Chris Lloyd, author of the HWA Gold Crown Award-winning The Unwanted Dead, talks about his fascination with the German occupation of France and the concepts of resistance and collaboration; topics in which, he says, “the grey areas become shadier” the deeper you look. His novel was selected as Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month for […]
One Moonlit Night by Rachel Hore
Forced to leave their family home in London after it is bombed in the Blitz, Maddie and her two young daughters take refuge at Knyghton, the beautiful country house in Norfolk where Maddie’s husband Philip spent the summers of his childhood. But Philip is gone, believed to have been killed in action in northern France. […]
The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan
Bombay, 1950. When the body of a white man is found frozen in the Himalayan foothills near Dehra Dun, he is christened the Ice Man by the national media. Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed? As Inspector Persis Wadia and Metropolitan Police criminalist Archie Blackfinch investigate the case […]
The Manhattan Girls by Gill Paul
New York City, 1921. An impossible dream. The war is over, the Twenties are roaring, but in the depths of the city that never sleeps, Dorothy Parker is struggling to make her mark in a man’s world. A broken woman. She’s penniless, she’s unemployed and her marriage is on the rocks when she starts a […]
The Twenties, then and now
The Twenties opened with a worldwide epidemic, followed by profound social change: a shift in working practices, new technologies, more rights and freedoms for women, an obsession with celebrities, rising inflation. Gill Paul, whose new book, The Manhattan Girls, is set in 1920s New York, looks back 100 years and wonders how similar our world […]
A Child of the East End by Jean Fullerton
Life in Cockney London was tough in the post-war years. The government’s broken promises had led to a chronic housing shortage, rampant crime and families living in squalor. But one thing prevailed: the unbeatable spirit of the East End, a tight-knit community who pulled through the dark times with humour and heart. Drawing on both […]
The Spirit Engineer by AJ West
Belfast, 1914. Two years after the sinking of the Titanic, high society has become obsessed with spiritualism, attending séances in the hope they might reach their departed loved ones. William Jackson Crawford is a man of science and a sceptic, but one night with everyone sitting around the circle, voices come to him – seemingly […]
Review: Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes
Judith Allnatt reviews Acts of Love and War by Maggie Brookes, a book set during the Spanish Civil War which “cannot fail to move the reader.” Lucy Nicholson has loved the Murray brothers, Tom and Jamie, ever since they moved next door when she was only six years old. Now in their 20s, with the […]