hard to put down as I had to keep reading to check Emma was alright. I thought it was clever that as well as an obvious threat there was also hints at other dangers that Emma couldn’t see which helps increase the tension even more.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and flew through it in a couple of days. The intriguing, hard hitting beginning quickly drew me into the story and I soon found it hard to put the book down as I was so enjoying it. Children were allowed to watch too much TV, chores went ignored as I found myself hiding in the kitchen desperate to find out what happened next.

This is the second book in the series but I think you could easily read it as a standalone, like I’ve done, as everything you need to know is explained. However I will definitely be reading the first book soon.

Huge thanks to Amanda from Penguin for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book. If you’re looking for a thrilling new crime series I highly recommend this one.

About The Author:

Ava Glass is the author of the espionage series Alias Emma. A former civil servant and journalist, she once worked closely with spies, and that experience fuels her writing. Ava is the pseudonym for an international bestselling author who has written more than ten crime novels under another name. Her books have been bestsellers in multiple countries, and have been published in more than twenty languages. Alias Emma is currently being developed for television by The Ink Factory. Join Ava’s bookclub and win free books on her website: http://www.AvaGlass.co.uk, or follow her on social media: @AvaGlassBooks

Book Synopsis:

Sunday Times bestseller Rachel Hore’s captivating new novel of secrets, loss and betrayal – set on the beautiful Cornish coast during World War Two and the heady days of the 1960s.

When talented musician Gray Robinson persuades Belle to abandon her university studies and follow him to Silverwood, home to an artistic community on the Cornish coast, Belle happily agrees even though they’ve only just met. She knows she is falling in love, and the thought of spending a carefree summer with Gray is all she can think about.
 
But being with Gray isn’t the only reason Belle agrees to accompany him to Silverwood.
 
Why does the name Silverwood sound so familiar?
What is its connection to a photo of her as a baby, taken on a nearby beach?
And who is Imogen Lockhart, a wartime nurse who lived at Silverwood many years ago?
 
As the summer months unfold, Belle begins to learn the truth – about secrets from the past that have been kept hidden, but also about the person she wants to be.

My Review:

The Hidden Years is a beautifully written, absorbing dual timeline mystery which I really enjoyed.

Firstly I loved the wonderful descriptions of Silverwood and I enjoyed learning more about it’s history, especially the different uses it’s had over the years. It sounded like a beautiful old house and I liked exploring it alongside the characters. It’s idyllic location near the beach sounded beautiful, as did the grounds it was set in . It made me wish that I could visit Silverwood as I’d love to be able to explore the house and grounds myself.

The story is told in two timelines, one following Imogen during the Second World War and the other following Belle as she tries to work out what she wants to do in life as well as her connection to the mysterious Silverwood. Of the two timelines I did prefer following Imogen’s slightly more as I always enjoy stories set in the war. However Belle’s story was also interesting as I liked exploring the different way of life Silverwood offered. There seemed to be some underlying tension amongst the inhabitants too which I found interesting to explore.

The book had a lovely pace to it and there always seemed to be something happening to keep me reading. Even in the slightly slower moments I didn’t mind as I was just enjoying hanging out with the characters. The two timelines complemented each other nicely and it was fun watching them both come together, with intriguing little clues dropped into both timelines. I did guess parts of the story early on but wasn’t able to guess other parts of the mystery until the end which I always love.

Huge thanks to the lovely Sara-Jade for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book. If you’re a fan of dual timeline mysteries then I highly recommend this book.

About The Author:

A warm welcome to my page. I’m the author of twelve bestselling novels, the most recent of which is One Moonlit Night. Look for my new novel, The Hidden Years, to be published in hardback in the UK on 14th September 2023.

I came to writing quite late, after a career editing fiction at HarperCollins in London. My husband and I had moved out to Norwich with our three young sons and I’d had to give up my job and writing was something that I’d always wanted to try. I originally studied history, so it was wonderful finally to put my knowledge to good use and to write The Dream House, which is partly set in the 1920s in Suffolk and London.

Most of my novels are dual narrative, often called ‘time slip’, with a story in the present alternating with one set in the past. I love the freedom that they give me to escape into the past, but also the dramatic ways in which the stories interact. My characters are often trying to solve some mystery about the past and by doing so to resolve some difficulty or puzzle in their own lives.

The books often involve a lot of research and this takes me down all sorts of interesting paths. For The Glass Painter’s Daughter I took an evening class in working with coloured glass. My creations were not very amazing, but making them gave me insight into the processes so that my characters’ activities would feel authentic. For A Week in Paris I had to research Paris in World War II and the early 1960s through films and books and by visiting the city – that was a great deal of work for one novel. Last Letter Home involved me touring a lot of country houses with old walled kitchen gardens in search of atmosphere and to explore the different kinds of plants grown there.

