Hi all!!
It’s the start of a rainy week! I’m not sure how I feel about that! I am lucky at the moment because I’m on maternity and until next weeks half term, I also still have my mornings free to write and do as I please so this morning, pre-dentist and odd jobs I downloaded my book of the week:
I cannot wait to get into it and it’s that time of year when the cold outside and the early dark makes you want to snuggle under a blanket and sink into a really good read. That said, I reflected over what I read last autumn and have compiled a list of books that are perfect for this time of year and are guaranteed to make you feel hearty, soulful and satisfied! Now, when I think of books to suit this season, I am thinking along the lines of historical fiction / period romance and chilling old-fashioned ghost stories set in abandoned manor houses in the middle of a haunting wintry town somewhere scenically whimsical. If you’re feeling that, read along and hopefully one of the books featured could be your next love affair next to the fire with a few pots of tea (and choccies)!
P.S I’ll keep you posted about the outcome of my new read!
1) ‘The glass of time’ by Michael Cox
Building on his haunting, superbly written debut, The Meaning of Night, Michael Cox returns to a story of murder, love, and revenge in Victorian England.
In the autumn of 1876, nineteen-year-old orphan Esperanza Gorst arrives at the great country house of Evenwood in Northamptonshire. There she will serve as the new lady’s maid to the former Emily Carteret, now Lady Tansor. But Esperanza is no ordinary servant. She has been sent by her guardian, the mysterious Madame de l’Orme, to uncover the secrets that her new mistress has sought to conceal – and to set right a past injustice in which her own life is intertwined.
Unable to escape the reverberations of past misdeeds, Lady Tansor finds herself desperate to keep Esperanza from learning dark, dangerous truths.
As well as a page-turning period mystery, The Glass of Time is a beautifully written and vividly imagined study of seduction, betrayal, and friendship between two powerful women bound together by the past.
Yes! A total page turner! Just brilliant, hence it features on top! Awesome book!
2) ‘The snow child’ By Eowyn Ivey
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he struggling to maintain the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone–but they glimpse a young girl running through the trees.
This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel come to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they begin to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent territory things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform them all.
Completely magical! Will make you want to move to Alaska to homestead so perfect for this time of year. A really dreamy, innocent read!
3) ‘The night circus’ By Erin Mortgenstern
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazement’s. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.
Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.
Captivating from the start and really lovable! You won’t be able to put it down!
4) ‘Rebecca’ by Daphne Du Maurier
What became a ‘Hitchcock Classic’ and rightly so.
Working as a lady’s companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamourous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers…
Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print,Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity. Brilliant read! Perfect for a lit fire evening!
5) ‘The distant hours’ By Kate Morton
A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WW II. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.
Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.
Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.
She’s so good at telling these kinds of stories so you’ll be gripped from the very beginning! A real page turner! Get your tea ready and your blanket on!
6) ‘Anna Karenina’ By Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
In their world frivolous liaisons are commonplace, but Anna and Vronsky’s consuming passion makes them a target for scorn and leads to Anna’s increasing isolation. The heartbreaking trajectory of their relationship contrasts sharply with the colorful swirl of friends and family members who surround them, especially the newlyweds Kitty and Levin, who forge a touching bond as they struggle to make a life together.Anna Karenina is a masterpiece not only because of the unforgettable woman at its core and the stark drama of her fate, but also because it explores and illuminates the deepest questions about how to live a fulfilled life.
This perhaps will take a while longer than a few cozy evenings but, it is an absolute classic that if you haven’t read, you simply must! An incredible love story and tragedy perfect for a snowy evening where the costumes and cavorting are made heavy by the struggle from power and oppression in Russia’s elite. The consequences of which for Anna are devastating and will leave you feeling angered and saddened until the next time you pick it up again, and you will!
7) ‘Archangel’ By Robert Harris
Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the bestsellers Fatherland and Enigma.
Archangel tells the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives.
One night, Kelso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguard of the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. The old man claims to have been at Stalin’s dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator’s private papers, among them a notebook.
Kelso decides to use his last morning in Moscow to check out the old man’s story. But what starts as an idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a murderous chase across nighttime Moscow and up to northern Russia–to the vast forests near the White Sea port of Archangel, where the final secret of Josef Stalin has been hidden for almost half a century.
Archangel combines the imaginative sweep and dark suspense of Fatherland with the meticulous historical detail of Enigma. The result is Robert Harris’s most compelling novel yet.
READ IT PLEASE!!! JUST BRILLIANT!
So, I hope there’s something there for you to indulge in! Please keep me posted on your thoughts and feedback on any of these books and any recommendations you wish to share, you can find me on twitter @ https://twitter.com/KatalinaAsher. Until the next time!
Loads of love x
Fortis Health 