📖 Book Review ~ Nightingale Hall by Rachel Burton

Boldwood Books
3 November 2026

Thanks to the publisher for the copy of the book 

 

2019: Still grieving the loss of her beloved grandmother, Rosie has let her world grow small. But when she discovers a postcard of the painting tucked inside her grandmother's unfinished book, Rosie realises the artwork may be hiding a secret much closer to home.

1969: Lex Cooper has talent, ambition and a dazzling future in the artworld ahead of them. But one heartbreaking decision threatens everything Lex has worked for, and the painting that was set to make them famous, could well prove their undoing...

As Rosie follows the trail Lex left behind, she uncovers a story of love, loss and reinvention – and a truth that will change everything.

📖 My Review..

At the start of the story Rosie Lopez is in mourning for her beloved grandmother who has recently died and whilst clearing her gran’s personal effects Rosie discovers a postcard of a painting called Moonlight on Nightingale and it is this enigmatic painting which will become the focus for the story. As we begin to see the effect that the search for this painting has on Rosie’s life going forward so we start to see long buried family secrets finally being unravelled.

Splitting into two distinct time frames we follow Rosie in the present as she goes about her life in Hampstead, her fractious relationship with her mother, her job at the small art gallery alongside her new boss Isaac, and her glorious friendship with Kaddy who owns the local coffee shop. All this is juxtaposed against Lauren Lopez’s rather unsettled life in the 1960s, her reasons for settling in London away from her native America and the connection with Lex Cooper, a talented artist with secrets of her own.

The story is a real delight to read, the author does this immersive dual time genre so well so that it becomes a seamless transition between past and present and I was equally engrossed in both eras. I found Nightingale Hall to be a delightful dual time story with strong female characters, a hidden family secret and a beautiful but forgotten painting at its heart.

About the Author 

Rachel Burton is the bestselling author of historical timeslip novels and romantic comedies. Rachel was born in Cambridge and studied Classics and English Literature before starting a career in law. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband, a variety of cats and far too many books.

​Follow Rachel Burton

Facebook: @RachelBurton74

Instagram: @RachelBurton

📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ The Mortician by Sharon Bolton

Orion Book Group
5 November 2026

My thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this book 

Prepare the body. Don't ask questions. Protect the ones you love.

Mortician Ella Foxton has built her life around honouring the dead and guiding them to their final resting place. Her peace is shattered when Jonny Massey, a notorious gangster, arrives at her small funeral parlour demanding she provide a lavish funeral for his brother Jimmy.

As Ella prepares Jimmy's remains, she soon realises it's not just a body Massey wants buried, but a lifetime of violent secrets. Secrets that may just tie the Masseys to a double murder investigation headed by the tenacious DS Brian Rushton.

Caught between a live investigation and warring gangs, Ella must decide how far she'll go to bring the truth to light.

After all, the dead can't speak, but every body tells a story…

📖 My Review..

Mortician Ella Foxton is slowly building up her funeral business with a good reputation and a growing following on social media however, when she has an unexpected visit from a local gangland leader who wants her to handle his deceased brother’s funeral she is ill-prepared for what follows or of how deeply she will become enmeshed in an underground world of crime, secrets and deadly rivalry.  With so much to lose both personally and professionally Ella must put her reservations to one side but in doing she compromises not just her own safety but also that of those people she loves.

There’s plenty of action which kept me turning the pages quickly and a creepy edginess which had me jumping at shadows, especially when the ‘scuttlers’ appear. There’s a couple of really clever twists which I didn’t see coming but once the secrets start to be revealed everything began to slot nicely into place and I really enjoyed trying to join together the pieces of this complicated and fascinating plot.

Dark and gritty this is an addictive crime thriller which hits the ground running with a gripping opening chapter and which doesn’t ever lose its momentum until all the deadly secrets are finally revealed. The Mortician is a really cleverly plotted story and is Sharon Bolton writing at her absolute best.

About the Author 

Sharon (formerly SJ )Bolton loves in Buckinghamshire with her husband and occasionally her grown-up son. The Mortician is her nineteenth book, her ninth with Orion. Her first book Sacrifice was voted Best New Read by Amazon UK, while her second Awakening, won the Mary Higgins Clark award (part of the prestigious Edgars) in the US. In 2014 she won the CWADagger in the Library. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, the CWA Steel Dagger, the Theakston’s Prize for Best thriller, the International Thriller Writers’ Best First Novel award, the Prix du Polar (France) and the Martin Beck Award (Sweden).

