Berlin is a city Catherine Hokin knows well. It’s the setting for many of her novels. But it’s a city that’s always changing, even though it’s soaked through with history, and there have been many Berlins, some only imagined. Here, Catherine goes in search of the lost cities of Berlin. When I first developed the […]
The Secret Hotel in Berlin by Catherine Hokin
In Berlin in 1944, Lili Rodenberg and her husband Marius run the Edel, Berlin’s most glamorous hotel. For its wealthy guests, it is an escape from the destruction outside, with its elegant piano bar and fine amber brandy. But Lili is Jewish, a secret she is terrified will end in tragedy for her and their […]
A Poisoner’s Tale by Cathryn Kemp
Rome in 1656, and in the shadowy backstreets of the Eternal City lies an apothecary’s shop – a place for women to take their heartbreaks and troubles. Herbs for childbirth. Tarot readings to tell their fortunes. An undetectable poison that can kill in four drops. Alongside her circle of female poisoners, Giulia Tofana dispenses her […]
The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite
1461. Through blood and battle Edward of York has gained England’s throne – king by right and conquest – 18 years old and unstoppable. Cecily Neville has piloted his rise to power and stands at his shoulder now, the first to claim the title King’s Mother. But to win a throne is not to keep […]
The Night in Venice by AJ Martin
Venice, 1911. Monica is a 14-year-old with a wild imagination and an unbearably dull governess named Rose Driscoll. She was supposed to be entering the most exciting time of her life but, with her parents and uncle now dead, she has been forced to leave leafy Hampstead and move to a flat on the busy […]
The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola
It’s Rome in 1659, and Girolama Spana lives west of the river Tiber in a house marked by a lily and a garden full of herbs. Many women in Rome seek her help — although they would never admit it — eager for her mysterious balms, her love potions, and her ability to predict their […]
The Girl Who Crossed Mountains by Lelita Baldock
San Sebastian, 1936; Abene García, a fisherman’s daughter, must make a terrible choice: risk being caught in the crossfires of the escalating Spanish Civil War or abandon her seaside home and make the perilous journey across the Pyrenees to the border of France. But the safety she finds on the other side of the mountains […]
Giulia Tofana: poisoner, murderer, saviour?
Giulia Tofana was a poisoner — but was she a murderer or a saviour, Cathryn Kemp asks. Her novel, A Poisoner’s Tale, is a dark retelling of Giulia’s story. She is the legendary serial killer you may not have heard of. Giulia Tofana, a woman famed for the undetectable poison she unleashed upon the unsuspecting […]