The Scent of Oranges

by

Kathy George

Nancy has spent her whole life on the vibrant and gritty streets of Victorian London, first as one of Fagin's child pickpockets and now on the arm of violent and mercurial Bill Sikes. Nancy does what she must to get by. She's attuned to the harsh realities of life, but also knows how to find moments of beauty amid the grime, even if it is only the scent and taste of an orange - its miraculous colour and form.

When she embarks on a relationship with enigmatic gentleman Mr Rufus, it awakens emotions she's never felt before, and makes a better life feel possible for the first time. But when she takes cherubic orphan Oliver Twist under her wing, something even more elusive and appealing seems to be within reach: redemption.

This captivating tale of love, sacrifice, and the battle between good and evil showcases the power of compassion in a world tainted by darkness.

REVIEW

We all know the story of Nancy in Oliver Twist, but this story is her own, in her "own words". 

Nancy has been brought up on the streets and for many years under the guidance of Fagin and since meeting Bill Sikes, she has to be wary of what she does and who she sees because one wrong word could cause trouble for Nancy, usually by Bills' hand or belt.

When Nancy is working the streets, she is introduced to a gentleman by the name of Mr Rufus. He is kind to her and treats her well, something she is not used to, so she is on her guard at all times, but she has feelings for him that she has never had for anyone else before.

When Oliver Twist is brought in to Fagin's den, Nancy feels nothing but warmth and love for the boy, but when he escapes Fagin's and Bill's clutches, she feels she has to try to keep him safe, even if it means putting her own life in danger. 

I truly loved this book. It is written so well, a bit like a memoir by Nancy herself and her life in Victorian London. We all know the story of Oliver Twist and how the story ends, but it's the bits in between where we get to know the real Nancy and what a lovely, kind, warm character she is. 

I really didn't want this book to end.

 Every Christmas Eve

by

Emma Heatherington

'Tis the season for second chances…

Lou and Ben fell in love as teenagers at the Ballyheaney Christmas Eve party. Every winter, they saved the date for each other. Until everything changed one fateful night…

Now, after years away, widower and single dad Ben is back, determined to revive the legendary party. But with only two weeks to make it happen, they need help. So Ben turns to the one person he could never forget: Lou.

As the days tick down to another Christmas Eve together, old feelings and memories resurface.

Will Lou and Ben seize this chance to rewrite their very own love story?

REVIEW

Every year there is a Christmas Eve party at Ballyheaney House, the home of Ben and his family. Lou loves helping out and when Lou and Ben have to deliver a foal on Christmas Eve, it seemed their relationship deepened from that day, but when Ben goes away to university, they have to make some serious decisions and it seems Christmas Eve will never be the same again. 

Years later, Lou has come back from New York where she lived with her daughter Gracie to settle into a cottage back in the Irish village where she was born and has opened a florist/coffee shop. A couple of weeks before Christmas a customer comes in and instantly Lou recognises the voice...Ben. He is back to help organise the Christmas Eve party again, which is the first in over 20 years.

Ben is now a widower with a 12 year old daughter called Ava, but doesn't live in the village anymore, so has to visit to help organise the party at weekends. He asks Lou if she would help with the arrangements (like old times) and she agrees. Surely this can only mean one thing? that they could rekindle their relationship? But many things have changed over 20 years and there are secrets that both of them need to share to be able to move forward...

I loved this book and the author's writing is just so easy to get into. It has a great mix of characters and I have to admit, I had a sob towards the end (good job I was on my own!). I really didn't want this story to end.

 All Together for Christmas

by

Sarah Morgan

This Christmas, the Balfour family will have more secrets to unwrap than presents …

Becky is stranded at the airport, so when she bumps into her brother’s best friend, Will, and he suggests they drive home together, Becky reluctantly agrees. For the first time, Becky is dreading Christmas, and only Will knows why. Can she trust him to keep her secret?

Rosie married Declan after a whirlwind romance, and now the cracks are starting to appear. Rosie and Declan have agreed to hide their problems from her family, but will this Christmas bring them closer or drive them apart?

Hayley can’t wait for her first Balfour family Christmas with Jamie, but she’s worried about her place in this close-knit family. Will there be room for her too? And how will they react to the secret she and Jamie have been keeping?

All this secrecy could derail everyone's happy holidays. Can the siblings open up to each other in time to enjoy a perfect family Christmas?

REVIEW

This is the story of Becky and Rosie (who are twins) and their brother Jamie and how they are all trying to get home to their parents for Christmas, but each has a secret that may bring their joyous family Christmas into jeopardy!

