The Angel of Goliad begins in Houston, Texas in the present day when Magda O’Toole, an investigative journalist, wakes from a four month coma following a fall from a ladder and is stunned to discover that she can now speak Spanish. On her return home, she finds a package from Matamoros, Mexico waiting for her. … Continue reading Book Review – The Angel of Goliad by Jean M Roberts
Book reviews
Book Review – The Flight of the Heron by D.K. Broster
The first book of historical fiction that I clearly remember reading was The Flight of the Heron by D.K. Broster. My father gave me a copy for my twelfth birthday. It was a book he had read years before and loved. And he re-read it once I had finished. The story begins in Scotland in … Continue reading Book Review – The Flight of the Heron by D.K. Broster
Book Review – The Master of Measham Hall by Anna Abney
The Master of Measham Hall by Anna Abney begins in London in 1665 where Great Plague already is taking hold. It is only five years since the restoration of the monarchy and the divisions that brought about the Civil War still exist beneath a thin veneer of conformity. Althea Hawthorne, a young gentlewoman, has been … Continue reading Book Review – The Master of Measham Hall by Anna Abney
Book Review – The Fall of the House of Thomas Weir by Andrew Neil MacLeod
‘… I have often said that when you have eliminated the natural, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the supernatural.’ - Dr Samuel Johnson The Fall of the House of Thomas Weir by Andrew Neil MacLeod begins with Alexander Boyle, the rational nightwatchman of Greyfriars Kirkyard, the place with the reputation of the most haunted … Continue reading Book Review – The Fall of the House of Thomas Weir by Andrew Neil MacLeod
Book Review- Soldier of Fate by Brook Allen
Brook Allen’s Antonius trilogy follows the life of Marcus Antonius from his beginnings as the son of a man disgraced by failure through to the military commander and lover of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, tracing his exploits as a military leader and his family relationships. The first, Son of Rome, concentrates on the period from the death … Continue reading Book Review- Soldier of Fate by Brook Allen
Book Review – Beware the Lizard Lurking by Vivienne Brereton
Beware the Lizard Lurking is the second book in Vivienne Brereton’s House of the Red Duke series which follows the fortunes of the House of Howard and the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, the elderly Thomas Howard. While Phoenix Rising, the first book, ranged over the years between 1497 and 1520, Beware the Lizard Lurking follows … Continue reading Book Review – Beware the Lizard Lurking by Vivienne Brereton
Book Review – A Woman’s Lot by Carolyn Hughes
A Womans Lot is the second book in Carolyn Hughes’s The Meonbridge Chronicles which are set in the fictional village of Meonbridge in the Meon Valley, Hampshire. It begins in the Spring of 1352, two years after the end of Fortune’s Wheel, a wonderful novel which put a human face to the struggles of ordinary … Continue reading Book Review – A Woman’s Lot by Carolyn Hughes
Book Review – Taking the Waters by Lesley Sainty
Following the death of her brother, Alice Elliot finds herself independently wealthy. At the suggestion of family friend and solicitor, Edmund Walter, she decides to come to Cheltenham to consider how she will spend her life from now on. She arrives at the height of the spa season when the fashionable and wealthy come to … Continue reading Book Review – Taking the Waters by Lesley Sainty
Book Review – Weave a Web of Witchcraft by Jean M Roberts
Firmly based on fact, Weave a Web of Witchcraft tells the story of Hugh Parsons, a man accused of witchcraft by his wife Mary and tried in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1652. The novel begins in England with fifteen-year-old Hugh reluctantly beginning an apprenticeship as a brickmaker. This has been arranged by his father because although … Continue reading Book Review – Weave a Web of Witchcraft by Jean M Roberts
Book Review – A Plague on Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift
Elizabeth Bagwell figures in the diary of Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth century Naval administrator, as one of his most enduring mistresses. The diary provides us with no hint of how Elizabeth, a married woman, achieved this position, especially as Pepys initially described her as ‘a virtuous modest woman’ who he had ‘a kindness’(!) for. In … Continue reading Book Review – A Plague on Mr Pepys by Deborah Swift
Catherine Meyrick 