📖Book Review ~ A Poem for Every Night of the Year : Edited by Allie Esiri

MacMillan Children’s Books
October 2026

 

A Poem For Every Night of the Year is a magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, one to share for every night of the year with a special new cover for the 10th year anniversary. 

The poems – together with introductory paragraphs – have a link to the date on which they appear. Shakespeare celebrates midsummer night, Maya Angelou for International Women’s Day and Lewis Carroll on April Fool’s day.

Perfect for reading aloud and sharing with all the family, it contains a full spectrum of poetry from familiar favourites to exciting contemporary voices. The special 10th anniversary edition A Poem for Every Night of the Year features the poetry of Rumi, Maya Angelou, Benjamin Zephaniah, George The Poet, Mandy Coe, John Updike, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, John Cooper Clark, Paul McCartney, Roger McGough, Carol Ann Duffy, Ezra Pound, Philip Larkin, Robert Frost, AA Milne, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, Lewis Carroll, W. H. Auden, Keats, Yates, Byron, Shelley, Roald Dahl, Rudyard Kipling, William Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickenson, Tennyson, Amelia Earhart, Walt Witman, Margaret Atwood, Matsuo Basho, Walter de la Mare, DH Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Simon Armitage, JK Rowling, Laurie Lee, Thomas Hardy and many more. 

📖 My Review..

This is such a delightful 10th anniversary hardback edition and definitely one to treasure and with its vast assortment of poetry there is something to suit all ages and tastes and is the perfect book to have on your bedside table. On first reading and as with all anthologies I dip into and out of at whim finding snippets of poems, some are old favourites like Abu Ben Adhem by Leigh Hunt whilst there were many others like Thunder by Elizabeth Bishop which were from poets I had never heard of before but they all added something rather special to this comprehensive anthology of verse.

Of course, I also looked up first those poems which were featured on significant dates like my birthday and wedding anniversary and as I was reading I thought what a great introduction to poetry this book is, with poems long and short, funny and sad, I shall definitely look forward to having a whole year of poetry as my bedtime reading. Being introduced to new poems and poets is what makes this such a special anthology and with 366 poems, this is not only great value for money but is also something to treasure.

About the Author

Allie Esiri’s best-selling poetry anthologies include Shakespeare For Every Day Of The Year, A Poem For Every Day Of The Year and 365 Poems For Life. They have lit an explosion of interest in poetry in the UK, are regularly chosen for National Poetry Day and have been picked as best books of the year by The Observer, The Times and New Statesman. Yearly sell out performances at the National Theatre and major book festivals with some of our best-loved actors reading poetry – from Helena Bonham Carter to Dominic West – are capturing and enthralling a new generation of poetry lovers. 

Esiri read Modern and Medieval Languages at the University of Cambridge then worked as an actress for ten years in the English Shakespeare Company and on TV in shows such as Sharpe, Men Behaving Badly and Poirot, before moving on to create the first poetry apps, daily poetry anthologies (for all ages) and live shows.

Website

X @AllieEsiri

X@panmacmillan

X@moonflowerbooks

📚Book Nostalgia ~ The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Welcome to my Book Nostalgia feature where I'm allowing myself the luxury of going back in time with some of my favourite reads. Over the past 15 years of blogging I have been privileged to read some amazing books which have featured on my BOOKS OF THE YEAR list.

Sometimes it’s good to revisit these stories in order to remember those extra special books which have influenced my reading over the last 15 years..

Come along with with me and let's wallow in a book memory from 2013..

Bloomsbury
2013

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Welcome to Scion: No safer place 

The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe. 

In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder, Paige is a dreamwalker, a rare and formidable kind of clairvoyant. Under Scion law, she commits treason simply by breathing. 

When Paige is arrested for murder, she meets the mysterious founders of Scion, who have designs on her uncommon abilities. If she is to survive and escape, Paige must use every skill at her disposal – and put her trust in someone who ought to be her enemy.

Set in 2059, in a dystopian future where London is a hot bed of intrigue and moral turpitude, nineteen year old Paige Mahoney, is a dream walker and clairvoyant, working as part of an elite criminal underworld in the notorious Seven Dials area of Scion London. On a rainy day, and due to a catastrophic error of judgement, Paige is kidnapped, drugged and taken to the secret city of Oxford, where she is assigned to a Rephaite, who becomes her master, and who is as mysterious, as he is deadly. In this whole new world, complete with its own syntax and idiom, Paige must learn to curb her natural instincts, or risk the consequences.

