‘The Mercies’ by Kiran Millwood Hargrave – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Arctic town of Vardø must …

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‘The Nix’ by Nathan Hill – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads 'The best new writer of fiction in America. The best.' - John Irving Nathan Hill's brilliant debut takes the reader from the rural Midwest of the 1960s, to New York City during Occupy Wall Street; from Chicago in 1968, to wartime Norway: home of the mysterious Nix. Meet Samuel: stalled writer, bored …

‘Once Upon a River’ by Diane Setterfield – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child. Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. …

‘The World That We Knew’ by Alice Hoffman – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads In Berlin in 1941 during humanity’s darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman.  In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save …

‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue’ by Mackenzi Lee – Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of …

‘The Lonely Hearts Hotel’ by Heather O’Neill – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads With echoes of The Night Circus, a spellbinding story about two gifted orphans in love with each other since they can remember whose childhood talents allow them to rewrite their future.  The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized …

‘The Ten Thousand Doors of January’ by Alix E. Harrow – eARC Book Review

Blurb from NetGalley EVERY STORY OPENS A DOOR In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored and utterly out of place. But her quiet existence is …

‘A Single Thread’ by Tracy Chevalier – eARC Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads From the globally bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring It is 1932, and the losses of the First World War are still keenly felt. Violet Speedwell, mourning for both her fiancé and her brother and regarded by society as a ‘surplus woman’ unlikely to marry, resolves to escape her suffocating mother and …

‘The First Time Lauren Pailing Died’ by Alyson Rudd – Book Review

Blurb from Goodreads An emotional, uplifting and magical novel as seen in GUARDIAN’s ‘hottest debuts of 2019’ Lauren Pailing is born in the sixties, and a child of the seventies. She is thirteen years old the first time she dies. Lauren Pailing is a teenager in the eighties, becomes a Londoner in the nineties. And …

‘Blessed Assurance’ by Stewart Ennis – ARC Book Review

Blurb from Vagabond Voices website "The fact of the matter is Joseph Kirkland was afraid. Afraid of not being Saved. Afraid of being Saved. Afraid of the transformation that would occur the moment he uttered those words, Jesus! God! I want you to come into my heart!" Blessed Assurance is a coming of age novel.  …