Escape to the Bookshelf

‘Spinning Silver’ by Naomi Novik

To save her family from poverty, Miryem takes over her father’s moneylending business. She is colder than he is, has no love for the villagers who have watched her starve, and finds it easier not to take no for an answer. Wanda is coerced into working off her cruel father’s debt, eventually learning that there is freedom in the opportunities that Miryem has presented her with. Things are going well until Miryem starts to make a bit too much money and captures the attention of the gold hungry Lord of the Staryk. It will take all the love of her family, natural and found, as well as a calculatingly intelligent Tsarina, to help Miryem untangle the web that she has unwittingly created.

‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell

A new twist on a familiar character; this book puts the playwright inside the story for a change. It follows Shakespeare as he matures into an adult, falls in love, and gradually becomes the person he is meant to be. Despite this, a large part of the narrative is told through the eyes of his wife, Agnes, and the main plot throughout revolves around the life and death of his young son. On many levels this is a love story; it explores parental and familial love, as well as romantic love. However the emphasis seems to be on the risks associated with love and the grief and heartbreak that can result.

‘The Coven’ by Lizzie Fry

A world filled with witches but ruled by men: what could go wrong? When Chloe Su discovers a latent magical ability, strong enough to make a whole house disappear, it puts her straight onto a kill list and sends her and her father Daniel on the run from the Sentinel, the modern world’s witch hunters. At the same time, Adelita is deciding whether or not she can trust the Sentinel agent gone rogue who has just broken her out of prison and revealed her own hidden power to her. Things are set in motion very quickly until it is fight or die. If they can rally other witches to their cause, then they just might live…

‘The Lost Apothecary’ by Sarah Penner

To be published 02/03/2021…

Living in 18^th century London Nella, like her mother before her, runs an apothecary shop exclusively for women. Like her mother before her, she helps them with women’s ailments and offers a safe space for women from all walks of life. Unlike her mother, Nella also sells poisons. Having been betrayed herself, Nella is the perfect sympathiser to the plights of all the betrayed women of London. She helps them gain revenge, safety, a future. Her only rule? Nella will only kill men. No women are to be harmed as a result of her poison. In this way she ensures that her mother’s legacy of helping women remains untarnished. Until one customer and one mistake and one final death.

‘Ariadne’ by Jennifer Saint

To be Published April 29th 2021…

Ariadne is the daughter of King Minos, the sister of the Minotaur, the accomplice of Theseus, and the wife of Dionysus. Very rarely is she described in any way that is not adjacent to the power of the men who lived their lives alongside her. This book explores the truths of Ariadne as a woman in her own right; as a woman who made her own decisions and faced her own consequences. It also gives a greater voice to the trials of other women in mythology including her mother Pasiphae, her sister Phaedra, and woman behind the monster that was Medusa.

‘Threadneedle’ by Cari Thomas

To be published May 27th 2021…

Anna is a witch. Fortunately she isn’t a very good one, because magic is dangerous and should be feared. At least that’s what Anna’s Aunt says and that’s why she, like all the others in their Binders coven, will be having her magic bound as soon as she turns of age. The one problem? Anna loves magic; its temptations lure her in. So when fellow witch Effie moves to town it doesn’t take much to convince Anna that they should start a coven all of their own. The more Anna plays with the limits of her magic, the more she starts to question everything she has ever known… What really happened to her parents? What is wrong with her magic? And what does her Aunt keep hidden behind the locked door in their house?

‘The Forever Sea’ by Joshua Phillip Johnson

Kindred is a Keeper; she keeps (and builds and controls) the hearthfire which keeps the ship afloat above the Forever Sea, a sea made entirely of grasses and with unknowable and fearsome depths. Having been raised aboard her grandmother’s ship, under her masterful but unyielding tutelage, Kindred is now trying to find her own place in the world. She thinks she has found it on board The Errant. Captain Caraway, Ragged Sarah, Little Wing and the others have become family, her own crew that she has earned her place in. But then she learns that something has happened to her grandmother, something shocking, and the island of Arcadia is not what it was when last they docked. Kindred is drawn into an adventure like nothing she had expected. It has more dangers than even a normal, pirate infested, harvesting voyage on the Forever Sea. And more mysteries too. As her journey progresses it seems that one direction keeps calling her to it: down. Down into the Deep.

‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ by V.E. Schwab

Adeline just wants a life of freedom, a life where she can make her own choices. When decisions start being made for her, and her freedom is one ‘I do’ from disappearing forever, Adeline calls on the wrong kind of god in her desperation. She makes a deal with the darkness: for time, for freedom, for life. And in exchange the darkness, Luc, can have her soul when she is done. But Luc is clever and he gives Addie her freedom in such a twisted way that he is sure she will give in sooner rather than later. He grants her eternal life and her freedom is that she cannot be bound to anyone because everyone forgets her as soon as they turn their backs. He is sure that he will not have to wait long for his soul. But Addie is clever too and three hundred years later they are still dancing the same game. She has time but nothing to do with it; she has freedom but no identity, she has life but no one to spend it with. But that doesn’t mean she will let Luc win.

‘The Second Bell’ by Gabriela Houston

To be published March 9th 2021…

In Heyne Town babies are sometimes born with two hearts. Two hearts mean that the baby is a Striga. The mother faces a choice then. There are three options: to kill her baby, to abandon her baby by the hope tree and hope that others of its kind will find it, or to take her baby and leave the town forever. Miriat is one such mother. She makes the choice. She names her baby Salka and leaves Heyne Town behind to take Salka to the Striga village hidden in the forest. There they receive an uneasy welcome and live an uneasy life; for the Striga’s trust no one, not even themselves. Because if a Striga gives in to the power of their second heart then they become a Stigoi and everyone knows that Stigoi are evil demons who feed off life itself.

‘The Kingdoms’ by Natasha Pulley

To be published May 20th 2021…

Joe Tournier steps off a train in London. His ticket shows that he came from Edinburgh, but he doesn’t remember ever having been there and he doesn’t remember getting on the train or a single minute of the journey itself. Actually he doesn’t remember anything. All he knows is his name, Joe Tournier, and a vague memory that he has a wife called Madeline. According to the doctor his memory loss is a caused by a very common type of epilepsy, although he does seem to have a rather severe case of it. When his wife Alice comes to collect him from the hospital, armed with photos of their wedding day, there doesn’t seem to be much else to do but try to get on with life as much as he can; moving forward into his future even if he’s forgotten is past. Then a postcard arrives, apparently having been waiting at the post office for one hundred years. It shows an eerily familiar lighthouse and is signed ‘m’.