March 19, 2026 · 2:25 pm

Bellman & Black – Diane Setterfield

Bellman & Black – Diane Setterfield

I loved Once Upon a River, and so when I saw this one at the local second hand book shop, I couldn’t resist. That book shop closed a few years ago – it just took me a while to get to this.

Here’s the blurb …

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 be a man blessed by fortune. 
Until tragedy strikes, and the stranger in black comes, and William Bellman starts to wonder if all his happiness is about to be eclipsed. Desperate to save the one precious thing he has left, he enters into a bargain. A rather strange bargain, with an even stranger partner, to found a decidedly macabre business. 
And Bellman & Black is born.

I love historical fiction and this had a bit of magical realism thrown in as well. Set in Victorian times during the Industrial Revolution, I enjoyed all the mill references – improving the mill, improving the dying techniques, feeding the workers to keep them loyal, etc. And then the Bellman & Black emporium – an emporium for mourning – everything you could possibly need or want, coffin?, stationery? a mute to follow the coffin? All possible.

There is also chapters about rooks – different collective nouns, behaviours, two mythical rooks called Thought and Memory (‘They know everything and they do not forget’). I enjoyed the part about the rooks playing on the thermal air currents.

What does it mean to be alive? Who will tell our story when we are gone? What does it mean to be successful? All big questions tackled by this novel.

One of my favourite quotes

Dora will be sad and happy and ill and well. She will live the best she can for as long as she can and when she can do that no longer, she will die.

Sounds like a good formula.

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March 11, 2026 · 11:39 am

In the Margins – Gail Holmes

In the Margins – Gail Holmes

I bought this solely for the cover!

Here’s the blurb …

England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector’s wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances’ love of books and secretly practised Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn’t report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.

 As Frances takes increasingly bold steps to help the women and children of the parish, she attracts the ire of a patron of the church who questions why Frances collects books that she charges are entertainment. When her mother is gaoled for religious crimes, the secrets Frances hides from her husband begin to surface, and she is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the strict dictates of the new laws, or risk everything to free the women she cares for. 

I like historical fiction and this is the first thing I read set around the time of the English civil war. I was intrigued by the recusancy laws, how quickly a woman could be accused of being a witch, and the restriction on women’s lives.

This novel is well-researched, but wears the research lightly. Society, living conditions etc are just revealed naturally as the story progresses. Being a book lover myself, the sections about Frances’ books and visiting the book seller were lovely (and some of her collection is still around today!). The relationships with her mother and her two boys are very touching.

A review

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March 9, 2026 · 11:53 am

Bad Actors – Mick Herron

Bad Actors – Mick Herron

As you know, I like a Mick Herron spy novel. As I was reading this one, I couldn’t understand why River wasn’t in it – and then I released I have skipped Slough House, but I finished this one anyone.

Here’s the blurb …

In London’s MI5 headquarters a scandal is brewing that could disgrace the entire intelligence community. The Downing Street superforecaster–a specialist who advises the Prime Minister’s office on how policy is likely to be received by the electorate–has disappeared without a trace. Claude Whelan, who was once head of MI5, has been tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads him straight back to Regent’s Park itself, with First Desk Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Taverner overplayed her hand at last? Meanwhile, her Russian counterpart, Moscow intelligence’s First Desk, has cheekily showed up in London and shaken off his escort. Are the two unfortunate events connected?

I love the writing, particularly the descriptions, there is a sly wit to it all. The scenarios are terrifying do the intelligence services really spend all of their time manipulating each other? There is mayhem and violence (Shirley Dander is on the loose), Lady Di is fighting for her spy life, and Lamb, disgusting as ever, seems to be the only one who knows what is going on.

A review.

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March 3, 2026 · 3:13 pm

Trials of Hope – Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

Trials of Hope – Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

This book won the Hungerford award in 2024.

Here’s the blurb …

In this profound, groundbreaking narrative, Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes weaves together stories of heritage and heartache. His unique memoir celebrates the beauty of Ethiopian culture while mourning its erosion – first under colonial forces, and later through internal conflict. Framing his work via the Ethiopian belief in the four elemental stages of human experience – water, fire, soil and wind – this is an essential exploration of the human condition, connecting readers to a nation of people whose sagacity and spirit have endured through generations.

This is beautifully written (and the poems in Amharic are visually beautiful as well). The sections of memoir are interspersed with poetry. This made me think about colonisation in a different way. Not so much a violent overthrow, but a more insidious erasure of culture – because, of course, everyone wants to be ‘modern’. Also, I didn’t know anything about Ethiopia, so I enjoyed learning about that as well (all I knew was the terrible famine in 1984). It is also about the immigrant experience, being caught between two worlds, and how would you feel when your new home expects you to be grateful?

An interview.

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· 7:52 am

The Sign of Four – Arthur Conan Doyle

The Sign of Four – Arthur Conan Doyle

I have continued my Sherlock Holmes adventure with number two. Also read by Stephen Fry.

Here’s the blurb …

Sherlock Holmes is bored and case-less, and relieving his boredom by alternating morphine and cocaine. Enter the charming Miss Mary Morstan, with whom Watson is instantly smitten. She requests the assistance of Holmes and Watson to solve the mysterious disappearance of her father, and the subsequent invitation to ‘have justice’ by an anonymous letter writer.

Holmes and Watson happily accompany her to see the anonymous letter writer; only to become deeply embroiled in a mystery concerning treasure, murders, India, escaped convicts and small savages with poisoned blowpipes. 

