Category: Book reviews

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Fanny Stevenson Barges In: #BeyondtheBook #TheAbsentHeart

When I first encountered Fanny Osbourne, she appeared as a footnote in Louis Stevenson’s story—emotionally fragile, grieving, and overshadowed. But the more I read, the more she demanded centre stage. Like my own heroine Frances Sitwell, Fanny was shaped by loss and resilience, but unlike Frances, she courted controversy and defied convention with unapologetic strength. Camille Peri’s A Wilder Shore and other biographies have only deepened my fascination with this remarkable woman—adventurer, writer, and the fierce force behind one of literature’s most celebrated figures. Without Fanny, there may have been no Louis as we know him. Continue reading Fanny Stevenson Barges In: #BeyondtheBook #TheAbsentHeart

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Two similar covers, two very different books. The power (or pestilence) of genre.

There’s nothing guaranteed to get an author worked up as a chat about book covers. We all have quite fixed ideas of how our book should look but sometimes a publisher thinks differently and we bow to their knowledge of the market. They usually do know best! As a reader too, I’m increasingly aware of … Continue reading Two similar covers, two very different books. The power (or pestilence) of genre.

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Full orchestra or string quartet? Two novels set in Victorian Scotland #photohistory #historical fiction #highlandclearances #scottishbooks

As soon as Sara Sheridan’s The Secrets of Blythswood Square crossed my radar I pounced on it as it’s a novel which springs from the exact scenario (and some of the characters) I drew on for In the Blink of an Eye. Coincidentally in the same week Sally Magnusson’s Music in the Dark was a … Continue reading Full orchestra or string quartet? Two novels set in Victorian Scotland #photohistory #historical fiction #highlandclearances #scottishbooks

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More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs

When I visited A New Power, the Bodleian Library’s photo-history exhibition which ran earlier this spring, I was fascinated to learn how daguerreotype images were used to produce wood engravings which then became the basis for newspaper illustration, an application of the daguerreotype process of which I had been totally unaware, and so I turned … Continue reading More than history: The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre by Dominic Smith #fictionalbiography #photohistory @bodleianlibs