The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon trans. by Lucia Graves If you like happy-ever-after endings, if your taste is for stories that resolve neatly, all questions answered and evil routed by good, The Angel’s Game is not for you. If you want heroic tragedy or vale of tears, pick up a copy of Romeo …
Category: Historical Fiction
Zafon's Barcelona
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon translated by Lucia Graves I wrote reviews of Zafon's Barcelona trilogy a few years ago now. However, since the Shadow of the Wind and the other two are among the best novels of the last 50 years and some of my all-time favourites, I thought I'd …
'Et tu, Brute?'
Emperor by Conn Iggulden The supposed last words (or nearly last words) of Julius Caesar are best known from the play by William Shakespeare. Whether he said anything of the sort - or anything at all - when he was fatally stabbed, remains in doubt. But, of course, Shakespeare was writing drama, not history. Latin …
The Other Queen
by Philippa Gregory (A novel of the captivity of Mary, Queen of Scots) Mary Stuart must be the most written about person in the whole of history, and with good reason. Pick your side: she was either a hopeless (and foolish) romantic, a woman too trusting for her own good, a victim of one conspiracy …
French Soap
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas 'If Dumas were alive today,' writes Keith Wren in his introduction to my current edition of The Three Musketeers, 'he would certainly not be bidding for the Nobel Prize for Literature but writing scripts for The Bill or Brookside.' Dr Wren's remark, written around 1993, may not strike many …
In the Land of the Pharaohs
The Egyptian by Mika Waltari 'A woman who combines malice with intelligence and beauty is dangerous indeed - more dangerous still when she can add to this the power of a royal consort.' The Egyptian is a classic historical novel by Finnish writer Waltari and set in the Egypt of the 14th century BCE. The …
The Future in the Fire
from The Il-khan's Wife (In my novel The Il-khan's Wife, Gobras is a priest, patriarch of the followers of Zoroaster. Although old and blind, he often has dreams of future events . . . . ) *** 'The fire in the hearth was low and Gobras was dreaming. So often now, in the solitary silence …
Righteous Medicine – Unholy Malice
A House Divided by Margaret Skea [I received an advanced reading copy of A House Divided in exchange for a fair review.] ‘I have eaten crushed orchid leaves, powdered fox’s lungs and crab’s eyes; drunk wolf oil and tincture of foxglove; been bled and leeched till I think I have little blood left; told to …
Gone to London to see the Queen!
The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott 'On the day when the unhappy Porteous was expected to suffer the sentence of the law, the place of execution, extensive as it is, was crowded almost to suffocation.' Edinburgh 1737: Captain John Porteous, King's officer, is confined in the Tolbooth prison for firing on a crowd …
The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse
".... Connie lined up the scalpel and cut. At first, a gentle shifting, nothing more. Then the tip of the blade pierced the skin, and the point slipped in." Kate Mosse returns to her native Chichester for the setting of her new novel, The Taxidermist's Daughter. The year is 1912, a time of mackintoshes, umbrellas, …
Magda Green Books 