All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

All The Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

A poignant page turner primarily set during World War II and following the lives of Marie-Laure, a blind French girl, and Werner, a German orphan boy.

One of the things that struck me was that characters who lived through World War II (and before it) were “normal” working people in 1974…. Not the “normal”ness, but the fact they were only in their 50s when I was small. I’d never really thought about the long tail of WW2 in that way before.

Author page: All The Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

Mrs England – Stacey Halls

Mrs England - Stacey Halls
Mrs England – Stacey Halls

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.

Author’s page: Mrs England – Stacey Halls

Narrator: Imogen Wilde

Fatal Legacy – Lindsey Davis

Fatal Legacy - Lindsey Davis
Fatal Legacy – Lindsey Davis

Back to 1st Century AD Rome and some Flavia Albia sleuthing, this time into an unpaid bar bill which soon develops into a much more complicated case.

I found it hard keeping track of all the characters in the two warring families, partly because there are a lot of them but mainly because of how Roman personal names work; siblings and parents / children all share some of the same names.

Author page: Fatal Legacy – Lindsey Davis