Book after Book

Welcome to the blog tour for The Best Postboy in England by Stephen Frost! More about the book… Summer, 1916. Fourteen-year-old Freddie Lovegrove begins his new job as  Postboy in the quiet rural English village of Eagley. But the shadow of war looms large over this peaceful idyll as Freddie is tasked with delivering news from the battlefields of France. The villagers call him the angel of death. Freddie is befriended by Suhani Harkness, an Indian woman living in an isolated Manor House where she tends to wounded soldiers from the trenches. Persuading Freddie to become the amanuensis to a soldier who cannot write, he finds new purpose in his work. But the grim reality of his job weighs down ever more heavily, until the telegram he has most feared arrives from the front – news of the death of one of Suhani’s sons. Set against the backdrop of one of the deadliest conflicts in history, this novel is a poignant and powerful exploration of the human cost of war for those...

Welcome to the blog tour for Murder in Moscow by Kelly Oliver ! More about the book… 1918, Moscow. Fiona Figg trails her nemesis Fredrick Fredricks to Moscow. But when she arrives at the grand Metropol Hotel, the bounder has vanished. After Fiona doesn’t show up for work at the War Office, Kitty Lane raises a red flag and tracks her to Russia. Seeking haven at the British Embassy, Kitty and Fiona become embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Bolshevik government. But the plot turns deadly when Fiona goes undercover as a governess in the household of Iron Viktor, the Bolsheviks’ Head of Secret Police. And when Viktor turns up dead in his study, Fiona finds herself wanted for murder and on the run. Can Fiona and Kitty find the real killer and escape the Kremlin before it’s too late? Or will this dangerous game of Russian roulette be their last? More about the author… Kelly Oliver is the author of three award-winning bestselling mystery series and dozens of nonfiction books. My impressions...

Welcome to the blog tour for Murder in the Library by Anita Davison ! More about the book… 1916, London: Keen to support the war effort, bookshop manager and sometime amateur sleuth Hannah Merrill has taken a volunteer role in the library of the nearby military hospital. But arriving at the hospital one cold winter’s morning, she is horrified to find the body of a dead soldier in the library. What’s more, a beautiful young nurse confides in Hannah that she thinks she’s being followed, and then she abruptly disappears. Hannah can’t shake the suspicion that the two cases are connected, but she can’t solve the case alone. She’ll once again need to call upon her delightful, demanding, only-occasionally devious aunt, Violet. The two women know they must find the missing nurse before it’s too late… but they don’t realise they’re now both in the killer’s sights. More about the author… My impressions… After Murder in the Bookshop , this is the second book in the Miss Merrill and Aunt Violet my...

Welcome to the blog tour for Murder in the Bookshop by Anita Davison! More about the book… 1915, London: Working in the dusty bookshop that her Aunt Violet mysteriously inherited, Hannah Merrill is accustomed to finding twists in every tale. But discovering her beloved best friend Lily-Anne – with a paperknife through her heart – in the middle of the bookshop, is not a plotline she saw coming. The case is anything but textbook. With the discovery of a coded German message, and Hannah’s instinct that Lily-Anne’s husband is keeping secrets, she determines to get to the bottom of it. She can’t do it alone though. To crack this case, Hannah will need the enlist the help of her outrageous, opinionated, only-occasionally-objectionable Aunt Violet. They think they’re making progress until one of their chief suspects is found dead. And Hannah realises that she is herself now in the murderer’s sights. Will the final chapter be the ending of a killer… or j...

Welcome to the blog tour for Less Dreadful   with Every Step by Clive Woolliscroft! More about the book… In August 1914, the lives of two young people seem mapped out in front of them. Frank, happily employed as a bank teller, is to marry his fiancée in the spring. Emily is also to marry around the same time. Both are natives of Jarrow. Their homes are about a ten-minute walk away – but they have never met. Then, everything changes. Carried along with the jingoistic national celebration that follows the declaration of war, Frank enlists in the army, leaving his family and fiancée behind. Shortly after this, a devastating loss leaves a massive void in Emily’s life. To help fill that void, she volunteers with the Voluntary Aid Detachment. By the end of summer 1916, both Frank and Emily are serving in France. Their lives intersect twice, once in France and once in Jarrow. After they meet, the destiny for one is tragedy, and for the other, hope. More about the author… Before reti...

1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War By Juliet Nicolson Published by John Murray After The Perfect Summer, Juliet Nicolson returns with a new and extraordinary book that delves deep into the emotions that dominated the lives of the British population after the Great War. Published at the end of 2009, The Great Silence focuses on the two years after the end of the hostilities and, as the author writes in her introduction, it is “a book about silence, the silence that followed the ‘incessant thunder’ of the four years and four months of the First World War.” Guns fell silent on 11th November 1918. People stood still and observed a two-minute silence on 11th November 1919, “to commemorate the Great War” and “to remember the Glorious Dead and their Great Sacrifice.”. On 11th November 1920 the Unknown Soldier was then lowered beneath Westminster Abbey shrouded in silence and “invested with the millions of identities that the bereaved willed upon him.” The country was not silent o...