Category: Historical Fiction

Spell the Month in Books June 2026

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

As Jana is not back on her blog yet, there is no theme for this month, so I am featuring books that spell the word June using the first letters of the book titles. These are all books that I’ve read and are linked to my posts on them.

J is for Julius by Daphne du Maurier

Julius is the life story of a ruthless man, driven by his lust for power, and his dedication to getting ‘something for nothing’. It’s a chilling tale about a man whose love for his daughter brings about his ruin. It was her third book written when she was twenty-six. It may lack that magic quality of her later books, but it is still compelling and disturbing reading, rich in detail and characterisation.

U is for Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

I read this book before I began blogging, so no review. It’s the third book in the Starbridge series, six self-contained yet interconnected novels that explore the history of the Church of England through the 20th century. I loved all six books. This one is about Neville Aysgarth, archdeacon, and right-hand man of the Bishop of Starbridge, who has spent his life chasing worldly success. In 1942 he has a perfect wife, a perfect family and a perfect future in the Church of England – all ultimate prizes.Then Aysgarth meets an attractive young socialite and is soon dangerously and chaotically involved in adultery, hypocrisy and obsession.

N is for No Further Questions by Gillian McAllister

I was hooked right from the start of this book. It plunges straight into a trial as Martha sits in the courtroom listening to expert witnesses being questioned  and cross-examined about the death of her baby, Layla, just eight weeks old. Her sister Becky is accused of murdering her. Martha doesn’t want to believe Becky is guilty but as the trial proceeds, as medical and social worker witnesses as well as neighbours and a school teacher present their accounts it looks increasingly bad for Becky.This is a tense, tightly plotted book and I was gripped. I didn’t want to stop reading it and when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it, about the characters and their relationships, about how they had got themselves into such a terrible situation. 

E is for The Elopement by Gill Hornby

This is historical fiction about the life of Jane Austen’s niece Fanny Knight and Mary Dorothea Knatchbull, Fanny’s stepdaughter. Fanny’s father was Edward Austen, who was adopted by the wealthy Knight family. In 1820 Fanny married Sir Edward Knatchbull, a widower, with six children. Fanny and Mary Dorothea, the only daughter, had a difficult relationship right from the start. Fanny is not a warm character and Mary is reluctant to accept her as a substitute mother, but Fanny comes from a large, happy and sociable family and Fanny’s sisters become Mary’s first friends. Her aunt, Miss Cassandra Austen of Chawton, is especially kind. Her brothers are not only amusing, but handsome and charming, and when Mary and one of the Knight brothers fall in love and want to marry Fanny is not all happy.

Top Ten Tuesday: New-To-Me Authors I Read in 2025

Published on by Margaret20 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to Jana in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

The topic this week is Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025 (New-to-you authors you discovered, new genres you learned you like, new bookish resources you found, friends you made, local bookshops you found, a book club you joined, etc.)

I decided to list 10 of the 24 New-to me- authors I read last year. I’ll be looking out for more books by these authors.

Gordon Corera – The Spy in the Archive, nonfiction about Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. Mitrokhin, a quiet, introverted and determined man, was a reluctant defector, because whilst he loved Russia he came to hate the KGB and the Soviet system.

Sarah Freethy – The Seeker of Lost Paintings, historical fiction set in two timelines, one in the 1940s in Italy and the other in 1997 in London and Italy, about the mystery surrounding a lost painting by Carravagio. 

William Horwood – The Boy With No Shoes: a Memoir, (the author of the Duncton Chronicles, which I haven’t read). This is a long and detailed book. It is beautifully written and as he tells the story of his very early life there are many times when it moved me to tears. His writing is so clear that the places and people he describes spring to life as you read. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year!

Alex Howard – The Ghost Cat, a novella and historical fantasy fiction about Grimalkin’s nine lives from 1887 to 2022. As well as the main story there are Grimalkin’s observations and notes explaining various events and technological changes that had taken place in each period.

Ruth Jones – By Your Side, an emotionally charged book as Linda Standish takes on her last case for the Council’s Unclaimed Heirs Unit, tracking down Levi Norman’s next of kin.

Jess Kidd – Murder at Gull’s Nest, crime fiction set in the 1950s in a seaside town. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance.

Rhiannon Lewis – My Beautiful Imperial, historical fiction set in the 19th century in both Wales and Chile. It begins in Wales in March 1865 with Davy Davies, a young teenager who is at the age when he must decide whether to work at the mill or to be a sailor like father. It’s based on the actual events of the Civil War in Chile and the experiences of the author’s ancestor, Captain David Jefferson Davies. 

Hannah Richell – One Dark Night, crime fiction, with a spooky, tense atmosphere about the police investigation into the body of a young woman is discovered in the woods the morning after Halloween. I loved it, one of the best books I read last year.

Lynda Rutledge – West With Giraffes, historical fiction with a colourful cast of characters, about the twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. It conjures up a vivid picture of America in 1938 during the Great Depression and the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most destructive storm to strike New England in recorded history until 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.

