Title:The Shape of Darkness Writer: Laura Purcell Publishing House: Raven Books Date of Publication: January 21st 2021 Rate: 5 stars ‘’Shadows flee across the cobbles and climb up walls. Agnes has spent her life studying them, but she has not appreciated their sheer number until tonight. She sees shadows thrown by a dancing flame, the…
Category: Victorian
The Mermaid in the Millpond
Title: The Mermaid in the Millpond Writer: Lucy Strange, illustrated by Pam Smy Publishing House: Barrington Stoke Date of Publication: January 6th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’I’m told there is a mermaid in the millpond. Not the sort of mermaid that sits on a rock, combing her pretty hair and singing to the moon. No,…
Circus of Wonders
Title: Circus of Wonders Writer: Elizabeth Macneal Publishing House: Pan Macmillan Date of Publication: May 13th 2021 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Have a long look, why don’t you?’’ Nell is unique, graced with a special kind of beauty. But the others cannot understand, they think she is an abomination, a cursed creature, lower than the low….
To Be Read at Dusk
Title: To Be Read at Dusk Writer: Charles Dickens Publishing House: Penguin Little Black Classics Date of Publication: March 3rd 2016 (first published 1852) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Τhe monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man.’’ Charles Dickens. The…
The Dante Chamber
Title: The Dante Chamber Writer: Matthew Pearl Publishing House: Penguin Press Date of Publication:May 29th 2018 Rating: 3 stars ‘’A poet never sees ghosts.’’ London, 1869. The metropolis is buzzing in its heyday. The glamorous Victorian court, the elegant literary circles, the world that changes. And right there, visible to all, yet unacknowledged by the…
Christmas At Thompson Hall & Other Christmas Stories
Title:Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories Writer: Anthony Trollope Publishing House:Penguin Classics Date of Publication:November 6th 2014 (first published 1882) Rating: 5 stars ”Yes, I want you to love me, and to be my wife. I don’t know how to tell you; but I love you better than anything and everything in the world-…
The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories
Title: The Apple: New Crimson Petal Stories Writer: Michel Faber Publishing House: Canongate Books Ltd Date of Publication: September 7th 2006 (first published 2004) Rating: 5 stars ”Snow continues to whirl through the sky, the windowpanes rattle and creak, but still those damned partridges and turtledoves proliferate. Passerby must be tossing coins to this bawling nuisance; better they should throw…
The Turn of the Screw
Title: The Turn of the Screw Writer: Henry James Publishing House: Penguin Popular Classics Date of Publication: 1994 (first published October 1898) Rating: 5 stars “I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his perhaps being innocent. It…
Things In Jars
Title: Things in Jars Writer: Jess Kidd Publishing House: Canongate Books Date of Publication: April 4th 2019 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Below her, streets and lanes, factories and workhouses, parks and prisons, ground houses and tenements, roofs, chimneys and tree tops. And the winding, sometimes shining, Thames- the sky’s own dirty mirror. The raven leaves the river behind and charts a…
The Opinionated Reader 