While revisions continue on my historical novel, I’ve been reading some fabulous fiction from small publishers. Publishers you might not discover unless you go looking for them, but all punching above their weight. In championing books they believe in, these small businesses often (like my current publisher, Inspired Quill) have a political edge. But their profit margins are minuscule and they need our support.
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If you’re ready for a page-turning historical read, here are five I can heartily recommend. All are published in the last couple of years, listed here in chronological order of their settings.

Ravenglass by Carolyn Kirby, published by Northodox Press
A boy who feels more himself in female dress wends his way through eighteenth-century northern Britain, encountering the violence of the transatlantic slave trade and the Jacobite rebellion. Thick with period detail, the voice grabbed me from the first page and kept me enthralled to the end. It was especially enjoyable for me having grown up in the area and being taught nothing about its bloody history (although I did try to redress that in my novel, Lyrics for the Loved Ones).

The Hyena’s Daughter by Jupiter Jones, published by Weatherglass Books
Of course I’d known of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. I discovered the existence of her stepsister Claire Clairmont, a lover of Lord Byron, only a few years ago through another fiction book. But, until I read this novel, I hadn’t known that Mary Wollstonecraft had another daughter, Fanny Imlay, who formed an attachment to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley before the other two. The Hyena’s Daughter tells her tragic story in eloquent fragments, entwined with those of her more glamorous sisters, and with the philosophical questions of the day.

The Prentice-Boy by Ray Rumsby, published by Claret Press
A taste of Regency London in this story of a landscape artist who takes on a runaway from the workhouse as an apprentice, an act of benevolence that radically changes both their lives. Narrated in two distinctive voices, the novel blends fact and fiction in the real-life historical figure William Daniell and his relationship with an imagined streetwise teenager with something to hide.

Some Rise by Sin by Siôn Scott-Wilson, published by Deixis Press
A rollicking caper about a pair of body snatchers and their friends, patrons, rivals and enemies in late Regency London. The voice is fantastic – although it might not suit readers who shy away from unfamiliar vocabulary. I did struggle slightly to keep track of the profusion of characters, although they certainly evoke the crowded metropolis. My only quibble is with the cryptic prologue, which adds very little, especially when the opening chapter is enticing enough.

The Others by Sheena Kalayil, published by Fly on the Wall Press
I wasn’t sure whether to include this story of a love triangle set in dying days of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, not because it isn’t a great read, but because the collapse of the Berlin wall seems like yesterday to me. But I was pleased to find that it deepened my knowledge the piece of history I lived through – albeit at a distance. When Armando, a factory worker from Mozambique, and Lolita, a medical student from India, are abruptly confronted by the dark side of the State, their burgeoning friendship sours. Into the gap comes Theo, an East Berliner with literary aspirations, who inadvertently threatens all three of their futures.

I hope you like the sound of these books. Buy directly from the publisher if you can.

I’m sharing my thoughts on two historical novels I’ve read recently, both featuring young women struggling to survive against the odds. The first is set in England in the 1660s, the second in Italy a century earlier.

October is Black History Month in Europe and the focus this year is on women. So I’m pleased to share my reviews of recent reads of novels by talented Black women writers which illuminate the lives of Black women in mid nineteenth century America. The first interweaves the narrative of another atrocity in which Britain was complicit: the Irish famine. The second shows how far women will go to salvage some control of their fertility.

We can’t get enough of the Brontës, can we? Whether it’s rereading the classic stories or rewriting them or delving into the lives of the authors, the sisters never seem to go out of fashion. So here are two recent reads inspired by them and their books. The first is a contemporary rewrite of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, while the second is historical fiction with a particular focus on Emily, the author of Wuthering Heights.

Here are reviews of two different types of English political novel. The first is contemporary and addresses how political events impact on an ordinary London family. The second is a historical novel that gets right to the heart of one of the most turbulent periods of British history.
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Two translated novels, both with a contemporary and historical element, which address the female struggle for autonomy and self-expression in a misogynistic and racist world.

Let me tell you about these two novels about women’s lives in terrain under occupation by external powers. The first is a historical novel about the struggle for personal and political freedom in 20th-century Greece. The second is a futuristic dystopia about how, in the climate crisis, the wealthy lay claim to the coolest lands.

I’m pleased to share my thoughts on two recent reads which focus on collecting the testimonies of women wounded by policies and practices rooted in racism: the first set in the early 1960s and the second century before.

My final two reviews of 2022 are tenuously linked by being set in closed communities in which unempathic people hold vulnerable creatures in their power. I refer to creatures less because the staff of the nightmare care home in the first novel don’t seem to regard their charges as human and more because the inmates of the second – where the compassion of the lowliest employee almost compensates for the attitude of her senior colleagues – are dolphins.

These two recent reads are about challenging women’s traditional roles as homemakers in the mid twentieth century. The first focuses on the barriers facing a woman seeking a career in science in early 1960s America. The second follows the fortunes of three sisters and their mother as the times change in 1970s France.

I love the freedom fiction gives me to make things up, but I also enjoy the facts I discover in the course of my research. In my novella, Stolen Summers, I gave my character, Matilda, a dancing partner who attracted and intrigued her, partly because he came from a different background.

A woman lives with her husband on a farm a short distance from a small town. There’s a distance between the partners also but they’re bound by habit and circumstance. When strangers arrive on their land, convention dictates they should chase them away. Instead, a tentative friendship develops, much to their neighbours’ disapproval and it’s not too long before violence ensues.
 
The link is often tenuous when I pair my reviews. But, even when there’s a common theme, it’s unusual for a four-sentence summary to serve both. Heck, even the covers match! Yet, while both brilliant debuts, these are very different novels: the first a near-future cli-fi dystopia; the second a historical novel set at the end of the American Civil War. Read on to see which you’ll pick up first!

I’ve recently read a historical novel and a contemporary YA novel featuring fostered girls. In the first, it’s idyllic, especially in contrast to the institution she’s sent to at the age of six. In the second, it’s more problematic with a foster mother who can’t put her own needs aside to support the child in her care.

These two novels are about the consequences of untimely deaths on those left behind. The first is set during the First World War when a grieving soldier is set to work making masks to hide the horrific facial injuries of those wounded in the trenches. The second is about two orphaned sisters and an anthropologist with unconventional ideas about mourning rituals.

Allow me to introduce two novels about the marginalisation of women’s experience: the first set in sixteenth century Strasbourg where the church rules hearts and minds; the second in contemporary a South Africa grappling with its colonial past. Both include a scene of arson, but that is not the worst of the violence.

These two novels depict a character’s reflections on their life following the sudden death of their spouse. Both the male writer in the first novel and the female teacher in the second are mourning not only the loss of a partner but of the promise of their original romance.

Two fabulous fiction books about ordinary people in historically significant times. The first is a family saga set in China, Taiwan and America across six decades of the twentieth century. The second is a snapshot of Swiss history on a single day in 1959 when the male half of the populace denied their mothers, sisters and wives the right to vote.