So Much Life Left Over
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A POWERFULLY EVOCATIVE AND EMOTIONALLY CHARGED NOVEL FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF CORELLI'S MANDOLIN...
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Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen
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Acclaimed author and historian Alison Weir continues her epic Six Tudor Queens series with this...
The Dogon Initiative (The Deniables #1)
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A group of foreign mercenaries hired as deniable assets by a newly-formed humanitarian division of...
Angel Thieves
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An ocelot. A slave. An angel thief. Multiple perspectives spanning across time are united through...
Houston Texas Historical Fiction slavery YA Young Adult
Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post
Sep 8, 2021 (Updated Sep 8, 2021)
The Night Gate
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In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of...
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In this riveting third book in the Soli Hansen Mysteries series, a woman’s courage to follow her...
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A Matter of Faith – Henry VIII: The Days of the Phoenix
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Finally free of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII, is now married to Anne Boleyn and eagerly awaiting...
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ClareR (5726 KP) rated The Hemlock Cure in Books
Apr 6, 2023
The real evil isn’t a disease, it’s being shut in with people who clearly do not have good intentions.
The village of Eyam is well known for the decision to shut itself off from the outside world when its inhabitants started to become ill and die. They understood that the only way to halt the spread of the disease was to isolate themselves - a selfless act.
This novel looks at some of the families and their relationships inside and outside of their family units. The local apothecary and his daughter Mae, are one such family. Mae is desperate to be her fathers apprentice, but this isn’t a time in history where it’s safe for a woman to be working with herbs. So Mae studies with the midwife and a local wise woman (who are both also skating on thin ice, truth be told).
The plague wasn’t a constant in London it appears, and we travel there with one of the main characters. The contrast between the country village and London was quite something to read. I could almost smell the difference off the page!!
I enjoyed the pacing of this book: in Eyam the time crawls, whilst in London everything is all hustle and bustle.
The slow reveal of the terrible secrets in Mae’s family are not so much shocking as terrifying. Wulfric, Mae’s father, is not a well man. It seems to be a race against time for Mae.
I would most definitely recommend this book to historical fiction fans - and if you like a mystery, you may well like this as well.
Hazel (2934 KP) rated A Child for the Reich in Books
Dec 4, 2022
Anna Dankova and her family live in Nazi-occupied Prague. Her husband and brother-in-law have joined the Czech Resistance leaving them to try and raise their children with the ever present danger of the Nazi soldiers, the Gestapo and the much feared Brown Sisters; female nurses who were dedicated to the Nazi cause. They worked for the Nazi Welfare Organization and searched through villages and towns for Aryan-looking children.
Anna and her sister's children are blonde-haired and blue-eyed and their fears are only too real but they are powerless against the might of the Nazi regime and one day, Anna's daughter, Ema is literally ripped from her arms in broad daylight leaving Anna, understandably, distraught and determined to get her back whatever the risks before she is lost forever.
Anna uses all her skills, courage and guile to find her daughter, infiltrate the children's home where she has been placed to be indoctrinated into the German way and to figure out a way to get her out of there whilst under the ever present threat of exposure and certain death.
This is a story full of tension and heartbreak and one mother's determination to find her daughter no matter what and it was absolutely gripping and I have no hesitation recommending it to those of you who 'enjoy' reading historical fiction based on true stories and events.
Thank you to HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of A Child for the Reich.