Tag: historical fiction

Book Review: The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

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The Burning ChambersAbout the Book

Carcassonne 1562: Nineteen-year-old Minou Joubert receives an anonymous letter at her father’s bookshop. Sealed with a distinctive family crest, it contains just five words: SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE.

But before Minou can decipher the mysterious message, a chance encounter with a young Huguenot convert, Piet Reydon, changes her destiny forever. For Piet has a dangerous mission of his own, and he will need Minou’s help if he is to get out of La Cité alive.

Toulouse: As the religious divide deepens in the Midi, and old friends become enemies, Minou and Piet both find themselves trapped in Toulouse, facing new dangers as sectarian tensions ignite across the city, the battle-lines are drawn in blood and the conspiracy darkens further.

Meanwhile, as a long-hidden document threatens to resurface, the mistress of Puivert is obsessed with uncovering its secret and strengthening her power . . .

Format: ebook, hardcover (608 pp.)    Publisher: Mantle Books
Published: 3rd May 2018                        Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Burning Chambers on Goodreads

My Review

CarcassonneI absolutely loved Kate Mosse’s Languedoc trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel) and the atmospheric The Winter Ghosts.  The author returns to the setting of previous novels – Carcassonne – but this time without the dual time structure of Labyrinth and Sepulchre. Instead the reader is plunged into the sights and sounds of 16th century France, a time of religious strife between the Catholic Church and Protestant Huguenots.  ‘The threat of being denounced terrified everyone; a man could be strung up for uttering the wrong prayer, kneeling at the wrong altar.’  However, as one character observes, “A war of faith is always about more than faith.”  In this case, for some, it’s about power and influence.

The Burning Chambers contains all the elements a reader has come to love and expect from a Kate Mosse novel: strong female characters, secrets passed down through generations, an inheritance, a forgery, a Will, a labyrinthine but totally absorbing plot.  There is love, passion and betrayal.  There is murder, treachery and brutal interrogation.  And, when it comes down to it, who can be trusted, even amongst those you believe your closest friends?

The story lines involving Minou and Piet are interspersed with extracts from the testimony of an unnamed woman who reveals herself as something of a Lady Macbeth character, prepared to stop at nothing to achieve her aims.   Eventually, the various story lines and leading characters converge on the place that holds the key to one element of the mystery before building to a dramatic climax. However, ‘old crimes cast long shadows…’ so this is a feud that could continue down the generations.

If you gave Mary Berry flour, butter, eggs and sugar, you could be absolutely sure she’d create the perfect Victoria sponge cake.  In the same way, in The Burning Chambers, Kate Mosse expertly combines all the ingredients necessary for a deliciously satisfying historical fiction novel…with the Prologue providing the promise of further appetising slices still to come.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers, Mantle Books, and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Intense, sweeping, entertaining

Try something similar…Sacrilege by S. J Parris

Kate MosseAbout the Author

Kate Mosse is an international bestselling author with sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages. Her fiction includes the novels Labyrinth (2005), Sepulchre (2007), The Winter Ghosts (2009), and Citadel (2012), as well as an acclaimed collection of short stories, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales (2013). Kate’s new novel, The Taxidermist’s Daughter is out now.

Kate is the Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Prize) and in June 2013, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature. She lives in Sussex.

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Blog Tour/Extract: Her Hidden Life by V. S. Alexander

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Her Hidden Life Blog Tour Banner

I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Her Hidden Life by V.S. Alexander. Unfortunately, the book hasn’t yet reached the top of my TBR pile, although I’m eager to read it based on some of the glowing reviews from other book bloggers.  For instance, Beverley Has Read called it ‘a well-written, well-plotted and…well-researched historical novel which ticked lots of boxes’.  Ginger Book Geek was ‘hooked from the moment I read the first sentence.’

Based on a true story, Her Hidden Life is described as a sweeping, heroic love story perfect for fans of Dinah Jeffries and Gill Paul.  I have an extract from Her Hidden Life to whet your appetite.  Incidentally, you can read a fascinating article by the author about the writing of Her Hidden Life here.

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Her Hidden LifeAbout the Book

It’s 1943 and Hitler’s Germany is a terrifying place to be.  But Magda Ritter’s duty is the most dangerous of all…

Assigned to The Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat, she must serve the Reich by becoming the Führer’s ‘Taster’ – a woman who checks his food for poison. Magda can see no way out of this hellish existence until she meets Karl, an SS officer who has formed an underground resistance group within Hitler’s inner circle.

As their forbidden love grows, Magda and Karl see an opportunity to stop the atrocities of the madman leading their country. But in doing so, they risk their lives, their families and, above all, a love unlike either of them have ever known…

(Her Hidden Life was published under the title The Taster in the US)

Format: ebook, paperback (400 pp.)    Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 3rd May 2018                         Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Her Hidden Life on Goodreads

 

Extract: Her Hidden Life by V. S. Alexander

In the first years of the war, Berlin had been spared. When the attacks began, the city strode like a dreamer, alive but unconscious of its motions. People walked about without feeling. Babies were born and relatives looked into their eyes and told them how beautiful they were. Touching a silky lock of hair or pinching a cheek did not guarantee a future. Young men were shipped off to the fronts – to the East and to the West. Talk on the streets centered on Germany’s slow slide into hell, always ending with ‘it will get better.’ Conversations about food and cigarettes were common, but paled in comparison to the trumpeted broadcasts of the latest victories earned through the ceaseless struggles of the Wehrmacht.

My parents were the latest in a line of Ritters to live in our building. My grandparents had lived here until they each died in the bed where I slept. My bedroom, the first off the hall in the front of the building, was my own, a place I could breathe. No ghosts frightened me here. My room didn’t hold much: the bed, a small oak dresser, a rickety bookshelf and a few items I collected over the years, including the stuffed toy monkey my father had won at a carnival in Munich when I was a child. When the bombings began, I looked at my room in a different way. My sanctuary took on a sacred, extraordinary quality and each day I wondered whether its tranquility would be shattered like a bombed temple.

The next major air raid came on Hitler’s birthday on April 20, 1943. The Nazi banners, flags and standards that decorated Berlin waved in the breeze. The bombs caused some damage, but most of the city escaped unscathed. That attack also had a way of bringing back every fear I suffered as a young girl. I was never fond of storms, especially the lightning and thunder. The increasing severity of the bombings set my nerves on edge. My father was adamant that I leave, and, for the first time, I felt he might be right. That night he watched as I packed my bag.

About the Author

V. S. Alexander is an ardent student of history and the arts and loves writing historical fiction with strong women protagonists. The author of several novels and short stories, Alexander’s first novel for Kensington Publishing was The Magdalen Girls, an Amazon best seller, set in 1962 Dublin. The author lives in South Florida where summer is never far away.

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