Owen Sheers – Resistance. I love historical fiction, but this is different – it is alternate history. Sheers speculates upon how the course of history might have been altered if Germany had won the Second World War and invaded and occupied Great Britain, an alarming prospect. The plot centres on the inhabitants of the isolated Olchon valley in the Black Mountains of south-east Wales close to Hereford and the border between Wales and England.

Top Ten Tuesday: The Ten Most Recent Additions To My Wishlist

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic today is Books I Hope Santa Brings/Bookish Wishes, I’ve picked the Ten Most Recent Additions To My Wishlist.

  • The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker – the 2nd book in her World War One trilogy (Regeneration Trilogy Book 2).
  • Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym, a funny, poignant and hopeful story of human connection.
  • Venetian Vespers by John Banville, an eerie, Venice-set novel.
  • Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally. In the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of gentlemen wait out a raging blizzard in the perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter, poised for a strike at the South Pole.
  •  Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett, a biography of Count Lev Tolstoy.
  • Voices of the Dead (A Raven and Fisher Mystery Book 4) by Ambrose Parry.
  • The Ghost Ship (The Joubert Family Chronicles Book 3) by Kate Moss, a swashbuckling tale of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the high seas.
  • Green for Danger by Christianna Brand, book 7 of the Inspector Cockerill Mysteries.
  • Normal Women: 900 Years of Women Making History by Philippa Gregory
  • Unfinished Portrait by Agatha Christie writing as Mary Westmacott. Agatha Christie also wrote about crimes of the heart, six bittersweet and very personal novels, as compelling and memorable as the best of her work.

West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Lake Union Publishing| 2001| 346 pages| e-book| I bought it| 5*

Description on Amazon:

An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.

“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…”

Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.

Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.

My thoughts:

I read West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge in September this year but didn’t get round to writing about it then. I don’t think I need to add anything to the description shown above other than to say that I loved this story. I didn’t really expect to like it as much as I did – that took me by surprise. It has a colourful cast of characters, all fictional apart from the owner of the San Diego Zoo, Mrs Belle Benchley, a remarkable woman. In the Historical Notes at the end of the book she’s described as ‘an early glass-ceiling breaker‘. She began working at the zoo in 1925 as a civil servant bookkeeper, and working her way through a number of different roles eventually becoming known in the late 1930s as ‘the only female zoo director in the world‘. She believed that the only way people would care about wild animals was to meet them.

Not knowing much about American history I found the Historical Notes very helpful, particularly those about the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most destructive storm to strike New England in recorded history until 2012’s Hurricane Sandy. The journey the giraffes took was primarily the Lee Highway, the more southern, of the transcontinental routes at the time, designed to be a southern counterpart to the northern Lincoln Highway. The author’s website is fascinating giving lots of information about the book, photos from newspaper articles and details about her writing process.

It conjures up a vivid picture of America in 1938 during the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, hobo cards, nomadic workers taking jobs where they could, desperate Hooverville dwellers in shanty towns, sundown town racism, and circus animal cruelty. But of course, it is the giraffes that are the two main characters. It is a remarkable book and if you like historical fiction based on fact, books about travel and an exciting story I think you’d enjoy it too.

A Legacy of Secrets by Lulu Taylor

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Pan Macmillan| 4 December 2025| 445 pages| e-book| Review copy| 3*

Description:

Is the truth a legacy worth inheriting?

Flick Templeton seems to have it all: money, a renowned family name, brains and talent. But her wealth and status seem an obstacle to the real love she longs for. Guided by passion, she seeks her soulmate while finding her own path – but will the legendary family curse of tragedy and loss always thwart her?

Etta, Flick’s daughter, inherits her own share of the family blessings along with its darkness. Growing up, she is pulled between caring for her mother and finding her own identity. As Etta unravels the threads of Flick’s secrets, she starts to learn the truth about who she really is . . .

But can Flick and Etta ever break truly free from the shadows of a painful past, and the curse that seems to hang over every generation of their family?

This is the first book I’ve read by Lulu Taylor, so I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it. But when I had an invitation from Pan Macmillan to read this book I thought I’d read it, based on the blurb.

Once I’d started reading it I found it gripping and compelling, but I also found that it’s full of emotion, from ecstasy to the depths of despair about a dysfunctional family, with some truly awful characters.They believe their family is cursed. It’s a dramatic family saga, verging on melodrama, high on romance, intermingled with mystery and intrigue. It’s also very long encompassing three generations, over different time lines. I did find the structure of the plot rather muddled, so it’s definitely a book you have to read carefully to keep track of the characters over the years from 1952 to 1992.

The main character is ‘little girl lost‘ Flick (Felicity) Templeton, the daughter of the fabulously rich and glamorous, Gloria, who is so unbelievably selfish, self-centred, and controlling, a perfectly horrible person. The novel begins in 1952 with Brinsley and Flick’s eighteenth birthday party to celebrate their coming-of-age, when Brinsley would take possession of Caundle Court. This puzzled me as in 1952 the date when a young person became an adult was 21 and it was not until 1969 that it was lowered to 18. I know this book is fiction, but this is so incorrect that it made me wonder if I wanted to carry on reading. Nevertheless I did because a mystery always intrigues me. However, as I read on it soon became clear what the secret was and it wasn’t too hard to work it out well before it was revealed, over 400 pages later. I had been tempted to jump to the end to see if I was right but because I received this book via NetGalley to review I thought it was only fair to read the whole book.

