In On Her Way Home, six years have passed since Frieda first moved to the Arizona-Sonora border. Now the mother of three, Frieda finds herself confronted by a new nightmare. Fourteen-year-old Ida Levie, Frieda’s darling youngest sister, has disappeared along with murderer Jed Pearson. Her relationship with Benny already strained, Frieda leaves her family and follows Ida’s trail, first to the Mexican border, then to Prescott, where Ida will stand trial for collaboration with her kidnapper. Frontier justice has little mercy for the defenseless, but frontier justice has never encountered the iron will of Frieda Goldson.

Best known for her social history Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West, Harriet Rochlin has incorporated her meticulous research into this wonderful series of novels. Torn between family and freedom, tradition and individualism, Frieda Levie Goldson draws us into her tumultuous world. The lively characters that inhabit Frieda’s world keep us guessing as to what trouble they will tumble into next. Painted against the backdrop of old San Francisco and sun-bleached Dos Cacahuates with such precise detail, a reader could easily feel caught up in the history that built the American West.

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Rochlin’s Desert Dwellers Trilogy begins with The Reformer’s Apprentice. Seventeen-year-old Frieda Levie has lived a charmed life north of Market Street. She dreams of attending Girl’s High and enthusiastically supports the Sisters of Service, a woman’s rightist group lead by the indomitable Miss O’Hara. All her dreams, however, crash along with the Bank of California in 1875. Forced to move with her family south of Market Street, Frieda now slaves eighteen hours a day to support her family’s kosher boarding house, while outwitting the less then desirable residents. She finds joy only in the occasional meetings with the Sisters of Service and the solace offered by Miss O’Hara. Like Cinderella before her, Frieda does find love unexpectedly in the form of Benny Goldson, a free-wheeling, red-haired pioneer from the Arizona Territory (and Jewish to boot!). Together they dream of making the world a better place.

Best known for her social history Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West, Harriet Rochlin has incorporated her meticulous research into this wonderful series of novels. Torn between family and freedom, tradition and individualism, Frieda Levie Goldson draws us into her tumultuous world. The lively characters that inhabit Frieda’s world keep us guessing as to what trouble they will tumble into next. Painted against the backdrop of old San Francisco and sun-bleached Dos Cacahuates with such precise detail, a reader could easily feel caught up in the history that built the American West.

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Wilson’s utterly remarkable trilogy set in Bronze Age Britain opens with spirited young Tamras being sent to the household of Lady Merin to learn comportment, the ways of court – and the arts of physical combat. In Wilson’s imagining, Tamras’ society is a prehistoric matriarchy in which women wield a great deal of power and trained for war right alongside the men, and the trilogy follows Tamras as she first encounters this wider society – including a foreign warrior named Maara, with whom Tamras strikes up a passionate friendship. Moving smoothly through the course of her three novels, Wilson lets us follow Tamras from impulsive childhood to confident young womanhood, and she so expertly fleshes out the world and the people around her main characters that the effect is immersive.

The strong, supple prose on display in all three novels, the intelligence of the plotting, and the skillfully-varied pacing make this a standout trilogy – highly recommended.

Book I – The Warrior’s Path (ISBN 9780981563619),

Book II – A Journey of the Heart (ISBN 9780981563626),

Book III – A Hero’s Tale (ISBN 9780981563633)

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This is an adventure story and a love story set on Crete during WW2. New Zealand soldier Dudley Watkins, known as “Kiwi”, escaped from Crete after the German invasion in 1941, but made a promise to return to Eleni, a girl he hardly knew and believes now to be dead.

Two years later Kiwi gets the chance to fulfil his promise and gain revenge, returning to Crete to aid the resistance against the Germans. Propelled into a position of leadership, he finds himself surrounded by conflict, against the occupying Germans, with his own British command in Egypt and between the rival Cretan resistance factions. At the same time Kiwi must face his own inner conflict, as he discovers that Eleni is still alive, but unattainable, married to another man. A man that Kiwi must now work with in order to unite the resistance factions and overcome the Germans.

I enjoyed this book, the action rolls along at a reasonable pace with a couple of plot twists towards the end. The combat scenes are mostly well handled, if a little confused at times. My only minor gripe is that some sections of the novel do seem more like a film script, with long passages of dialogue and little descriptive writing.

