The novelist Elizabeth Buchan usually looks forward to travelling to research a new novel. But when she became ill while starting work on her latest, Bonjour, Sophie, she had to rethink… A new novel to write usually triggers the anticipatory thrill of travelling for research. Many summers have seen me, rucksack on back, tracking down […]
Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan
It’s 1959 and time for 18-year-old Sophie’s real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a […]
Secret Missions of the Suffragettes by Jennifer Godfrey
Over two evenings in March 1912, more than 250 women – old and young, rich and poor, strong and delicate – were arrested and charged with using hammers and stones to smash the windows of shops and offices across London. The youngest amongst them was 19-year-old teenager glass-breaker and Kent working maid, Ethel Violet Baldock, […]
The Red Hollow by Natalie Marlow
Warwickshire, 1934. Deep in a hamlet in the Warwickshire countryside, Red Hollow Hall is a male-only sanatorium run by the charismatic psychiatrist Dr Moon. However, all is not well, and Dr Moon’s patients are leaving Red Hollow in droves. Recent disturbances, which originally appeared to be pranks, have descended into something more sinister, and now […]
Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau by Sheena Wilkinson
April McVey hasn’t a romantic bone in her body. So how has she found herself at the door of Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, job application in hand? Matchmaker Martha hopes the lively Irish girl will breathe fresh air into a business struggling to keep with the times amid the tumult of 1930s Britain. So when […]
Historia Live in Dublin, 1 May, 2024
Historia Live Dublin returns on 1 May with four more bestselling authors of historical fiction. The theme is When History Meets Mystery featuring Sinéad Crowley, Amanda Geard and Carmel Harrington. The discussion, led by Hazel Gaynor, will look at novels with dual or multiple timelines and narrators, the skill of creating suspense on the page, the difficulties of weaving a […]
How I discovered my war hero uncle’s secret
Douglas Jackson’s Polish uncle was a bit of a family legend. But it was only while researching his Warsaw Quartet series that Doug discovered that Uncle Kazimierz was a war hero, a secret that he’d kept after the Second World War. The perennial question that eventually faces every writer is: Where do I go next? […]
Death of a Lesser God by Vaseem Khan
James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby’s father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing. The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia […]