Top 10 Books 2013

Here's my Top 10 list for the year. It's a mix of fiction & non fiction but it represents all the genres & subjects I'm interested in - history, 19th & 20th century fiction as well as a couple of brand new novels. The books are in no particular order, just as I thought of them or as they leapt out at me as I looked back through my reading list for the year.

I love writing this post every year. It takes me ages as I go back to my reviews & read all your lovely comments & remember the experience of reading the books again. It leaves me feeling happy & excited about the reading year to come. The links are to my original reviews.

The Secret History by Catherine Bailey. A book about family secrets & lies & an absorbing story of literary research & detection.

Fenny by Lettice Cooper. The story of a young woman whose life is changed forever by moving to Italy in the 1930s.

Plotting for Grown-ups by Sue Hepworth. I'm also including Plotting for Beginners (written with Jane Linfoot) here as well as I read both books in about a fortnight. Sally Howe is a writer living in the Peak District, coping with a disintegrating marriage & a new love, wayward children & the trials of self-publishing her new novel. I loved Sally's voice which is funny, witty & so observant about the life of an older woman assailed by family & friends who just wants to be able to watch Neighbours in peace.

Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. I didn't read nearly enough sensation fiction this year but this was a book I chose for my 19th century bookgroup & I loved it. A story about betrayal, murder, money & relationships between fathers & daughters. My excellent Victorian Secrets edition included a comprehensive Introduction & some fascinating contemporary reviews.

The Deliverance by Ellen Glasgow. A Gothic family saga with overtones of Wuthering Heights, set in the American South after the Civil War. Another excellent choice from my 19th century bookgroup.

Wounded by Emily Mayhew. There will be many books published over the next few years about WWI as the anniversaries of that conflict begin. I don't think there will be many that are as moving as this one. It's the personal stories of the wounded & those who care for them, from the front line to the hospitals back home in Britain.

The Ashgrove by Diney Costeloe. A beautifully written novel about remembrance & a shocking story of injustice set in the present & during WWI. I still have the sequel, Death's Dark Vale, to look forward to.

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley. I love Kearsley's novels but this one was completely involving. A sequel of sorts to my two favourite books of hers - The Shadowy Horses & The Winter Sea, the story moves from the present to the past, from Scotland to Russia & I was completely absorbed in the story & the characters.

Heat Lightning by Helen Hull is my Persephone of the year. The story of a woman who returns to her family home in Michigan during a hot summer to work out what she wants from her life & her marriage. A completely absorbing family saga, reminiscent of Dorothy Whipple.

Tudor by Leanda de Lisle. I've read many books about the Tudors but in this excellent account, Leanda de Lisle focuses on some of the forgotten people in the story, often women. Most interestingly, Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots & potential heiress to the throne at different times of the life. A perfect introduction to the Tudor story but also a book with lots to interest those who have read hundreds of books on the period.

I'd also like to mention two audiobooks that I loved this year. I don't usually review audiobooks because I listen in the car & I can't take notes or refer easily back to check names & details. However, there were two standouts for me this year. Clarissa Dickson Wright read her own book, A History of English Food. This was so involving & Clarissa was a perfect traveling companion as she guided me through English food over the centuries with a good bit of history thrown in. Witty & opinionated, I could hardly wait for the next instalment. Bertie by Jane Ridley is the biography of Edward VII. This is a sympathetic but honest book about a man who survived a dreadful childhood & an aimless life as an unemployed prince to become a respected monarch in the final years of his life. Lots of lovely gossip as well & a well-rounded portrait of an interesting man.

Well, there it is. I'll be back tomorrow with a New Year's resolution & I'll look forward to touring the blogs & reading everyone else's Top 10 lists. Happy New Year!

The Firebird - Susanna Kearsley

Nicola Marter has a gift. When she holds an object, she can connect with the people who have owned it in the past. Nicola is an expert in Russian art & works in a London gallery. When Margaret Ross brings in a wooden carving of the Russian fairy tale creature, the firebird, Nicola feels an immediate connection to someone called Anna who once owned the object. Margaret's family believed that the firebird was given to their ancestor, Anna, by Empress Catherine, widow of Peter the Great, in the early 18th century. Margaret wants to sell the carving but, without provenance, this will be difficult. Nicola can see how important the sale is to Margaret & she feels compelled to try & trace the history of the firebird.

Nicola has ambivalent feelings about her gift of psychometry. Her family discouraged her from talking about it & she feels embarrassed & defensive about it. Her Russian grandfather was persecuted by the Soviets because of it. When studying in Edinburgh, Nicola had taken part in scientific tests conducted by a parapsychology institute. She met Rob McMorran, who accepts his psychic gifts as just a part of who he is. Nicola & Rob's relationship ended abruptly when Nicola left Edinburgh without explanation & returned to London,. Now, Nicola knows that she needs Rob's help if she is going to trace the firebird. Rob is a policeman, living in Eyemouth near the Scottish border. He & Nicola had always shared a deep bond, even reading each other's thoughts & communicating without speech so he's not surprised by her arrival. Rob is able to see the past & agrees to help Nicola in her quest.

The search for the firebird takes them from Slaines Castle on the coast near Aberdeen to Belgium & on to Russia. They discover Anna Moray as a child, cared for by the Logans after her parents were forced to leave Scotland because of their involvement with the unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion of 1715. Anna is taken to a Belgian convent by her great-uncle, Colonel Graeme & then, after a terrifying encounter in Calais, Anna is taken on to St Petersburg by Vice Admiral Gordon. Gordon is one of the many Scots who were forced to leave their homeland after fighting for King James. Anna becomes his ward & grows up as part of his family & as part of the Jacobite community in Russia. Peter the Great was sympathetic to King James & gave material help & support to the King as he plotted his return to the throne.

When Anna is seventeen, she agrees to stay with the family of General Lacy as companion to his pregnant wife. The General won favour from the Tsar through his bravery at the Battle of Poltava against Sweden & he is a central figure in the expatriate community. Through General Lacy she meets his kinsman, Edmund O'Connor, an Irishman who has been exiled from home because of his Jacobite sympathies. Anna's story is immensely touching. Her longing for family & her careful awareness of the danger of knowledge makes her self-contained & wary. She is also proud of her family although she can never speak of them. Finally, as Anna's story comes to a close, we discover how she acquired the firebird, the fairytale creature who started the quest. I was very moved by the conclusion of Anna's story.

If you've read Susanna Kearsley's earlier books, you will find echoes of two of her books in The Firebird. As a boy, Rob had helped a group of archaeologists searching for the missing Roman Ninth Legion & his story was told in The Shadowy Horses. The story of Anna's parents was central to The Winter Sea, another of my favourite Susanna Kearsley books. Reading The Firebird brought both of these books back to me. There were so many lovely touches. Rob still talks to the Sentinel & Nicola hears the shadowy horses when she stays with Rob's parents. I loved revisiting Slaines Castle & remembering both earlier books. Nicola & Rob's relationship is beautifully romantic but almost understated & I found the psychic elements of the story fascinating. Susanna Kearsley writes contemporary & historical fiction equally well & it was a delight to follow Anna's story as Rob describes it to Nicola, whose own psychic gifts become stronger once she acknowledges that it's an important part of her being. Anna & Nicola have a lot in common. Their characters are both self-contained & reluctant to trust their own instincts. Both women must find a way past their self-imposed restrictions before they can find happiness.

As if the incredibly satisfying & emotional ending of both stories in the 18th & 21st centuries wasn't enough, Susanna Kearsley has also provided a fascinating essay on the research she did when writing the novel.  Russian history has been one of my interests ever since I read two books when I was a teenager - The Youngest Lady-in-Waiting by Mara Kay & Robert K Massie's Nicholas & Alexandra. Since then, I've read many books about Russian history so walking through 18th century St Petersburg in my imagination was just wonderful. Scotland & its history is another interest so a book that combined both was almost too good to be true. Most of the 18th century characters are real & there is documentary evidence for their actions & motives. I loved reading about the process of research, something that always fascinates me. I'm so glad that Colonel Graeme, a character from The Winter Sea wouldn't let go of Susanna Kearsley's imagination & inspired her to write this completely involving story.

The Shadowy Horses - Susanna Kearsley

In my post the other day, I mentioned that I was reading The Shadowy Horses but that I couldn't remember where I read the rave review that sent me back to this book after many years. Well, Claire commented on my post & I thought her enthusiasm sounded familiar & so here's the post about several books by Susanna Kearsley that made me want to reread this book.

I've read all Susanna Kearsley's books as they've been published & I love the mix of history, suspense, romance & the supernatural that she uses to create her addictive plots. Since reading The Shadowy Horses back in 1998 I've become even more interested in Roman Britain & archaeology so Claire's reminder was all I needed to download the book & start reading almost straightaway.

Verity Grey is an archaeologist who has recently started working freelance after leaving the British Museum. A former boyfriend, Adrian Sutton-Clarke, has recommended her for a job at Rosehill, a house on the Scottish border, but has told Verity very little about what the job entails. Verity arrives to discover that the site director, Peter Quinnell, believes that he has discovered the fate of the Ninth Legion. The Ninth mysteriously disappeared in the early years of the Roman occupation of Britain in the 1st century. There have been many theories as to what happened to the Legion from annihilation at the hands of Celtic warriors to the more prosaic redeployment to another part of the Empire. Verity is intrigued but also a little concerned when she realises that Peter is basing his excavations on the word of Robbie McMorran, a local boy with remarkable powers of second sight.

Robbie sees a Roman soldier that he calls the Sentinel patrolling an area of land close to Rosehill. Robbie, who accepts his second sight as a normal part of his life, isn't the only one who can sense the Sentinel's presence. His dog, Kip, runs alongside the Sentinel, waiting for him to reach down & give him a pat & Verity becomes aware of a presence watching her closely & protectively. Peter's two cats, Murphy & Charlie, are also sensitive to the supernatural & they can sense the Sentinel as well as the horses that only Verity can hear at night in the field next to the house.

The rest of Peter's team have varying levels of belief in the project. Adrian, a geophysicist, is sceptical & mainly there for the money. He's also interested in Peter's granddaughter, Fabia. Fabia is young, beautiful & bored. Staying with Peter after her father's death, she makes herself useful as a photographer. David Fortune is another archaeologist who Verity becomes attracted to. David worships Peter, who inspired his love of history & Peter is very close to David's mother, Nancy, who lives nearby. Peter has only a short time to come up with results so that he can convince Dr Connelly, head of the archeology department at the university to approve his project for summer students. Peter's reputation as an archaeologist has suffered because of his obsession with the Ninth Legion & Verity becomes determined to support his vision, sometimes against her better judgement.

I loved this book. It has everything I love in a novel of romantic suspense. It's set in Scotland, it's about history & archaeology, the supernatural elements are beautifully handled, the romance is perfect & there's enough conflict & mystery to keep the plot ticking along. There are even cats! What more could I ask for? According to Marg, who commented on my post the other day, Susanna Kearsley's next book, The Firebird, features Robbie from The Shadowy Horses & is also linked to The Winter Sea, another of the books set in Scotland. I can hardly wait.

There's a copy of The Shadowy Horses, as well as several other books by Susanna Kearsley, available at Anglophile Books.

Bookish news - & some treats to look forward to

I mentioned in my last post that I love publishers who reprint out of print classics that have slipped under the radar for whatever reason. Now with e-books, it's even easier for a canny publisher to bring back an author's backlist without the thought of being left with a warehouse full of unsold hard copies. I discovered Martin Edwards through his wonderful Lake District series. He also wrote an earlier series featuring Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin but most of the titles have been out of print for some time. I borrowed Waterloo Sunset from work & enjoyed it very much & Arcturus Classics have recently reprinted the first in the series, All the Lonely People. Now, Andrews UK have reprinted most of the rest of the series as POD paperbacks & e-books. Distinguished crime writers have contributed new Introductions & Martin has written a "Making Of" feature for each title & there's a teaser chapter of the next book in the series. All the details are here at Martin's blog.

Martin's blog also reminded me of Bello, Pan Macmillan's new e-book imprint. They have some fantastic authors, including Josephine Bell, a mystery novelist I read in the dim dark past but would love to read more of her books. She also wrote historical novels which are part of the new Bello list as well. Other authors include Vita Sackville-West, Eva Ibbotson, R C Sherriff (author of the terrific Persephone reprint, The Hopkins Manuscript), Francis Durbridge & Lillian Beckwith. I'm especially interested in the Lillian Beckwith books as I love stories set in Scotland & her memoirs & novels set in the Hebrides have been out of print for some time.

I'm reading Susanna Kearsley's novel The Shadowy Horses at the moment. I read all her books as they were published but this was an especial favourite & I recently read a rave review (I can't remember where now) that made me long to read it again. It's just as good as I remember & looking at Fantastic Fiction to find out when it was published (easier than going back in my e-book), I discovered that Susanna has a new book due out next March called The Firebird. Tantalisingly that's all I can find out about it. There's no blurb on Amazon & nothing on Susanna's website.

O Douglas is another of my recent favourites, discovered thanks to Greyladies in Edinburgh. They're publishing two new books next month & one of them is by O Douglas, The Day of Small Things. I think it's a sequel to The Proper Place which I enjoyed & reviewed here.

Finally, two books that I've pre-ordered & can't wait to get my hands on. Michael Slater's biography of Charles Dickens was published a few years ago & I loved it. Now, he's written a book (published in September) about Dickens's relationship with Nelly Ternan, The Great Charles Dickens Scandal. He not only describes the relationship between Dickens & Nelly & the lengths Dickens went to to keep it a secret but also discusses how the relationship was finally revealed & the many intrigues that accompanied each revelation.

Maggie Lane has been writing about Jane Austen for many years & her thoughts are always insightful & beautifully expressed. Her new book (published in October), Understanding Austen, was the result of a series of articles she wrote for Jane Austen's Regency World magazine. The articles explored some of Austen's favourite words which express her ideas about human worth - elegance, openness, fortitude. It's sure to send me back to reread at least one of the novels.

Well, I can never say I have nothing to read & nothing to look forward to!

The Rose Garden - Susanna Kearsley

I love time slip stories & I've enjoyed all of Susanna Kearsley's novels so I was predisposed to enjoy The Rose Garden. And I did! It's a beautifully romantic, engaging story that I read in 100 page gulps. Eva Ward is a PR consultant living in Los Angeles. Her parents are dead & her sister, Katrina, is dying. After Katrina's death, Eva takes her sister's ashes back to the house in Cornwall where they had spent happy summers with family friends. Trelowarth House is home to the Halletts. Uncle George is dead but his second wife, Claire, lives in a cottage in the grounds while her stepchildren, Mark & Susan, live in the big house. Mark runs a rose nursery & Susan has returned from Bristol to help, full of plans for tea rooms & enticements for tourists.

As Eva relaxes into the familiar rhythms of life at Trelowarth, she becomes aware of voices in empty rooms & one day she steps back into the past, back to Trelowarth in the early 18th century. She meets Daniel Butler & his brother, Jack, Daniel's friend & ally, Fergal O'Cleary, & Constable Creed, who will do anything to see the Butlers hang. The Butlers are smugglers but they're also distantly related to the Duke of Ormonde, who is planning a rebellion to put the Pretender, James Stuart, back on the English throne. It's 1715 & the death of Queen Anne has seen the Protestant House of Hanover preferred over the Queen's Catholic half-brother, James. James's supporters, the Jacobites, are plotting to overthrow King George & the Butlers are in the thick of it.

Eva's presence is disconcerting but she's soon accepted by Daniel & the immediate attraction between them grows stronger. Even Fergal, suspicious & anxious, accepts Eva & she masquerades as his mute sister, just over from Ireland, as she learns the ways of an 18th century household. Jack, with his easy ways & loose tongue, isn't allowed into the secret, & Constable Creed, who hates Daniel for personal as well as political reasons is a threatening presence in all their lives. Eva's knowledge of the future is a heavy burden as she researches the Butlers in the present day & becomes more involved in their lives when she slips through the barrier. Time moves differently in the past. Eva spends days with Daniel in the past but when she returns to the present, she's only been absent a split second. As her love for Daniel grows stronger, Eva has to make a decision about where her future lies & find a way to make it happen.

The Rose Garden is full of the magic of Cornwall. There are echoes of Daphne Du Maurier's Cornish novels, Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek & The House on the Strand especially. I loved all the detail about the roses & Susan's plans to make the business a success. I was equally interested in the modern & 18th century stories & that isn't always the case with time slip novels. Although, I must admit, Daniel Butler was such a romantic figure that I wouldn't have minded spending more time in his company. I could fully understand Eva's desire to stay with him & her growing dissatisfaction with the present. The 18th century Trelowarth was as real to me as the 21st century house. The characters were convincingly historical, their speech was different without any thees & thous which can be jarring. I could understand why Daniel & Fergal didn't want Eva to speak to strangers - her speech & manner would have been so strange. There's excitement, adventure, tragedy & romance in The Rose Garden, it's a compelling read.