Adventurer, soldier, courtier, poet, prisoner – outsider. Drawn by ambition to Elizabeth’s court, Walter Raleigh soon becomes the queen’s favourite. But his meteoric rise attracts the enmity of powerful rivals. Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s spy master, proves a dangerous enemy. While the Earl of Oxford is an equally dangerous friend. Even Elizabeth’s favour is […]
Review: Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin
Author Essie Fox reviews Finola Austin’s “remarkable” debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress. Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin is a literary novel created in the classic style of Victorian sensation. It also echoes certain themes from the Brontë sisters’ work. But at the centre of this novel is not some younger woman in the throes of her […]
Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin
Yorkshire, 1843. Lydia Robinson, mistress of Thorp Green Hall, has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something […]
The Foundling by Stacey Halls
London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst, that Clara has died in care, Bess is astonished to be told she has already claimed her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to […]
The Dance of the Serpents by Oscar de Muriel
There are many bad days in Edinburgh police’s subdivision ‘The Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly’. And in the pantheon of the worst days, today takes the podium. Because the English Inspector Ian Frey, and his Scottish boss ‘Nine-Nails’ McGray are called into a meeting in the […]
Fugitive by Paul Fraser Collard
Roguish hero Jack Lark – soldier, leader, imposter – crosses borders once more as he pursues a brand-new adventure in Africa. London, 1868. Jack has traded the battlefield for business, running a thriving club in the backstreets of Whitechapel. But this underworld has rules and when Jack refuses to comply, he finds himself up against […]
The Last Blast of the Trumpet by Marie Macpherson
Scotland 1559. Fiery reformer John Knox returns to a Scotland on the brink of civil war. Victorious, he feels confident of his place leading the reform until the charismatic young widow, Mary Queen of Scots returns to claim her throne. She challenges his position and initiates a ferocious battle of wills as they strive to […]
Fortune’s Hand: The Triumph and Tragedy of Walter Raleigh by RN Morris
Adventurer, soldier, courtier, poet, prisoner – outsider. Drawn by ambition to Elizabeth’s court, Walter Raleigh soon becomes the queen’s favourite. But his meteoric rise attracts the enmity of powerful rivals. Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s spy master, proves a dangerous enemy. While the Earl of Oxford is an equally dangerous friend. Even Elizabeth’s favour is […]