Showing posts with label 20th Century. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 20th Century. Show all posts

The Next Ship Home by Heather Webb
Book Review

book cover image
Publication Date: February 8, 2022
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Format:Print and ebook
Genre:Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Ellis Island, 1902: Two women band together to hold America to its promise: "Give me your tired, your poor ... your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

A young Italian woman arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life. That same day, a young American woman reports to her first day of work at the immigration center. But Ellis Island isn't a refuge for Francesca or Alma, not when ships depart every day with those who are refused entry to the country and when corruption ripples through every corridor. While

The Quality of Mercy by Malia Zaidi
Book Blast - Blog Tour - Giveaway (US Only)

Publication Date: August 25, 2020
Book Baby
Paperback & eBook; 416 pages
Series: The Lady Evelyn Mysteries, Book 5
Genre: Historical Mystery

Synopsis

After years spent away, Lady Evelyn is at long last back in her home city of London and she has returned with a rather controversial plan. The Carlisle Detective Agency is born, and it does not take long for the bodies… ahem, cases, to start piling up. With her friend and assistant Hugh, Evelyn embarks on the quest to solve the crimes. Yet the London she encounters is not the London of her coddled youth, and she is forced to learn that there is

Clouds of Love and War by Rachel Billington
Book Review - Blog Tour

Publication Date: 12th July, 2020
Unicorn Publishing
Paperback & eBook; 356 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, World War II

Synopsis

Occasionally panoramic, more often intimate, in Clouds of Love and War author Rachel Billington balances a detailed and highly researched picture of the life of a Second World War Spitfire pilot with the travails and ambitions of a young woman too often on her own. The result is both a gripping story of war and a sensitive story of love, a love that struggles to survive.

Eddie and Eva meet on the eve of

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: The Waxwork Corpse by Simon Michael

Publication Date: 19 December, 2019
Sapere Books
Series: Charles Holborne #5
Format: ebook
Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller

Synopsis

A deadly crime has been dragged to the surface…

London, 1965

Charles Holborne, maverick barrister, will never fit in at the Bar; he is too working-class, too Jewish and too

CAN'T-WAIT WEDNESDAY: I Can't Wait for Khaki Town by Judy Nunn

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released. Find out more here.

CAN'T-WAIT WEDNESDAY: I Can't Wait for The Winemaker's Wife by Kristin Harmel

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released. Find out more here.

BOOK REVIEW: Reasons to Kill God by I.V Olokita.

Synopsis

“If you are able to write 180 pages of your memoir without putting the pen down, I might let you live…”

Klaus Holland loves no one other than himself. He victimizes people for being Jews or for just being alive.

He is an old Nazi criminal who escaped to Brazil and was caught and prosecuted. He is now forced to write his memoirs as part of his punishment – the same punishment he used to give Jews at the concentration camp. This punishment makes him remember and re-live his cruelty as the concentration camp commander

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: The Price of Compassion by A.B. Michaels

Publication Date: August 27, 2018
Red Trumpet Press
eBook; 296 Pages
Series: Golden City, Book #4
Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery

Synopsis

April 18, 1906. San Francisco has just been shattered by a massive earthquake and is in the throes of an even more deadly fire.

During the chaos, gifted surgeon Tom Justice makes a life-changing decision that wreaks havoc on his body,

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: Tiffany Blues by M.J. Rose

Publication Date: August 7, 2018
Atria Books
Hardcover & eBook; 336 Pages
ISBN: 978-1501173592
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

New York, 1924. Twenty‑four‑year‑old Jenny Bell is one of a dozen burgeoning artists invited to Louis Comfort Tiffany’s prestigious artists’ colony. Gifted and determined, Jenny vows to avoid distractions and romantic entanglements and take full advantage of the many wonders to be found at Laurelton Hall.

Book Review: We That Are Left by Lisa Bigelow

Many Australians and naval historians know of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of HMAS Sydney during World War II and the discovery of its wreckage which made headline news in 2008.

In her debut novel, Lisa Bigelow draws on her family's history to tell the story of Mae, the wife of a naval engineer aboard the HMAS Sydney, and Grace, an aspiring female reporter whose boyfriend is posted to Singapore to cover the war there.

Synopsis

Melbourne, 1941. Headstrong young Mae meets and falls head over heels in love with Harry Parker, a

Blog Tour/Book Review: Chasing the Wind by C.C. Humphreys

Publication Date: June 5, 2018
Paperback & eBook; 320 Pages
Genre: Historical/Women's Fiction/Mystery


Synopsis

Smuggler. Smoker. Aviatrix. Thief. The dynamic Roxy Loewen is all these things and more, in this riveting and gorgeous historical fiction novel for readers of Paula McLain, Roberta Rich, Kate Morton and Jacqueline Winspear.

You should never fall in love with a flyer. You should only fall in love with flight.

Book Review: Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband by Barbara Toner

A shortage of men due to the First World War and the flu pandemic, and the discrimination against women, is the backdrop of Barbara Toner's latest novel.

Set in a small country town in New South Wales, Australia, this wonderfully entertaining narrative comments on the social and political aspects of the time as men return from the war to resume their lives and the impact this has on the female population.

