The House with the Golden Door – Elodie Harper

"The painter stands balanced on a wooden platform, his brushstrokes hidden from sight as he brings the goddess to life." (The House with the Golden Door picks up where the first book, The Wolf Den, left off, so usual warning that even mentioning characters who appear in book 2 could be seen as spoilers for …

The Wolf Den – Elodie Harper

"Baths, wine and sex make fate come faster." Set in Pompeii 74CE, in a brothel known as the Wolf Den, this book follows one of the prostitutes, Amara. There are many ways the girls have ended up here, and Amara's background is no less tragic: once a beloved and well-educated daughter of a doctor, the …

The Gates of Athens – Conn Iggulden

"The dust of mountain flowers lay thick on the air, like perfume or boiled varnish." Having enjoyed Conn Iggulden's work before (particularly his fantasy, as CF Iggulden) and as a big fan of stories set around ancient history, I thought this book would tick quite a few boxes for me. Starting with the battle of …

Murder at the Savoy – Jim Eldridge

"The wail of air raid sirens filled the air." Following straight on from the first book in the series, Murder at the Ritz, it was easy to just keep reading on with the second, even though I hadn't been that impressed with the first volume. It wasn't bad at all, just not quite enough to garner huge …

Murder at the Ritz – Jim Eldridge

"The Hon. Edgar Walter Septimus Saxe-Coburg - better know to his colleagues at Scotland Yard as Detective Chief Inspector Coburg - pulled up in his Bentley outside the small terraced house of his sergeant, Ted Lampson, in Purchese Street, Somers Town." As World War II rages across Europe and the skies of London, we're introduced to …

The Tower of Fools – Andrzej Sapkowski

"The end of the world did not occur in the Year of Our Lord 1420, although much had indicated that it would." Oh, this book. Just... why, why did I continue slogging through it, really? Sigh. So. It's 1425 Silesia (which would now be partly in Poland, Czech Republic, Germany) and a war is brewing …

The Angel of the Crows – Katherine Addison

"When I left London in 1878, I intended never to return." I'd never heard the term 'wingfic' until the afterword of this novel, where the author informs us that The Angel of the Crows 'started' life as wingfic of Sherlock Holmes. Started? It's well written, it's pleasurable enough to read, but AotC is absolutely a fan fiction …

The Name of the Rose (season 1)

Back in the late 1980s, a movie adaptation was made of Umberto Eco's historical mystery, The Name of the Rose. Starring Sean Connery and a very young Christian Slater in one of his first roles, I rather loved it and enjoyed the book on the back of it. So when I saw there was a new adaptation …

The Mercies – Kiran Millwood Hargrave

"Last night Maren dreamt a whale beached itself on the rocks outside her house." On Christmas Eve in 1617, almost the entire male population of the tiny fishing village of Vardo, Norway, is lost in a terrible storm. Left behind in grief, the women of the village have to find a new way to survive. …

The Pursuit of William Abbey – Claire North

"The truth-speaker was tall as a stretcher, thin as a rifle." William Abbey is a young doctor working in Africa - a punishment for pursuing the wrong girl, in a very Victorian fashion - when he sees a native boy lynched. Shocked by the sight but unwilling to intervene, William is cursed by the boy's …