Tag: NetGalley

#BookReview Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson @MantleBooks

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Daughters of NightAbout the Book

Lucia’s fingers found her own. She gazed at Caro as if from a distance. Her lips parted, her words a whisper: ‘He knows.’

London, 1782. Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the bowers of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly-paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself. Enlisting the help of thief-taker, Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives.

But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous than she can know . . .

Format: Hardcovere (592 pages)         Publisher: Mantle
Publication date: 18th February 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

In my review of Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s first book, Blood & Sugar, I recall mentioning how good it would have been for Caroline, wife of the novel’s protagonist Harry Corsham, to have had a bigger role. And do you know what, in Daughters of Night I got my wish!

Teaming up with thief-taker, Peregrine Child, Caroline – known as ‘Caro’ – sets out to investigate the death of the woman she believed to be an Italian Countess but whose real identity was somewhat different.  They make a great partnership with Peregrine especially admiring of Caro’s questioning skills, likening it to ‘having Torquemada on your team’. What their enquiries reveal is that firstly, no-one in authority particularly cares about solving the murder and secondly, there are those who definitely do not want any light shone on their activities.  Despite the risks to their reputations (such as remain), to their lives and those of their loved ones, Peregrine and Caro press on with their investigation, uncovering some very sordid secrets in the process. Despite pressure from her family, Caro remains defiant to the end, managing to bring about her revenge on the culprits in her own way.

Daughters of Night positively oozes period atmosphere, transporting the reader from the bowers and pathways of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to the taverns, coffee-houses and “fleshpots” of Covent Garden.  It was fascinating to discover the existence of things such as ‘Puss and Mew’ shops (illegal gin shops) and mixed doubles boxing matches.  Equally fascinating, but rather more distasteful, was learning about the varieties of brothels that existed in Georgian London including ‘posture houses’ where girls posed naked and ‘tableaux houses’ where young girls acted out classical scenes before audiences of men, often in order to solicit bids for their virginity.   The book reveals there existed a hierarchy of prostitutes with those at the top of their ‘profession’ becoming celebrities of their day.

Daughters of Night is another hugely impressive historical crime novel from the pen of Laura Shepherd-Robinson. Its intricate plot, with its twists and turns, kept me glued to the book until the final page. And was it my imagination or were Caro’s closing thoughts a nod to those of another famous literary heroine, Scarlett O’Hara? “There will be a plan, she told herself. I just haven’t thought of it yet. Let tomorrow bring what it will bring.” I’m sure I’m not the only reader keen to find out what tomorrow does bring for Caro.  Although Laura has revealed her next novel will be a standalone historical mystery, she also hasn’t ruled out a return for Harry and Caro at some point.  Fingers crossed from this reader.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of Mantle Books via NetGalley, although having seen the gorgeous hardcover with its fabulous endpapers, I may have to treat myself when my first post-lockdown trip to a bookshop finally comes about.

In three words: Gripping, atmospheric, immersive

Try something similar: To The Dark (Simon Westow #3) by Chris Nickson

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Laura Shepherd-RobinsonAbout the Author

Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She has a BSc in Politics from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics. Laura worked in politics for nearly twenty years before re-entering normal life to complete an MA in Creative Writing at City University. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.

Blood & Sugar, her first novel, won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month, and a Guardian and Telegraph novel of the year. It was also shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the Sapere Historical Dagger; and the Amazon Publishing/Capital Crime Best Debut Novel. (Photo/bio credit: Author website)

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#BookReview Land of the Living by Georgina Harding

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Land of the LivingAbout the Book

Every time the dream came it was different and yet he felt that he had dreamt it exactly that way before. The trees, there were always the trees, and the mist and the shadows and the running.

Charlie’s experiences at the Battle of Kohima and the months he spent lost in the remote jungles of Northern India are now history. Home and settled on a farm in Norfolk with his wife Claire, he is one of the lucky survivors. The soil promises healthy crops and Claire is ready for a family. But a chasm exists between them. Memories flood Charlie’s mind; at night, on rain-slicked roads and misty mornings in the fields, the past can feel more real than the present.

What should be said and what left unsaid? Is it possible to find connection and forge a new life in the wake of unfathomable horror?

Format: ebook (240 pages)                     Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publication date: 1st November 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Land of the Living on Goodreads

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Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Amazon UK
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My Review

One of my bookish resolutions this year is to catch up with reading and reviewing the books on my NetGalley shelf. Browsing through my Kindle, this one caught my eye because I recall it being highly recommended by other book bloggers and, I’ll admit, because it’s relatively short.

The novel is set predominantly in Nagaland, a mountainous state in the north east of India bordering Myanmar, or Burma as it would have been called at the time the novel is set. I confess it is an area of the world whose history I was unfamiliar with until reading this book. However, as the novel reveals, during the Second World War it became the site of fierce fighting between Japanese and British troops.

The book moves between three storylines. The first is Charlie’s rescue from the jungle by a Naga tribe and the time he spends living with them without the means to communicate in anything beyond basic fashion. Gradually the reader gets glimpses of what happened to Charlie’s comrades and how he came to be alone in the jungle.

The second storyline describes Charlie’s arduous journey through the jungle back to British administered territory alongside a guide and another Naga who joins them on the trek. “There was no way of telling where the border was and Burma began. No name to anywhere. There was only jungle and mountain, and bare slashed mountain and jungle again, and the rivers ran wild in gorges and you could see across but you could not cross them except where the people had swung their cat’s-cradle bridges of vines, which you walked like a dancer, one foot delicate and light before the other.”

Reaching his destination, Charlie is encouraged by Hussey, a local government official with an interest in anthropology, to talk about his time with the Naga people.

“What did they call themselves, your tribe?”
“I don’t know.”
“We should have a name for them. Tell me about them.”
With Hussey there would be names. Words, story, a route, flattened onto a map on a plain wooden table.

The naming of things, or the absence of names, is one of the themes of the book, as is the inability to talk about some events because they are too traumatic to be shared.  Back in Norfolk with his wife, Claire, Charlie is tormented by flashbacks to the scenes he witnessed in the jungle but he keeps these to himself believing people simply won’t understand what the realities of combat can do to a person.  ‘It was a bit of war one didn’t mention, the clearing up. One mentioned battlefields but one didn’t explain what was there. What was there already when they arrived, what had massed there all through the siege, that they had spent more time clearing up than fighting.’

Those back home want to hear about heroes, not the sordid details that are the reality of war.  We get the sense Claire partly understands there are things Charlie just cannot bring himself to speak about.  ‘Their eyes exchanged what they both knew: that he wouldn’t tell it all and that she would humour him by pretending there was no more to tell.‘

I received a review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury Books via NetGalley.

In three words: Haunting, lyrical, intense

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About the Author

Georgina Harding is the author of four previous novels: The Gun Room, The Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game, which was shortlisted for the Encore Award, and Painter of Silence, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012. Georgina Harding lives in London and on a farm in the Stour Valley, Essex.