Synopsis

When Adelaide Nightingale, Louisa Worthington, Maggie O'Connell and Pearl McLeary threw caution to the winds in the most brazen way imaginable,

Book Review: The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith

To start off my 2018 reading year, I chose this novel based on its World War II setting and its quirky title.

Alexander McCall Smith is a prolific writer of adult and children's fiction, and non-fiction. He is the author of a number of mystery series, his most successful being The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. He has also written several standalone novels, of which The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse is his latest.

Synopsis - From the Back Cover

World War II. England is under threat, and everybody has a part to play, no matter how small. Val works on a farm as a Land Girl, supplying produce to the local air

Book Review: For Two Cents I'll Go With You by Marcia Maxwell

For Two Cents I'll Go With You follows Walter "Pat" Lusk from his role as a shipping clerk for a chemical company in Michigan, through his training in the Army Medical Corps to his posting as a surgeon's assistant with Evacuation Hospital No.4 in France during World War I.

Pat, his imagination fired up by his grandfather's stories of his time in the First Michigan Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War, yearns for glory and similar stories to tell his own grandchildren. When America declares war on Germany, it takes only a little cajoling from his friend, Aubrey, before he decides to enlist.

Book Review: Homeland by Clare Francis

1946. Billy Greer, recently demobbed, reluctantly returns to Crick Farm on the Somerset Levels after an absence of seven years. He finds the farm neglected, his uncle aged and his aunt bed-ridden from a stroke. Despite his eagerness to take up a job offer in London, he decides to restore the farm to order. However, he soon realises that his uncle will be unable to cope when he leaves and on the recommendation of the village doctor, he hires a Pole from the Middlezoy refugee camp to help work the withy farm.

Wladyslaw Malinowski, a veteran of the Battle of Monte Cassino, was a student of history and literature before abandoning his studies to join the Polish army. Now a member of the Polish Resettlement Corps, he is one of many Poles faced with the decision of whether to return to his homeland or remain in England once he has served the mandatory two years. His sister writes from Poland that there is nothing to fear in returning, but Wladyslaw is not so sure that a Poland under Russian rule is the place for him and there are rumours of imprisonment or death for those who do return.


Befriended by the village doctor and Stella, the local school teacher, Wladyslaw is determined to improve his English as the first step to being assimilated into the country he is planning to make his new home. When offered the job at Crick Farm he eagerly accepts. At first, due to the language barrier and Billy's taciturn nature, he finds living on the farm and the work challenging, but eventually he adjusts to both.

My overall impression of Homeland is one of bleakness. Not because it is set during one of the harshest winters that England ever experienced, but images evoked of the landscape and the people are, like the cover of the book, grey and sombre. The flooded Somerset Levels are cold and wet. The unharvested withies are rotting. The people are dispirited and growing resentful as they continue to deal with housing, job, fuel and food shortages, exacerbated by returning servicemen.

The Poles in the refugee camp also have problems. They are mistrusted by the locals, who do not understand their ways or their reluctance to return to Poland now that the war is over. When a local war hero, a veteran of the Burma campaign, is found dead, suspicion falls on a Pole from the camp with tragic consequences.

The historical content and the unusual setting drew me to this novel. The formation of the Polish Resettlement Corps and the plight of Polish refugees in post war Britain is not often the subject of novels. Nor is the growing of withies on the Somerset Levels, but the two combine to make this a very memorable read.

The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller
Book Review


I was disappointed with this novel. The first part was slow and I kept asking myself when will the mystery of Kitty Easton’s disappearance begin. I persevered to the end, but did not find this novel as engaging as Speller’s previous one <i>The Return of Captain John Emmett</i>.

I was certainly looking forward to meeting Laurence Bartram again, but I didn’t warm to the other characters and by the end of the novel I had lost interest in what had befallen Kitty Easton.

Book Review: The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller



For my next read I decided to leave the medieval world behind for a while and move forward a few hundred years to the end of the First World War - the year 1920 to be exact - and a mystery.

This is an unusual detective story. It opens on a railway station platform, with a silent crowd waiting to pay their respects to the Unknown Warrior, whose coffin is aboard a train bound for burial in London, and a mysterious figure standing alone.

Dealing with his own personal loss and a life that has changed forever, ex-soldier, Laurence Bartram, receives a letter from the sister of a former school friend who is trying to make sense of why her brother, John Emmett, committed suicide after surviving the war.

Puzzled by the relevance of items in John Emmett's possession at the time of his death, Laurence sets off to find the answers and soon becomes embroiled in a mystery that brings back the recent horrors of World War I and its devastating effect on those that lived through it and its aftermath. I won't elaborate on the story further,  as that would spoil it  for those who haven't read it, only to say it is a tragic tale.

My interest was held to the very end of the novel. The image of that mysterious figure at the station was always in my mind. Who was he and  what connection, if any, did this person have to the unfortunate events  in the story? I had many theories, none of which were correct, and to me the essence of a good mystery novel is one that keeps me guessing until the author decides to reveal the solution.

I really enjoyed this novel and look forward to reading Elizabeth Speller's next entitled "The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton" also featuring Laurence Bartram.




If you want to know more about the aftermath of World War I, Aftermath is a great website to visit. There is a page devoted to the Unknown Warrior.