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On page 207 of Pearl Lagoon, the narrator laments: “I still question my decision that night [but] I then find myself backing up that key event further and further [and] it seemed I could have kept backing up that point of departure indefinitely.” This gives the impression that the storytelling in this novel is akin to knocking down a row of dominoes, one event leading to another. Instead, the game is more like 52-pick-up.

So many explanations of the struggle for independence in 1920′s Nicaragua are contained within flashbacks and reminiscences and outright digressions, one within another, sometimes two, that it takes over half the book before a storyline emerges. When it does, it is given in a scene told from a different point of view altogether before the narrator, Cordell Fletcher, resumes his first-person account. As a consular officer, he is one of two American officials sent upcountry to investigate two murders. He finds that their presence not only accelerates local passions, political and otherwise, but leads to further deaths. How much blame should they as Americans, and himself as a passive observer, assume for the events? The reader decides.

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To escape a life of poverty and degradation, 23-year-old Nellie Chase volunteers as a nurse with the 100^th Pennsylvania Roundhead Regiment during the American Civil War. Although has no formal nursing experience, Nellie’s character and skills quickly convince Colonel Daniel Leasure to promote her to the position of regiment matron in charge of assisting the doctors and overseeing the other female volunteers. Nellie faithfully serves with the Roundheads until gossip, supposition, and illness force her to leave her post. Not easily dissuaded, Nellie volunteers as a nurse for the New York Highlanders, and, through a subsequent series of jobs, eventually becomes head matron of a 600-bed Tennessee hospital.

Based on the actual life of Nellie M. Chase and written by a retired Rhodes College history professor, Beyond All Price is as thoroughly well-researched as the gaps in the formal records of Chase’s life will permit. The book reads more like an interesting documentary than a fast-paced novel; however, readers interested in women’s roles during the Civil War will enjoy it.

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The long and incredibly varied life of Pliny the Elder forms the subject of Parejko’s fantastic book, taking readers on a first-person narration of the great man’s life and times. That life was more eventful than most: cavalry officer in Germany and Judea, imperial administrator in Syria, Spain, and North Africa, author of the mammoth Natural History, friend to the emperor Vespasian, and, perhaps most famously of all, the admiral who sailed his fleet toward Naples when Vesuvius was erupting in AD 79, dying there during his attempt to rescue stranded survivors.

In telling this life story, Parejko is able to dramatize one of the most fascinating periods in ancient Roman history, through the filter of one of the most remarkable men of antiquity. The dialogue flows easily, the research is extremely thorough but smoothly incorporated, and the atmosphere is well-evoked; it adds up to a book that’s very strongly recommended.

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Powerfully written, Death Speaker tells the story of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul as seen through the eyes of the Celts. In this tale, the Romans appear in the distant shadows, remote and terrifying. With laborious detail, Kall recreates the climate of impending disaster and gives voice to the trampled tribes. There is an air of unexpected and tenuous mystery that adds flavor to this novel about the violent and turbulent times during the spread of Rome into the European continent.

Emyn, a Celtic peasant, travels the land spreading warnings about the coming Romans, but what sets her apart is her ability to listen to the dead – the spirits of kings from long ago. This has earned her the name Gutumaros  – Death Speaker. These ghosts compel Emyn to give their messages at dangerous moments to some of the land’s most powerful people. Kall’s writing is quite impressive, showing considerable craft and comfort with her material.

A smaller cast of characters would have prevented some flipping back and forth to keep the names straight, but otherwise the book is well-structured. Great reading, suitable for public libraries and most young audiences.

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In the 1660s, when illegitimate orphan Adele Dupuy leaves for New France aboard a ship of similarly-disadvantaged young women, she is known as une fille a marier, meaning a marriageable girl intended to increase the colony’s population. Two years later, when she seeks refuge in Quebec City after having escaped her brutish husband, she discovers the term for those of her kind, who now arrive regularly from overseas, has been changed to filles du roi (daughters of the king). Even then, politicians knew the value of a catchy slogan for a campaign.

Author Illing has done a profound job of research into this rarely-written historical episode, and Adele: Wilderness Bride can serve as a valuable resource for anyone interested in this period. But as fiction? Although the characters are realistic enough, they are not presented in scenes. I sorely missed having a sense of place for each conversation, nor am I a fan of removing commas from long compound sentences and of dispensing with indentations in dialogue. For the most part, though, Adele was a compelling read but at arm’s length only.

