I have been fascinated by historical fiction since childhood, when I used to read historical stories for children by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliffe and Henry Treece, moving on to Dickens and Austen in my early teens. Many of the great books about girls growing up were written in the Victorian and Edwardian periods by e.g. Louisa M Alcott, L M Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I devoured all these since they seemed to take me into a different world. I am a fiction writer rather than a historian since it is the great stories offered by history that spark my passion!
A gripping portrayal of the "house for fallen women" funded by Angela Burdett-Coutts and managed by Charles Dickens in Victorian London.
Urania cottage offers refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute who end up there for various reasons and respond to it in different ways.
I loved the way Halls skilfully depicts women from different classes. Josephine is a working-class woman who comes straight from prison, whereas Angela Burdett-Coutts is the richest woman in London, but her wealth cages her in a different way. I found this novel beautifully observed, unsentimental, and absorbing.
'Absorbing' Sunday Times 'Acutely observed and beautifully written' Daily Mail 'A writer of great originality' Kate Mosse 'Compelling' Good Housekeeping
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, SET AGAINST CHARLES DICKENS' HOME FOR FALLEN WOMEN
The house she was promised, is the first clean page in a new book for girls like her . . .
1847, Shepherds Bush. Charles Dickens' home for fallen women is about to open its doors. Part refuge, part reformatory, the house and its location are top secret. Among it first inmates are Martha, arrived from a shelter for prostitutes, and Josephine, a convicted thief. But faced…
A literary mystery featuring Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, in a real case in which he proved an accused man innocent.
The trial was in 1903, but the novel exposes the legacy of Victorian colonialism with supreme skill. It unfolds against a society divided by racial and class prejudice. George Edalji, born to a Parsee father and an Irish mother, was imprisoned for the brutal mutilations of farm animals that took place in Wyrley.
I loved the portrayal of the two protagonists. Arthur is convinced of George’s innocence and dedicates himself to his cause. George is particularly moving, maintaining his integrity and dignity throughout. The investigation explores the lives of these two very different men while ultimately celebrating their courage and generosity.
Now a major TV series starring Martin Clunes, Arsher Ali and Art Malik
From the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011, an extraordinary true-life tale about a long-forgotten mystery...
Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as The Great…
Artist Nilda Ricci could use a stroke of luck. She seems to get it when she inherits a shadowy Victorian, built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind—supposedly, in beneficial ways. At first, Nilda’s new home delivers, with the help of its longtime housekeeper. And Nilda…
From the brilliant first line to the ambiguous ending, this novel kept me gripped throughout its 800 + pages.
It plumbs the secret depths of Victorian Society, uncovering pornography, mental illness, prostitution, the evils of marriage and inheritance in gloriously rich prose.
It explores the lives of two very different women, Agnes and Sugar who are both dependent on Wiliam Rachkam, reluctant heir to a perfume business. Agnes represents the Victorian ideal of naive femininity, whereas Sugar is a prostitute who is writing an erotic revenge novel in which all clients are gruesomely murdered.
This novel has a surreal and baroque quality, which I loved.
'Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them . . .'
So begins this irresistible voyage into the dark side of Victorian London. Amongst an unforgettable cast of low-lifes, physicians, businessmen and prostitutes, meet our heroine Sugar, a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can. Be prepared for a mesmerising tale of passion, intrigue, ambition and revenge.
Another novel with a great opening line, "Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead," The Master is a subtle and complex portrayal of the Victorian writer Henry James.
It begins at a moment in his career when, although lauded as a novelist, he has failed as a dramatist. He retreats from public life, buying a house in Rye, Sussex, where he lives alone, haunted by people from his past and preoccupied with the details of the Oscar Wilde case.
I loved the exploration of creativity and the consequences of dedicating yourself to the creative life, especially in terms of the uncomfortable relationship between artistic integrity and public response. This is a virtuoso depiction of social and psychological repression, the pain of unacknowledged sexuality, and the cost of art.
Nineteenth-century writer Henry James is heartbroken when his first play performs poorly in contrast to Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" and struggles with subsequent doubts about his sexual identity.
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
This is one novel that I can truly say kept me up all night until I’d finished all 548 pages, despite a headache and sore eyes!
A thrilling tale of deception, betrayal, and ingenuity by one of my all-time favourite writers, Fingersmith tells the story of two women from very different social classes. One is a young thief, the other from an aristocratic family, a secretary to her corrupt uncle.
In the course of the novel, their intertwined history is exposed, along with the conspiracy to steal Maud’s fortune. There are vivid, Dickensian scenes of Victorian London and Gothic elements to the romance, but I especially admire the multiple, breathtaking plot twists. I wish I’d written it!
“Oliver Twist with a twist…Waters spins an absorbing tale that withholds as much as it discloses. A pulsating story.”—The New York Times Book Review
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty thieves—fingersmiths—for whom this house in the heart of a mean London slum is home.
One day, the most beloved thief of all arrives—Gentleman, an elegant con man,…
Based on the correspondence between Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens, Elizabeth and Ruth tells the story of Elizabeth’s meetings with a young prostitute in Manchester’s New Bailey prison. Her attempts to save the girl from returning to the streets result in a dramatic intervention.
Elizabeth’s second novel, Ruth, which drew on this encounter, was considered so controversial that it was banned and burned. Elizabeth and Ruth tells a story of suppression, hypocrisy, and defiance, set against the criminal underworld of the first great industrial city.
A dual-time mystery with a dusting of magic and a sprinkle of romance from the author of The Keepsake.
Sussex, 1821: Philadelphia Boadle wakes to find her husband, the tailor Jasper Boadle, dead. As the daughter of the local cunning woman, Philadelphia is soon accused of murder by witchcraft.…
Winter Journeys is a story of music, memory, and imagination.
At summer’s end, Ilona Miller loses her job. Instead of adjusting her attitude and sending out resumes, she retreats into grief and paranoid imaginings by day and wanders the streets at night. A long-dormant alter ego awakes and prompts a…