Places often inspire my stories. The Memory Garden, my second novel, is set in one of my favourite places in the world – Lamorna Cove in Cornwall – which is accessed through a lovely hidden valley. A Place of Secrets is set in a remote part of North Norfolk near Holt, where past and present seem to meet. Southwold in Suffolk, a characterful old-fashioned seaside resort with a harbour and a lighthouse, has been a much loved destination for our family holidays and has made an appearance in fictional guise in several of my novels, including The Silent Tide and The Love Child.

Until recently I taught Publishing and Creative Writing part-time at the University of East Anglia, but now I’m a full-time writer, which felt like a bit step. My boys are all grown up now and finding their way in the world, but we still see a lot of them. My husband David is a writer, too (he writes as D.J. Taylor), so we understand each other’s working lives.

I find I have to have a regular routine with my writing, not least to keep the book in my head. My aim is to sit down at 9am every morning and write till lunchtime, then again the afternoon, but there is often something ready to interrupt this, not least our Labrador girl Zelda, so I go with the flow.

I hope that you are able to find my books easily and enjoy them – I am always happy to hear from readers!

Good morning everyone and happy Saturday! I was very excited to book some tickets to see some of my favourite authors at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

I’m going with one of my best friends who I’ve known since I was 16. We’ve both booked the day off work so plan to make the most of it having lunch and arriving early to soak up the atmosphere.

I’m going on the 12th of October to see Sarah Winman which I’m very excited about as I love her books and then JoJo Moyes with Mike Gayle!

Anyone else going to Cheltenham Festival? Who are you going to see?

Good afternoon everyone I’m excited to be on the cover reveal for this fantastic sounding book today!

I love the look of this cover by Jeremy Wilson, designed by Lauren Panepinto which has me very intrigued. The book is out on the 7th December 2023 and is available to preorder now.

Book Synopsis:

The second novel in Justin Lee Anderson’s sensational epic fantasy series where the war for a kingdom exits the shadows now that a terrifying secret has been revealed.

The fog of war is lifted and the conspiracy at the heart of Eidyn finally exposed.

Now they know the truth, Aranok and his allies must find a way to free a country that doesn’t know it’s held captive.

But with divided loyalties and his closest friendship shaken, can their alliance hold against overwhelming odds? The quest to retake the country begins here.

A fast-paced epic fantasy, filled with swashbuckling action and expansive worldbuilding, The Bitter Crown is the gripping sequel to The Lost War, perfect for fans of Nicholas Eames and RJ Barker.

About The Author:

Justin spent 15 years as a professional writer and editor before his debut novel, Carpet Diem, was published in 2015. It became a best-seller and won a 2018 Audie award. His second book, The Lost War, won the 2020/21 SPFBO award and was picked up by Orbit as the first of the four-book Eidyn Saga.

Justin lives with his family in East Lothian, just outside his hometown of Edinburgh.

📚 September Hopefuls!

Good morning everyone and happy Friday.  Here are some of the books I’m hoping to read this month:

❤️Leech by Hiron Ennes *
🧡The Queue by Alexandra Heminsley*
💛The Playground by Michelle Frances*
💚 In The Weeds by B. K. Borison*
💙 The Turnglass by Gareth Rubin
🩵 Talking At Night by Claire Daverley
💜 The Square Of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson*
🩷 The Good Liars by Anita Frank
🤎 Bad Men by Julie Mae Cohen*
🖤 Nineteen Steps by Millie Bobby Brown*
🩶 Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
🤍 Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

I’m a bit of a mood reader and easily swayed by what others are reading so I’m not expecting to read all of these.  Shark Heart is a book club read so I’ll definitely be reading that and I’m hoping to read a lot of the starred books as these were all kindly gifted to me.

Have you read any of these? Do we have any books in common to read this month?

Good afternoon everyone I hope you’re having a great day. I’m excited to be starting the read-along for Penance by Eliza Clark with Tandem Collective today. I’ve heard lots of great things about this book so I’m excited to finally read it.

Have you read this book?

Book Synopsis:

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes?

Did you see the pictures of the body?

Did you look for them?

It’s been nearly a decade since the horrifying murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson rocked Crow-on-Sea, and the events of that terrible night are now being published for the first time.

That story is Penance, a dizzying feat of masterful storytelling, where Eliza Clark manoeuvres us through accounts from the inhabitants of this small seaside town. Placing us in the capable hands of journalist Alec Z. Carelli, Clark allows him to construct what he claims is the ‘definitive account’ of the murder – and what led up to it. Built on hours of interviews with witnesses and family members, painstaking historical research, and most notably, correspondence with the killers themselves, the result is a riveting snapshot of lives rocked by tragedy, and a town left in turmoil.

The only question is: how much of it is true?

About The Author:

Eliza Clark has relocated from her native Newcastle back to London, where she previously attended Chelsea College of Art. In 2018, she received a grant from New Writing North’s ‘Young Writers’ Talent Fund’. Her debut novel, Boy Parts, was released by Influx Press in July 2020, and it has since been Blackwell’s Fiction Book of the Year. In 2022, Eliza was chosen as a finalist for the Women’s Prize Futures Award for writers under thirty-five, and she was selected as one of Granta‘s Best of Young British Novelists in 2023.