Despite my misgivings I did find enough that I liked to give A Legacy of Secrets 3 stars. I enjoyed the details of life in the 1950s when Flick went to a finishing school in Oxford and her brother went to Magdalen College to read history. I liked Flick’s daughter a lot, and determination to uncover the family’s secrets. I also liked the descriptions of all the locations and the interaction between the characters showing how misunderstandings arise and the difficulties of mother/daughter relationships. I could feel the heartbreak and sadness as the characters experience all the setbacks that are thrown at them. It’s a complex and emotional book, one that I liked rather than loved.

Two Novellas for Novellas in November The Library Cat & the Ghost Cat by Alex Howard

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Novellas in November, is a challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 books and Rebecca at Bookish Beck, books under 200 pages long.

Here are two novellas by Alex Howard that I really enjoyed reading.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Library Cat The Observations of a Thinking Cat by Alex Howard (161 pages Black & White Publishing 2016) Winner of the People’s Book Prize 2017 Beryl Bainbridge Award for Best First Time Author.

Library Cat, the resident cat of the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library, is not like other cats. He is a thinking cat. You can tell by the canny glint in his eye, his disdainful whiskers and his unrelenting interest in books and piles of paper.

This is a book for cat lovers as well as library lovers – that’s me for one, so although I thought the beginning of this book was rather slight I was soon captivated by the Library Cat. He is black and white, with one ‘white paw and one black paw with a white tip that makes it look like it has been dipped into a churn of fresh milk.’

This is a story about Library Cat’s thoughts and his own search for completeness in this fractured world. It is a funny, witty and irreverent look at the world, seen through the unusually observant eyes of Edinburgh University Library’s resident cat. The chapters are quite short to start off with, getting longer towards the end, as he thinks about life, muses on the strange behaviour of humans, particularly of students and ponders the work of Nietzsche. At the end of each chapter there’s a list of Recommended Reading, notes on the food he ate, his Mood, and he Discovers about Humans.

I enjoyed this light, yet philosophical little book complete with the Library Cat’s Bibliography, listing all the recommended books.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard ( 192 pages & White Publishing 2023}

I preferred this one as it is more developed, following Grimalkin’s life after his mother abandoned him as a kitten, in 1887, through his nine lives in Edinburgh. He was found, near to death in an icy stable, by Eilidh, a maid servant to Mr Calvert who lived at 7/7 Marchmont Crescent.

A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays and for the last three he stays. ~ English proverb.

His death came in 1902 as he lay sleeping in front of the fire and ‘as the rising flames beat their warmth upon his fur, the twist of his thoughts fell silent for the last time ever in this life.’ (page 14)

From then on the story follows Grimalkin as he experiences the rest of his nine lives and witnesses the changes of the next 120 years, prowling unseen among the inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement, while unearthing some startling revelations about the mystery of existence, the unstoppable march of time and the true meaning of feline companionship.

He found himself in another world and with a new existence and meets the Cat-sith,* a huge cat that walks on its hind legs. The Cat-sith has missed his death, thus depriving him of his nine lives. The only way he can make amends is to give Grimalkin a choice of passing over to oblivion immediately or to return to earth and spend his remaining eight lives observing its future. However, although this would prevent him from experiencing physical pain it wouldn’t guard him against a great many painful emotions, albeit with many more positive ones. All these live and 2022s will take place in the supernatural realm. He becomes a Ghost Cat.

This is history as seen through the eyes of a cat from 1902 to 2022. I’m not going to go into detail about his remaining lives, other than to say he witnessed events in 1909, 1935, 1942, 1969, 1997, 2008 and 2022. As well as the main story there are Grimalkin’s observations and notes explaining various events and technological changes that had taken place in each period.

I was fascinated and just loved it, such a novel experience, informative and full of emotion right to the end. I shall certainly look out for more of Alex Howard books – the next book is The Ship’s Cat, described as an epic new adventure for feline fans. The Ship’s Cat is the Odyssey with cats – a heroic yet feel-good tale of unlikely friendship on the high seas.

*According to Wikipedia the Cat-sith is a fairy or spirit creature from Celtic mythology, said to resemble a large black cat with a white spot on its chest that walks on its hind legs. Legend has it that the spectral cat haunts the Scottish Highlands.

Alex Howard is an author, editor and theatre professional from Edinburgh. His TikTok page, Housedoctoralex, has nearly 300,000 followers and his been featured on television and in the national press.

A doctoral graduate of English literature, Alex wrote his first book Library Cat (B&W Publishing) while completing his PhD. It won the People’s Book Prize in 2017, and has been translated into French, Korean and Italian. He also writes poetry, which has been published in New Writing Scotland, Gutter and The London Magazine, among others, and his academic book Larkin’s Travelling Spirit was published in 2021 by Palgrave McMillan.

Alex works at Capital Theatres as a creative engagement coordinator and editor while renovating his Edinburgh tenement flat at weekends, with his cat Tabitha, son Sasha and wife, Ellie.