Rosie is at the airport waiting to get a flight home to Edinburgh, but all flights are cancelled due to the snow. She stumbles across Will, who is her brother's best friend who she has known forever. He offers to drives her home as he is also going home to Scotland, but she is trying every excuse in the book to get out of it because she just doesn't want to do a family Christmas this year, especially as Rosie (her twin sister) will be there with her new husband Declan, who Becky worked with for many years. 

Rosie and Declan had a whirlwind romance and married after only a few months, but Rosie is worried that the cracks are starting to show and spending Christmas with her family may be too much for Declan to bear...

Jamie is also making his way home with Hayley and he has told his parents to get the champagne on ice and to arrange a party, but what for? 

I love a Sarah Morgan Christmas book and this one didn't disappoint. All of the siblings had their own secrets they had before returning to their parents for Christmas and it was great finding out what they were!

Thoroughly enjoyed this one with a good bunch of characters.

 Estella's Fury

by

Barbara Havelocke

Daughter. Murderer. Saviour.

London, 1835.

To high society, Estella is the perfect lady. But her fair face hides dark secrets what has she done with her husband? And will her past crimes come back to haunt her?

Desperate to escape her troubled life, she visits her friend, Lady Taykall. But when a servant girl disappears, Estella stumbles on a horrifying web of crimes and feels the old fire for vengeance burning inside her.

To mete out her own brand of dark justice she must risk everything.

Even if it means she cannot survive.

REVIEW

After reading Estella's Revenge last year and it being my "book of the year", I was eagerly awaiting the sequel, but equally a bit anxious to see if it lived up to the first book. I wasn't disappointed. Estella's Fury slips back into the life of Miss Havisham's adopted daughter Estella (Great Expectations) and her wicked ways, but only to the people who have done her wrong and that starts with her husband Bentley. Having nearly killed her previously in a ferocious attack, Estella locks him in the attic and keeps him dosed up with laudanum, just enough to keep him alive whilst she deals with others in and around London who are doing wrong by innocent people, mainly the exploitation of children. 

There a lot of twists and turns in this one and the author uses the characters brilliantly to intertwine with each other - I certainly gasped a few times when I found out who a particular character really was! and I was also very pleasantly surprised when the author mentions Walworth (which is in South East London) which is where I come from!

When I started reading this one, I thought perhaps Estella had gone a bit soft and that she was going to go along with being a good wife, but it didn't take long to realise that she will do anything within her power to dispose of anyone who does her wrong... I love her!

There is definitely some unfinished business for Estella, so here's to the next installment and I can't wait!

 PHOENIX RISING

BY

ALBINA DU BOISROUVRAY

I was very honoured to be approached by the Publishers to host an extract for Phoenix Rising by Albina Du Boisrouvray and I am posting an extract below for you.

I am mixed-race, hybrid.
A jumble of geographical, ethnic, social, economic, and cultural contradictions. 15% French and Celtic, 20% Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese), 28% southern European of all sorts, and 21% Native American of southeastern Asian origin. The remaining percentages are divided between sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East: Arab, Jewish, and 1% African — most likely the legacy of an ancestor who was a slave in the sugarcane fields of the Bolivian lowlands.

A paradox. A walking oxymoron.

Luz Mila, my mother, was the youngest child of an extremely wealthy Bolivian family. Slight, short, and fragile, she was a chola (of mixed Quechua and Spanish heritage). She was tan, but she lightened her face by washing it with milk every night. On July 2, 1939, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in the midst of seizures from pre-eclampsia, she gave birth to a little piece of ethnic patchwork weighing 4 pounds, 15 ounces(2.25kg) — me. She even dislocated her shoulder during labour.

Saddled with the first name of my maternal grandmother, Albina Patiño, I landed in this affluent Parisian suburb on the eve of World War II. I embodied two traditions: my father was from the Jacquelot du Boisrouvray Polignac family, the old aristocracy of Brittany and Auvergne. And my mother was a Patiño, from a newly enriched family that was part Quechua and had risen from poverty.

I stayed in an incubator for one whole week. My mother couldn’t produce any milk and when I obstinately refused powdered formula, the hospital provided milk from an anonymous wet nurse from Levallois, to whom I am infinitely grateful. At the end of July, a certified British nanny who had raised almost all the grandchildren of the Patiño tribe arrived. Miss Eva Rust, whom we called “Nursie,” was the daughter of a Protestant minister. Tall with greying hair, she resembled a police officer in her dark blue uniform. She was solid and reliable, and, while somewhat prudish and harsh, she had an enchanting imagination.