I read this debut novel when it was first published in 2013 and this talented young author has since gone on to write many more novels, including five, and a soon to be published sixth book in The Bone Season Series. I remember being so impressed with the power of the story and fully intended to carry on with the series but sadly I haven’t managed to catch up with them all. However, The Bone Season remains one of my favourite debut novels, so here’s what I thought about it in 2013…

***

The Bone Season is unlike anything I have ever read before, and so far out of my comfort zone, that I am at a loss to know where to start to evaluate the story, but I can’t do the author or the story a disservice by describing all that happens. Heck, even after finishing the book, I still don’t know half of what happens, but what I do know, is that this is a remarkably good debut novel. The strength of imagination needed to control a world within a world is finely explored, and the inspired use of original and highly inventive terminology adds authority to a story which ultimately takes you by surprise and leaves you, in the end, wanting more. Thankfully, there is a wonderful glossary which reveals a vocabulary which gets to be so utterly familiar, you find that you want to drop the vernacular into your own life; I mean who can resist a good Flash House?

There are going to be the inevitable comparisons made between The Bone Season and recent trends in popular fiction, and yes, it does have some of the magical elements of Rowling’s Harry Potter, the otherworldliness of Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and some of its own shades of grey in the relationship between keeper and voyant , but ultimately, what’s important is that you should read the book on its own merits, and judge it against none – merely enjoy a good story, settle in and take your seat for a ride to Scion London.

📖 Favourite Read of the Month ~ Royal Witch by Philippa Gregory

Harper Collins 
20 October 2026

My thanks to the publisher for the invitation to read this book

 

Ambition, Sorcery. Treason. How far will one woman dare to go?

Eleanor Cobham arrived at court with nothing - her greatest hope was simply to marry well.

But her ambition carried her further than any woman before her had dared. She wanted to rule her own destiny. To rule England itself.

They say she summoned the devil himself to secure her fate.

They say she plotted to murder a king.

Now, it's time to finally hear her story.

This is the tale of the woman they called witch. Who would have called herself queen.

📖 My Review..

In 1428, Eleanor Cobham married into the English royal family when she became the wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. A marriage of convenience in many ways as Eleanor had set her sights on something far more powerful than an advantageous marriage, she wanted to be Queen Consort of England and would go to any lengths to secure the throne for her equally ambitious husband. Whilst I knew snippets about Eleanor Cobham and her role within the court of the boy King Henry VI I didn’t know many of the details surrounding her spectacular fall from grace or of the seriousness of the criminal charges levelled against her. 

Alive with intrigue, the royal court comes to life and as the royal siblings vied with each other for political power so Eleanor strove to secure her own place at the very centre of court life. Ruthlessly ambitious, Eleanor would stop at nothing to get what she wanted, that she did some unsettling things is recorded in historical records but whether she did perform witchcraft and necromancy to bring down a King remains to be seen. However, what can be deduced is that she was a woman of great strength and ruthless ambition, female qualities which did not sit comfortably with medieval men. Her imperfections are highlighted in detail and whilst it’s not possible to warm to her, she was a tetchy and difficult woman to like, I did finish the story with a modicum of respect for her. 

Well written and impeccably researched, the author has succeeded in bringing this fascinating woman to life and whilst

history has tried to erase Eleanor thanks to this author’s fine skill for storytelling Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester comes gloriously alive, in a fascinating story of thwarted ambition, dangerous treachery and desperate desire.

I really enjoyed reading it and have no hesitation in making Royal Witch my Favourite Read of the Month for October.

About the Author

DR PHILIPPA GREGORY is an internationally renowned historian and novelist. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Edinburgh and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Universities of Sussex and Cardiff, an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck University of London and she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to literature and to charity. Her novels have been adapted for stage and screen and in 2023 she published her groundbreaking history book, Normal Women– 900 Years of Making History, which was also released as a podcast, a teen edition and a series for young children.

🎧 One from the shelf ~ Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

In an attempt to get my ‘to be read pile’ to a more manageable level over the following autumn months, I’m going to share my reviews of books which have lingered for far too long on my digital book shelves.

I’ve had Year of Wonders:A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks in my Audible library for ages. The book was first published in 2001.

Spring 1666: when the Great Plague reaches the quiet Derbyshire village of Eyam, the villagers make an extraordinary decision. They elect to isolate themselves in a fateful quarantine. So begins the Year of Wonders, seen through eighteen-year-old Anna Frith’s eyes as she confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. Based on a true story, this novel explores love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggles of seventeenth-century science and religion to interpret the world at the cusp of the modern era.

