The Red Horse by James R. Benn

Synopsis

Just days after the Liberation of Paris, US Army Detective Billy Boyle and Lieutenant Kazimierz are brought to Saint Albans Convalescent Hospital in the English countryside. Kaz has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and Billy is dealing with emotional exhaustion and his recent methamphetamine abuse. Meanwhile, Billy’s love, Diana Seaton, has been taken to Ravensbrück, the Nazi concentration camp for women, and Kaz’s sister, Angelika, who he recently learned was alive and working with the Polish Underground, has also been captured and transported to the same camp.

This news is brought by British Major Cosgrove, who asks Billy for help, unofficially, in solving what he thinks was the murder of a

The Lost Girl of Berlin by Ella Carey Book Review

Publication Date: July 12, 2021
Publisher: Bookouture
Series: Daughters of New York #2
Format: ebook & paperback
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The truck stopped for a moment in the freezing, bombed-out street and Kate caught sight of a little girl in a ragged dress on the steps of a once-beautiful mansion. The child’s eyes were startling blue, a pair of endless pools, drawing Kate towards her…

1946, Berlin. War correspondent Kate Mancini is in Germany, reporting on the aftermath of the devastating war. For her readers back home in New York, she tells the stories of innocent families, trying to rebuild the

The English Girl by Sarah Mitchell Book Review

Publication Date: 18 June 2021
Publisher: Bookouture
Format: ebook and paperback
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

He is German. She is English. Their countries are enemies. Can love bring them together? Inspired by an incredible true story, this is a sweeping tale about the power of hope in the face of war and the legacy of an impossible choice.

1946, Norfolk, England: Grief and fear spill over in Fran’s small village when German prisoners of war are sent to the nearby camp. After the death of her beloved brother on the front lines, Fran cannot see the new arrivals as anything but his killers.

The Custard Corpses by M J Porter Read An Excerpt

Publication Date: March 25th 2021
Publisher: M J Publishing
Page Length: TBC
Genre: Historical Mystery

Synopsis

A delicious 1940s mystery.

Birmingham, England, 1943.

While the whine of the air raid sirens might no longer be rousing him from bed every night, a two-decade-old unsolved murder case will ensure that Chief Inspector Mason of Erdington Police Station is about to suffer more sleepless nights.

A Painter in Penang by Clare Flynn Read an Excerpt

Publication Date: 6th October 2020
Publisher: Cranbrook Press
Page Length: 362 Pages
Series: Penang Series, Book 3
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Barrington hates everything about living in Kenya and longs to return to the island of Penang in British colonial Malaya where she was born. Expulsion from her Nairobi convent school offers a welcome escape – the chance to stay with her parents’ friends, Mary and Reggie Hyde-Underwood on their Penang rubber estate. But this is 1948 and communist insurgents are embarking on a

Secret Shores by Ella Carey Book Review - Blog Tour

Publication Date: December 10th, 2020
Publisher: Bookouture
Format: ebook
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

From bestselling author Ella Carey comes an utterly gripping and sweeping historical novel about terrible choices and heartbreaking family mysteries. The past holds more secrets than we can ever imagine…

1946. Young, beautiful artist Rebecca survived the devastating war that claimed the lives of so many of the men and women she grew up with. Her friends have returned as empty shells or not at all. But although peace has been declared, Rebecca is still fighting at home.

BOOK REVIEW: Reasons to Kill God by I.V Olokita.

Synopsis

“If you are able to write 180 pages of your memoir without putting the pen down, I might let you live…”

Klaus Holland loves no one other than himself. He victimizes people for being Jews or for just being alive.

He is an old Nazi criminal who escaped to Brazil and was caught and prosecuted. He is now forced to write his memoirs as part of his punishment – the same punishment he used to give Jews at the concentration camp. This punishment makes him remember and re-live his cruelty as the concentration camp commander

Book Review: The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse by Alexander McCall Smith

To start off my 2018 reading year, I chose this novel based on its World War II setting and its quirky title.

Alexander McCall Smith is a prolific writer of adult and children's fiction, and non-fiction. He is the author of a number of mystery series, his most successful being The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. He has also written several standalone novels, of which The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse is his latest.

Synopsis - From the Back Cover

World War II. England is under threat, and everybody has a part to play, no matter how small. Val works on a farm as a Land Girl, supplying produce to the local air

Book Review: Homeland by Clare Francis

1946. Billy Greer, recently demobbed, reluctantly returns to Crick Farm on the Somerset Levels after an absence of seven years. He finds the farm neglected, his uncle aged and his aunt bed-ridden from a stroke. Despite his eagerness to take up a job offer in London, he decides to restore the farm to order. However, he soon realises that his uncle will be unable to cope when he leaves and on the recommendation of the village doctor, he hires a Pole from the Middlezoy refugee camp to help work the withy farm.

Wladyslaw Malinowski, a veteran of the Battle of Monte Cassino, was a student of history and literature before abandoning his studies to join the Polish army. Now a member of the Polish Resettlement Corps, he is one of many Poles faced with the decision of whether to return to his homeland or remain in England once he has served the mandatory two years. His sister writes from Poland that there is nothing to fear in returning, but Wladyslaw is not so sure that a Poland under Russian rule is the place for him and there are rumours of imprisonment or death for those who do return.

Befriended by the village doctor and Stella, the local school teacher, Wladyslaw is determined to improve his English as the first step to being assimilated into the country he is planning to make his new home. When offered the job at Crick Farm he eagerly accepts. At first, due to the language barrier and Billy's taciturn nature, he finds living on the farm and the work challenging, but eventually he adjusts to both.

My overall impression of Homeland is one of bleakness. Not because it is set during one of the harshest winters that England ever experienced, but images evoked of the landscape and the people are, like the cover of the book, grey and sombre. The flooded Somerset Levels are cold and wet. The unharvested withies are rotting. The people are dispirited and growing resentful as they continue to deal with housing, job, fuel and food shortages, exacerbated by returning servicemen.

The Poles in the refugee camp also have problems. They are mistrusted by the locals, who do not understand their ways or their reluctance to return to Poland now that the war is over. When a local war hero, a veteran of the Burma campaign, is found dead, suspicion falls on a Pole from the camp with tragic consequences.

The historical content and the unusual setting drew me to this novel. The formation of the Polish Resettlement Corps and the plight of Polish refugees in post war Britain is not often the subject of novels. Nor is the growing of withies on the Somerset Levels, but the two combine to make this a very memorable read.