This is a strange, haunting and completely addictive read. It is set in the late Victorian era, in the Egyptian desert, but it is also science fiction. If Jules Verne had decided to write about British colonialists trying to communicate with Mars, this would be the book. Sanford Thayer has convinced the best minds…
REVIEW: THE GODDESS AND THE THIEF by Essie Fox
Taking cues from The Moonstone, Essie Fox’s newest book weaves colonialist India and Victorian spiritualism together into a riveting story. Our heroine, Alice Willoughby, has had the childhood that many British children must have in those days. She was born abroad in India, the daughter of an East India Company man and his English-born wife. Alice’s…
ACCENT: BELLA WALLIS by Brian Thompson
The eponymous heroine is an unusually free-spirited widow in Victorian London. She assists those of the upper class in solving the mystery behind scandals. This lengthy tome is actually 4 separate novels. It’s dark, slightly underhanded, and good fun. Excerpt: Only two people from the breakfast table braved the weather. One of these was Mrs…
REVIEW: THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED by John Boyne
When Eliza Caine and her father brave the dreadful London weather to listen to the prolific Mr. Dickens read his new story, they could hardly have imagined the consequences. Eliza’s beloved father catches a chill and within hours he is dead. Eliza, alone in the world, and no way to pay the rent of her…
31 Days of Halloween — October 21, 2013
Then come the sudden swirl round of the wind, the blistering gale from the south-west, the dragging anchor, the lee shore, and the last battle in the creaming breakers. The wise mariner stands far out from that evil place. On the land side our surroundings were as sombre as on the sea. It was a…