Review: Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker

'Silence becomes a woman.' Every woman I’ve ever known was brought up on that saying

Review: The Woman In Black, by Susan Hill

I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever

Review: Life With A Star, by Jiří Weil

People always think there's hope, even they're standing over an open grave

Review: The Wicked Cometh, by Laura Carlin

Down the murky alleyways of London, acts of unspeakable wickedness are taking place

Review: The Witchfinder’s Sister, Beth Underdown

They say what happened, but they do not say why

Review: The Witches of New York, by Ami McKay

The year is 1880. Two hundred years after the trials in Salem

Review: Longbourn, by Jo Baker

Synopsis: It is wash-day for the housemaids at Longbourn House, and Sarah's hands are chapped and raw. Domestic life below stairs, ruled with a tender heart and an iron will by Mrs Hill the housekeeper, is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a new footman, bearing secrets and the scent of the sea. …

Review: Smoke, by Dan Vyleta

Synopsis: If sin were visible and you could see people's anger, their lust and cravings, what would the world be like? Smoke opens in a private boarding school near Oxford, but history has not followed the path known to us. In this other past, sin appears as smoke on the body and soot on the …

Review: All the Light We cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

Synopsis: Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When …

Review: Florence & Giles, by John Harding

Synopsis: 1891. In a crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence and her younger brother Giles are neglected by their guardian uncle. Banned from reading, Florence devours books in secret, and twists words and phrases into a language uniquely her own. After the violent death of the children’s first governess, a second arrives. Florence becomes …

Review: Rawblood, by Catriona Ward

Synopsis: In 1910, eleven year old Iris Villarca lives with her father at Rawblood, a lonely house on Dartmoor. Iris and her father are the last of their name. The Villarcas always die young, bloodily. Iris knows it’s because of a congenital disease which means she must be strictly isolated. Papa told her so. Forbidden …

Review: A Study in Scarlet – by Arthur Conan Doyle

Synopsis: A dead man is discovered in a bloodstained room in Brixton. The only clues are a wedding ring, a gold watch, a pocket edition of Boccaccio's Decameron, and a word scrawled in blood on the wall. With this investigation begins the partnership of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Their search for the murderer uncovers …

Review: The Girl Who Couldn’t Read – by John Harding

Synopsis: New England, the 1890s. A man calling himself Doctor John Shepherd arrives at an isolated women’s mental hospital to begin work as assistant to the owner Dr Morgan. As Shepherd struggles to conceal his own dark secrets, he finds the asylum has plenty of its own. Who is the woman who wanders the corridors by …

Review: Bellman & Black – by Diane Setterfield

Synopsis: As a boy, William Bellman commits one small cruel act that appears to have unforeseen and terrible consequences. The killing of a rook with his catapult is soon forgotten amidst the riot of boyhood games. And by the time he is grown, with a wife and children of his own, he seems indeed, to …

Review: The Miniaturist – by Jessie Burton

Synopsis: There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed . . . On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes …

Review: The White Queen – Philippa Gregory

Synopsis: Internationally bestselling author Philippa Gregory brings the tumult and intrigue of The Wars of the Roses to vivid life through the women of the House of Lancaster and the House of York, beginning with the story of Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. A woman who won the love of a king and ascended to …

Review: Plague Child – by Peter Ransley

Synopsis: September 1625: Plague cart driver, Matthew Kneave, is sent to pick up the corpse of a baby. Yet, on the way to the plague pit, he hears a cry – the baby is alive. A plague child himself, and now immune from the disease, Matthew decides to raise it as his own. Fifteen years …

Review: Wolf Hall – by Hilary Mantel

Synopsis: England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son …

Pure – by Andrew Miller

Synopsis: Deep in the heart of Paris, its oldest cemetery is, by 1785, overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a …

The Daylight Gate – by Jeanette Winterson

Synopsis: Good Friday 1612. Pendle Hill. A mysterious gathering of thirteen people is interrupted by a local magistrate. Is it a witches' Sabbat? In Lancaster Castle two notorious witches await trial and certain death, while the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter rides to their defence. Elsewhere a starved child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and …