The Smithsonian Libraries / Biodiversity Heritage Library has digitised gorgeous Art Nouveau and Art Deco prints of beetles, butterflies and more by Emile-Allian Seguy. Developers have expanded on an app that lets you block your wife. After the Paris Exposition, London wanted its own tower to attract attention (apparently the Tower of London was not enough). The…
In this highly imaginative adventure, the heroine is no meek governess left to wander the moors. Though she shares some unfortunate circumstances with Jane Eyre — ones she freely acknowledges to the reader — Jane Steele is a fierce, violent and stubborn. And she is a murderer. One assumes had she met a crazed, homicidal…
“O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley It’s time for NaNoWriMo, so my book reviews are likely to be a bit sparse during November. But I send you into the darkening, chill days with…
This is perfect kind of steampunk. It merely blurs the lines ever so slightly between fantasy and reality. Rather than imagining strange new worlds full of variant species or particle space travel, this book is set firmly in 1880s London. It is foggy, sooty and on the cusp of a new century.
Comparisons to Gone Girl are inevitable so let me start there. Yes, this is a suburban suspense, with a (perhaps) unreliable narrator at the heart of it. She views her old home from the commuter train everyday. My head leaning against the carriage window, I watch these houses roll past me like a tracking shot in…