The Duke of Fire
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Miss Jane Harcourt has seen the roguish ways of men and has resigned herself to remaining alone the...
Fiction Romance Historical
So Much Life Left Over
Book
A POWERFULLY EVOCATIVE AND EMOTIONALLY CHARGED NOVEL FROM THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF CORELLI'S MANDOLIN...
Historical Fiction First World War Family Saga
Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen
Book
Acclaimed author and historian Alison Weir continues her epic Six Tudor Queens series with this...
The Dogon Initiative (The Deniables #1)
Book
A group of foreign mercenaries hired as deniable assets by a newly-formed humanitarian division of...
Angel Thieves
Book
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
Book
In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of...
Hidden Masterpiece (Soli Hansen Mysteries #3)
Book
In this riveting third book in the Soli Hansen Mysteries series, a woman’s courage to follow her...
Historical Fiction Mystery Dual Timeline
A Matter of Faith – Henry VIII: The Days of the Phoenix
Book
Finally free of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII, is now married to Anne Boleyn and eagerly awaiting...
Historical Fiction Tudors Henry VIII
ClareR (5667 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.