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I enjoy pirate-based  stories so much I even write my own series, so I am somewhat hesitant to meet characters created by other authors – but Douglas Boren’s pirate was a pleasure to meet. If it can be a pleasure to meet a pirate.

Maggie Alexander is a servant to Lord Myron Victor of Cheswyck. She is brutally raped by his business partner, Don Carlos Ramirez of Cordoba. Because the resulting pregnancy may cause a scandal she is dismissed from service. Returning to her impoverished parents she gives birth to a son, Rafe.

With the passing of time, things work out well; she meets Captain Sam Newell and is about to marry him when she is murdered in the street. Young Rafe kills the murderers but fearing arrest he flees London aboard Newell’s ship.

Newell himself eventually turns pirate – and now the adventure really begins. Rafe is to meet many and varied characters as he grows from boy to man; pretty women, good friends and dastardly scoundrels. His aim is to avenge his mother’s rape and kill Ramirez, but there are others in this High Sea adventure with the same desire, notably the woman who calls herself Black Widow,  she too suffered from the Spaniard’s brutality.

I found  several historical errors: there was not a  police force in London in the early 1700’s (The Bow Street Runners were  established  1749) Larboard was the correct term,  not port back then, and correctly,  musket-men not riflemen. Rafe carries a ‘brace of three pistols’ – a brace is actually a pair. Another edit would pick up the occasional punctuation error, and in places an author’s voice and tell not show writing style comes to the fore along with a few clichés. I would also have preferred new chapters instead of  line breaks, when the scenes changed.

These issues aside, the characters are believable, the baddies are real baddies and the goodies are interesting people. With some historical facts added, the hanging of Jack Rackham for instance, plenty of sword fights and battles at sea, nicely balanced by some romantic episodes, the Kindle edition could make an entertaining beach or in-flight read. The story is full of action and adventure, albeit a little violent in places, but then as the author says in his closing note: ‘pirates were the terrorists of their time’.

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Rutherfurd, an author known for his multigenerational epics set in some of the world’s most storied locales, tackles the City of Light in his newest novel. Though the grand scale will be familiar to Rutherfurd’s many fans, the structure of Paris is less linear than his earlier works. Instead of telling the story of Paris from its early Roman days to the modern era, Rutherfurd alternates between the late 19th century—a rich, yet infrequently explored era of Parisian history—and eras both earlier and later. In the eight hundred pages of Paris, readers get to know members of the aristocratic de Cygne family, the merchant class Blanchard family, the working-class Gascon family, and the villainous Le Sourd family. Though the characters come from different social classes, they intermix in surprising ways. One of the many threads interwoven through the book is the ongoing, multigenerational feud between the de Cygnes and the Le Sourds, who hail from vastly different backgrounds but who seem to run into each other in dramatic fashion.

The pacing is expert, as is the research. By telling the story of this magnificent city through the families who call it home, Rutherfurd is able to incorporate fascinating facts about everything from the construction of the Eiffel Tower (it’s more of an engineering marvel than you may think) to the organization of the city’s neighborhoods. In addition to the historical drama, there’s plenty of human drama, as the characters cope with the aftermath of decisions and choices made, in some cases, hundreds of years prior to their birth.

The majority of the book is spent focused on late 19th and early 20^th-century Paris, with only a brief chapter covering the French Revolution—a slight disappointment in an otherwise fantastic book, mainly because I would have loved to see the history of the Revolution through the eyes of the novel’s characters. Still, Rutherfurd’s latest is as grand and engrossing as Paris itself, and it belongs on the must-read list for any reader who enjoys richly detailed historical epics.

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Susan Dawson’s journal is read on her deathbed by a nurse. Susan was a journalist and an abolitionist, her story and the story of those around her, is told here.

There is never a nice way to tell a story about slavery. You can’t pussyfoot around the subject and there’s no point in trying to find a tactful way of describing something that was so horrendous it’s amazing people couldn’t see how vile a trade it was before something happened about it! Again, some passages in Congo are just heart-breaking.  Truly awful images are presented by an incredible way with words.

Congo does tend to jump around a little, between Susan on her deathbed and her journal being read, to the slave traders collecting their latest cargo, to dinner parties where the merchants, captains and other ‘society’ members hobnob to discuss the latest collection and congratulate themselves on a job well done.

Congo is, however, a fantastic book. It doesn’t cover anything new, but for anyone interested in this despicable area of history Congo is a must read. It doesn’t pull any punches and it is extremely informative and well written.  There are also spacing issues and should this be rectified, perhaps the book may be a little smaller.