Taken by my mother to her parents’ house at 32 Avenue Foch, a Bolivian enclave within Paris, and I was immediately stored on the top floor to spare the family my piercing cries. One afternoon, Marie-Louise Parent, my mother’s gentle and distinguished maid, heard my howls from afar and found me alone under the eaves. I was purple with rage, blue with cold, and had no blanket. “I warmed you up and comforted you,” she told me later. Though I lacked maternal tenderness, I was still born with a tin spoon in my mouth.

Tin. Several decades before, this metal had sealed the fate of my grandfather, Simon Patiño, before he became the dictatorial patriarch I knew. He was born in 1860 to an unknown father, just like his two half-brothers. A Quechua cholo from Cochabamba province (altitude: 8,900 feet), Simon was an orphan working in the mines by age sixteen. My great-grandmother Mali had run a café on a dirt road in the main square of Carrassa, a poor village in the Andes. She served chicha, a local beer made of corn. When their mother died, Simon took his half-brother Ernesto, who was only ten, to work in the tin mines at an altitude of 15,000 feet. After working in the mine, Simon was then hired at a store selling prospecting tools. Through luck and ingenuity, this adventurous young man discovered a deposit that would become the most gigantic tin mine in the world. Locate above Oruro, it was almost at surface level, at an altitude of 16,400 feet. In the early days, my grandmother Albina, escorted by llamas, would transport chunks of ore on the back of a mule when she went to borrow money from the bank in Oruro, her small hometown.

 The Whispering Muse

by

Laura Purcell

Be careful what you wish for... it may just come true.

At The Mercury Theatre in London's West End, rumours are circulating of a curse.

It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.

What Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in nature. On stage, it's as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the Muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress. But when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders if the rumours are true, and fears that when the Muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.

REVIEW

Jenny finds herself desperate for money when her brother disappears leaving the family destitute and when Mrs Dyer, the owner of the theatre where her brother worked approaches her to work at the theatre as a dresser for the new leading actress Lilith, Jenny jumps at the chance to help her family, but little does Jenny know that Mrs Dyer has an ulterior motive for wanting her to work closely with Lilith.

Lilith is a diva in the true sense of the word and wants to be the star of the Mercury theatre at whatever cost and when her lover (who happens to be Mrs Dyer's husband) gives her a watch that is supposed to contain a muse called Melpomene, she thinks that as long as she has the watch in her possession, nothing can harm her and that she will have the world at her feet. 

Lilith may think that the watch will bring her good luck, but every time there is a tragedy in the theatre, the watch has been there. Jenny wants to get the watch off Lilith, but in doing so, would she be passing the bad luck on to her and her family...

There was a good mix of characters in this book. I liked Jenny because she was no pushover with Lilith and stood her ground, it was the authors fabulous writing of the character of Lilith that made me feel a whole range of emotions towards her, from disliking her to actually feeling sorry for her. 

This is the second book I have read of this authors and can't wait to read more. Would thoroughly recommend to lovers of gothic historical fiction. 

 The Corset

by

Laura Purcell

Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain?

Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder.

When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she finds herself drawn to Ruth, a teenage seamstress - and self-confessed murderess - who nurses a dark and uncanny secret. A secret that is leading her straight to the gallows. As Ruth reveals her disturbing past to Dorothea, the fates of these two women entwine, and with every revelation, a new layer of doubt is cast...

Can Ruth be trusted? Is she mad, or a murderer?

REVIEW

Ruth and Dorothea come from completely different walks of life. Dorothea is rich and spends her time doing charity work which includes visiting and talking to prisoners awaiting the death sentence. 

Ruth was bullied when she was at school and her saving grace was when she went home and helped her mother with sewing beautiful gloves for the rich, but when her father dies and her mother becomes destitute, Ruth is sent to Metyards, a dressmakers, who her mother worked for previously. Ruth is treated so badly there, as were other girls, that she thinks she would have been better off in the debtor's jail, but she believes her sewing has magical powers and this will help her to get revenge on the Metyard family.

The corset that Ruth makes for Kate Metyard for her wedding is superb, but Ruth is convinced that it's power will kill Kate off. Is this why Ruth is in prison and having visits from Dorothea?

This is a great gothic thriller which keeps you guessing until the very last page. I really enjoyed this book. It was the first I have read by this author, but I have now started reading The Whispering Muse as I love her writing. 

Would thoroughly recommend to lovers of dark, gothic stories.