I enjoyed this – the interesting locations; India, and the Andaman Islands, there is treasure, a man with a wooden leg, an Indian uprising, and a murder in a locked room.

It had the same structure as number one – first half solving the crime and the second half from the criminal’s perspective. Is this the standard Sherlock Holmes’ structure?

Dr Watson meets Mary! What happens now? How can he continue to live with Sherlock?

I am having a bit of a pause while I listen to Bad Actors by Mick Herron (I always like a Slough House novel).

Wikipedia The Sign of the Four

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March 2, 2026 · 11:41 am

Flesh – David Szalay

Flesh – David Szalay

This is my latest book club book. I had it in my digital pile, having bought it thinking I would read all of the Booker prize shortlist for 2025 (I am still going). This won.

Here’s the blurb …

A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. 

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. 

As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it. 

This has a pared back, direct writing style. It is also like a group of short stories connected together with István being the connection. Each chapter has him in a new place or a new phase of his life, and we don’t know how he got there. In the bits we read he seems very passive, but he joins the army, moves to England, moves back to Hungary so he has some agency. This is a biography told through relationships; the older neighbour, his mother, Helen, Thomas, and his son. He seems attracted to women who have power over him (Helen and the neighbour). Despite not being a sympathetic character, I did feel for him in the end.

Service 95 – David Szalay Interview

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February 27, 2026 · 9:09 am

A Study in Scarlet (#1 Sherlock Holmes)- Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle

I read the Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, which is a Sherlock Holmes’ novel written by Horowitz with approval from the estate, and I enjoyed it so I thought I would tackle the real thing. I remember a friend telling me to read them years ago – sorry Jacq I am finally onto it!

This is the first in the series, here is the blurb …

Dr. John Watson, discharged from military service after suffering severe wounds, is at a loose end until a chance encounter leads him to take rooms with a remarkable young man. The arrogant, irascible Sherlock Holmes is a master chemist, a talented musician and an expert on all aspects of crime. And when Watson is drawn into the investigation of a bizarre murder in which Holmes is involved, he is unaware that it is the beginning of the most famous partnership in the history of criminal detection. 

First, Stephen Fry is a fabulous narrator.

In this first novel we get most of the characteristics that Sherlock is known for – amazing detection skills, cocaine taker, musician, weird experiments (he was beating a corpse to see if bruises can happen after death) etc. This novel is written in two parts (and possibly they all are?). In the first part, we get to the point where we know the murderer and then in the second part we get his back story – in this case set amongst the mormans in Utah!

I love how they are written – a bit Dickensian, with gentlemen, street urchins, and young ladies who require protection.

Here’s the wikipedia entry.

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February 24, 2026 · 8:46 pm

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands – Sarah Brooks

The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands – Sarah Brooks

A friend recommended this novel and I noticed that Miss P had a copy (I believe I bought it for her 🙂 )

Here’s the blurb …

It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.

It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.

Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands.

On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters: a grieving woman with a borrowed name, a famous child born on the train and a disgraced naturalist, all heading for the Great Exhibition in Moscow.

But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn’t safe. As secrets and stories begin to unravel the passengers and crew must survive their journey through the Wastelands together, even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .

I would describe this as historical fantasy – is that a thing? It is set in Europe/Asia on a train voyaging between Beijing and Moscow during the 1800s. The train travels through the ‘wastelands’. On a previous crossing something terrible happened – no one on that voyage can remember what happened. On this crossing everyone is nervous, the wasteland is evolving, but how and into what?

The world building is fabulous, the characters well described. The plot, like many a fantasy novel, could have been a bit tighter (a bit of editing?), but I suspect I am in the minority on that.

A review.

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February 23, 2026 · 3:08 pm

The Kingdome of the Blind (Gamache #14)- Louise Penny

The Kingdom of the Blind – Louise Penny

I really like Gamache novels – I think there is 21 at the moment, and I don’t want them to end.

Here’s the blurb …

Lured to a remote farmhouse in rural Québec, Armand Gamache finds himself the beneficiary of an unknown woman’s will. When a body is discovered, he must confront events that led to his suspension from the police force, and the dark secrets in his past.

This was great – beautiful writing, scenery, a bit of history and lovely characters. It also seems to mark a bit of an ending (I don’t want to give away spoilers, but maybe Gamache will have a different team next time?).

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February 12, 2026 · 1:46 pm

Time of the Child – Niall Williams

Time of the Child – Niall Williams

One of the lovely women in my stitching group lent this to me.

Here’s the blurb …

Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from his community. A visit from the doctor is always a sign of bad things to come.

 His youngest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father’s shadow, and remains there, having missed her chance at real love – and passed up an offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

 But in the advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy’s lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter’s lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

This is beautifully written – is Niall Williams a poet? I could feel the damp and the humidity, not to mention the small town lack of anonymity. The baby doesn’t arrive until about halfway through the novel. Prior to that we are observing the daily lives of these ordinary people, which is made extraordinary simply by the observation. The doctor goes a bit mad when he tries to concoct a plan to keep the baby – this is Ireland in 1962, no one is going to let an unmarried woman keep the baby. However, after getting the curate drunk, sending money for a ticket to a young man in New York, crashing the car, willing an old lady to die, and Ronnie running away only to return – they concoct a good plan. This all sounds very dramatic, but it is a quiet, introspective novel with a real sense of place and character.

A review

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