I can’t for a minute say that I enjoyed it, the subject matter doesn’t make it an enjoyable read, what I can say without hesitation is that it was extremely difficult to put down!

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As this book opens we meet Anna, who begins to reminisce about her mother, Eilidh who died when Anna was only two years old. With the help of surviving family members, Anna is looking for answers to the mystery of Eilidh’s death, and using an old tin containing photographs from a past age, Anna looks back to the 1950’s where Eilidh’s childhood and life are revealed.

We learn that as a child, Anna’s life was rocked by a series of tragic events, each one affecting the tight community of people whose lives weave and mix to make this a remarkable and interesting story. The descriptive text takes us from the highlands of Scotland to the sights, sounds and bright colours of Malaya where a brutal war is taking place in an attempt to bring communism to the land.  Here a community of British and Scottish men and women live a privileged life on the rubber estates. Their peaceful existence is disrupted by murders and tragedies that burden the characters in the story, and it is not just Anna who uncovers hidden secrets.

Where the Golden Oriole Sang takes us on a gentle meander through the rich, believable lives of the characters, and although it doesn’t grab you for a thrill ride it certainly entertains with wonderfully detailed and convincing descriptions of the places occupied by them.

I was captivated by this book, not wanting to put it down, and keen to read on to discover the intrigue and twists in the tale that would follow. Praise goes to Gael Harrison whose style of writing is flawless, descriptively accurate and a genuine pleasure to read.

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England, Whitby, mid seventh century and at the height of crisis for the early Christian church when the celebration of the Easter festival was dividing Celtic English and Roman Catholic Belief. A great Synod was held at Whitby Abbey, Yorkshire, where the important dignitaries gathered to debate and decide upon an agreed formula for the Easter dates. Against this opening setting, A Swarming of Bees leads the reader gently into a “why-dun-it” murder mystery, as the author Theresa Tomlinson describes it.

Fridgyth is the pagan herb-wife employed by Abbess Hild of Whitby to see to the monastery’s medicinal needs. Apart from it making an agreeable change to have a female apothecary and healer, I enjoyed the concept of her also being the ‘head sleuth’ Cadfael style. Through Fridgyth’s eyes, the story revolves around a charming cast of characters, some real, some imagined. When plague hits the community – indeed the country – the natural deaths are added to by a poisoner who is making best use of the devastation. Fridgyth is set the task, by the Abbess, of discovering who the poisoner is, for as a simple herb-wife, she can go anywhere, anytime, almost unnoticed.

The plot is a little ambling in places where it reads more like a country stroll rather than a hurry and turn the pages action-packed adventure, but the fascination of the detail, historical and medical, and the realism of the variety of individual characters makes this a story to sit and relax with, and is a delight to read.

Some readers may find it difficult to remember the characters because of the unfamiliar Anglo-Saxon names; this is always a hurdle for authors who write about periods or places where names are very different from our English comfort zone, but the story is intriguing and entertaining enough to carry anyone through any potential minor confusion.

Well researched, well written, and well read! Recommended.

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Tainted Prize is the second in the Under Admiralty Orders series about Oliver Quintrell, a naval captain serving at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803 (first in the series is Floating Gold about a mission that takes Quintrell down to the islands near the Antarctic). As hostilities against the French loom, Quintrell is without a ship but hoping for a chance to see action. He gets his ship but the Admiralty send him on another clandestine mission, to South America in search of another naval vessel that that has failed to return. What follows is a lively adventure as Quintrell and his crew on the frigate Perpetual search sail towards Peru in search for the missing ship

As a fan of naval fiction set at the time of the Napoleonic wars, I’m always keen to read new series and I enjoyed Tainted Prize. The author writes knowledgeably about what life must have been like in the navy at that time, both for the officers and their men. The horrors of sea battles and naval discipline are not glossed over nor the difficulties of navigating with inaccurate sailing charts as when Captain Quintrell takes his ship through the Magellan Strait.

Ideally, it would be best to read the first book in the series in order to become familiar with the back-stories of the characters, but this is a separate story so can be read as a stand-alone. I hope there’s another adventure and that, if so, we get to know more about his second in command Simon Parry and about Captain Quintrell’s wife (who seems a potentially more interesting character than Susanna, the lover who waits patiently for him to call in at Madeira).

The book is well presented and laid out with an attractive cover.

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