Easy listening (audiobook) set in Edwardian England.
Historical fiction combined with a low stakes thriller/mystery as Ruby May, our a scholarship-funded Norland Nanny fleeing “something in her past” (connected with her family, and her dad in particular), finds herself in the middle of another strange family set up at her new post in a “big house” in Yorkshire surrounded by woods, crags and cotton (alpaca, actually) mills.
Enjoyable, but I did wince every time our heronine’s mention of her Brummie roots” triggered an “Oh, The Black Country” response.
A female focused telling of the tale of the Pendle Witches, narrated by 17 year old Fleetwood Shuttleworth, mistress of Gawthorpe Hall. The one that got away.
Easy reading; real people; gruesome events. Not a criticism.
London shrimp girl Bess Bright leaves her new born daughter at The Foundling Hospital in London’s Coram’s Fields. Returning six years later to retrieve her child, Bess uncovers a mystery – apparently she herself has returned the next day to claim her daughter …
Stacey Halls shows us Georgian London society from top to bottom, which I enjoyed – as you can see from the speed read. My main grumble is that the denouement was rather rapid. Not a surprise, but all a bit to simple and straightforward compared to the plotting that got us there.