Site Author

Published 2019, 354 pages

Finnie and Paddy have won the proverbial lottery when Paddy is invited to become partner in a law firm, and Finnie lands a job in the same village as a full time deacon. It seems too good to be true….

The couple has been married for a year when their fortunes take a drastic turn for the better, or so they think. Finnie keeps having wisps of doubts, trying to figure out how they’ve landed in such a cush setting. It’s hard to say too much about the story without giving away the plot. But early on, it turns out the couple has not been honest with each from the beginning. Both of them had lived in Canada for a time, but they never met there. However it was a connection when they first started dating that made them think they had something in common. From now on, whenever I hear that phrase my alarm bells will be going off.

The partnership’s location is a village called Simmerton, a place so dark it barely sees light on a cloudless day. It settles into a narrow valley between pine trees growing so thick it’s impossible to walk through them. The law firm consists of a married couple, Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon, older lawyers who want Paddy to take on much of the work, and a couple of assistants. Maybe they want to retire, or just take it easy for a while in their golden years. Finnie’s deacon work will have a lot to do with a non-profit adoption agency the Dudgeons set up after Lovatt’s first wife and their two children died in a fire at the big house. It turns out Paddy himself is adopted so that most likely played into their choice for new partner.

Soon after they move into their new cottage Paddy and Finn and invited for dinner at the big house, although the real big house was the one that burned to the ground, and the Dudgeons live in a much smaller cottage on the property. As they walk up the drive that night Finnie is sure she sees someone stalking in the trees, but Paddy calms her fears. Just another barn owl or rabbit bustling about. But the dinner turns out to make a critical point in both of their lives and what comes after is anything but lucky.

Published 2019

It’s hard to know where to begin with this book. The two main characters, Fatima and Hassan, live in the Sultan’s palace, the Alhambra, and were his slave and his royal mapmaker, respectively. Fatima, perhaps the most beautiful girl in the world, had been born in the palace to a slave who died shortly after giving birth. Her father was unknown but it was of no matter, her beauty alone was birthright enough. At the point of the story she is a teenager and the Sultan’s concubine. Although a love story of sorts, Hassan prefers the intimacy of other men otherwise Fatima could not have trusted him or been safe when she sneaked into his room at the palace. But the Sultan’s power has waned, emissaries from the Spanish Inquisition arrive, and to Fatima’s horror, she reveals to the evil woman Luz, that Hassan not only makes maps, but has the magical ability to create doors, tunnels, and rooms where none existed before. Or perhaps he only is able to see what others cannot. Once Luz hears about these remarkable gifts, she labels Hassan as a witch who must be tortured and killed. She offers Fatima a life of opulence if she will turn over her friend. But with Hassan’s map making skills, the two of them escape, if only briefly and once having tasted freedom Fatima is unwilling to give it up, nor can she give up her friend, whom she finds she loves more than anyone else on earth.

There are jinns and priests, monsters and magic in this tale, a love story of sorts about friendship and what can come of it.

Published 2019, 249 pages

Martha Storm is headed to the Sandshift library where she volunteers. It’s Valentine’s Day and she’s spent the whole day preparing for a book signing event. Although she herself thinks the hoopla around Valentine’s Day is a lot of nonsense, she dutifully bakes heart shaped cookies, purchases wine and fluted glasses, then trundles it all to the library in time for the event, only to find the word ‘cancelled’ written on the poster advertising it. Martha is prepared to be furious, and rightly so – someone owed her the courtesy of a call, but she finds a parcel outside which grabs her attention for the time being and for a long time to come. The parcel is a book with a note attached which is addressed to her. It was left there by a used book seller from a nearby town. Inside is an inscription to her from Zelda, her grandmother, but the date is three years after her grandmother’s death. Martha is advised by her younger sister Lilian to let the matter drop, but Martha can’t do it. Zelda was the one bright spot in an otherwise painful childhood, the one who stood up to her controlling father and acquiescent mother. While Martha and Zelda were making up stories to entertain each other, her father Thomas was recommending that she and her sister read only the encyclopedia set he had purchased for them. The tension between her father and grandmother escalated for several years until Zelda’s death when Martha was still a young girl. As her parents grew older her mother needed help caring for her father, and Martha devoted herself to the task, then spent her young adulthood caring for both parents until they died. It was a lonely task, her sister Lilian not helping much, by then she had married and had children of her own. Martha had given up her own life to care for her parents and now made a life for herself in helping others. She put to rest the writing that she and her grandmother were so fond of in her youth, and forgot about it. But this book, the one found on the library steps on Valentine’s Day, was a collection of those very stories. And the possibility that her grandmother might still be alive proved irresistible to her. Martha sets out to discover how the book came to her, how it came to be, and most of all to find her much loved grandmother. Along the way she comes to terms with disappointment, makes new friends and wrestles with decisions she made in the past which have come to be a way of life, maybe not the life she wants for herself now

I didn’t realize it at first, but this is a story about a house, built in the bend of the river Thames before it reaches London. But houses are nothing without the people who inhabit them. In 1861 this particular house was purchased by an artist who invites a group of friends, along with his sisters and current model, to spend a summer working there. One hundred and fifty years later Elodie, an archivist in the city, finds a satchel containing the artist’s sketch book and recognizes the house from her favorite bedtime story when she was a child. Twin gables and a distinctive weather vane, exactly like the story. Now that she knows the house is a real place she is determined to see it even if it interferes with her upcoming wedding preparations to wealthy fiancé Alastair. Elodie’s mother, a world famous musician, was killed in an automobile accident when Elodie was a child. She feels as though finding the house will be finding at least a part of her mother again.

But Elodie is not the only main character in the story. The other one is a ghost. She has inhabited the estate by the river since the summer of 1861. For many years she was alone there. Then the artist’s sister Lucy opened a school for girls which lasted several years until one of the students was drowned in a boating accident. Now the house is a museum open to the public on weekends. Sometimes the smaller buildings are inhabited by a student or researcher for several months at a time. During the war the house was rented to Elodie’s great-grandmother for a time when her home in London was bombed. The ghost has seen all of these people come and go, and a few of them have seen her, including Elodie’s uncle Tip, who was a child during the war years.

I really enjoyed this book. Part of the story takes place during the Victorian era, Dickens and the artists of the time play a part. The war years and the bombing of London have a role. Elodie, very much in the present, using her archivist training to ferret out the fairy story from her childhood, finds much more. Love stories, mysteries, a little magic, some tragedy, all are woven into this book. You’ll love it!

ps I have since read two more books by Kate Morton, The Distant Hours, and The Lake House. Both revolve around beautiful old houses and the families who live there. All of the three books are so well done and I can highly recommend them. These are not quick reads, and require an investment of time but are so well worth it. I look forward to the next volume by Kate Morton.