🎧 My Review..

The small Derbyshire village of Eyam still carries the scars of what happened to it in 1666 and although now quiet and visited by tourists who come to see the Plague Village there are still echoes of past tragedies. Written in 2001 after the author visited the village, this is a fictional account of what took place and of the village folk who simply closed themselves away from the world so that the wicked contagion from London would not spread to neighbouring villages.

Anna Frith is the narrator of this story, and as the plague seeds spread and multiply from fleas on bolts of cloth from London, so her life runs in quiet reflectiveness. At the start of 1666 and on first meeting Anna we find that she is a young widow with two small boys, managing alone but with work at the local rectory and the local manor house, she ekes out a living, however, events soon spiral out of her control as the plague attacks everything she once held dear. With the village in lockdown and with only the very basic medical care from wise women who are deemed to be witches, and from herbal remedies which have no power over a pestilence which indiscriminately takes old and young, rich and poor. Superstition, fear and suspicion is rife in the village, tempers run high and threaten to take away any semblance of Christian charity but Anna, together with Elinor Monpellion, the rector’s wife, do all they can to keep one step ahead of a deadly disease that shows no mercy.

Atmospheric and rich in detail Year of Wonders conveys the horror of living cheek by jowl with a disease that seemed entirely unstoppable. The audio narration of over 10 hours didn’t seem overlong and interestingly it’s narrated by the author herself. At first I wasn’t keen on this but after a while the author took on the persona of Anna Frith with an almost childish naivety which developed in strength and purpose as the story progressed. My only quibble is the ending which I felt slightly out of sync and not what I expected however, I’m really pleased to have listened to Year of Wonders at last, it’s a fascinating story and nicely narrated by the author.

📖 Book Review ~ That Day at Rose Cottage by John Nicholl

Boldwood
21 October 2026

Thanks to the publisher for the copy of this book 

Two women running from their pasts. Two predators determined to find them. One isolated cottage with a deadly secret…

Ella Hart believed the nightmare was over when her manipulative, abusive ex-boyfriend, Nigel Franks, was sent to prison. But now Nigel is free – and his obsession with revenge is stronger than ever.

When Ella’s friend Poppy arrives at Rose Cottage seeking sanctuary from her own recently released tormentor, the two women realise a terrifying truth: prison bars and restraining orders can only keep dangerous men away for so long.

Hidden deep in the Welsh countryside, Rose Cottage was meant to be a refuge. Instead, it becomes a trap. As their former abusers close in, determined to reclaim the control they’ve lost, Ella and Poppy find themselves cut off, hunted and running out of options.

With the threat of violence growing by the day, the women face an impossible choice: live in fear forever – or fight back.

As hunter and hunted exchange places, the lines between justice and vengeance begin to blur. Because some monsters never stop coming for you. And sometimes the only way to survive is to find a way to stop them, forever…

📖 My Review..

Reaching breaking point, Ella Hart finally reports her abusive boyfriend to the police. With evidence stacked against him Nigel Franks is convicted and sentenced but even with her abuser behind bars, Ella never feels safe. When she comes to the aid of her friend, Poppy, who is also another traumatised victim of domestic abuse, Ella is determined that the time has come for them stop allowing these vicious men to take control of their lives.

Cleverly written, with a terrifying edginess, the story unfolds not just from the perspective of both Ella and Poppy but also from Nigel, the prison governor who has the measure of the man, the prison psychologist who assessed Nigel for release from prison and who sees good where evil lurks and finally Detective Inspector Laura Kesey who understands better than most that the justice system consistently fails these traumatised women. All of these fascinating characters add a sense of realism to the story and drive the action spinning headfirst into what is, after all, an inevitable reckoning.

I read That Day at Rose Cottage in one sitting simply because I couldn’t bear the thought of Ella and Poppy’s pain and wanted the whole sorry story to pan out in the way I hoped it would. With his usual flair for cracking good storytelling the author paints a vivid picture of despair, fear and a twisted sense of righteousness which made me reach the end of the book with a wry smile. Justice served.

About the Author

John Nicholl is a Welsh author renowned for his gripping psychological thrillers and crime novels. Born and raised in West Wales, Nicholl draws upon his experiences as a former police officer, child protection social worker, and lecturer to craft compelling narratives that delve into the darkest corners of human nature. His work often explores themes of justice, psychological manipulation, and the resilience of the human spirit.

Twitter/X  @nicholl06

Twitter /X @BoldwoodBooks