Aprhodite’s Tears by Hannah Fielding
Already an award winning author, (Echoes of Love) Fielding looks set to tempt us to join her on the Greek island of Helios which is where Oriel Anderson goes to join an archaeological dive team. It’s not just any team but an all male one, bar her. She is there as their leader.
Dumped by her fiancé she is determined to ‘make it’.
But does she?
There are the usual areas of conflict, the dark brooding presence of her employer, to whom Oriel is attracted, but should she be? Will it all end in disaster? Possibly it seems when strange things start going bump in the night. Well, not bump in the night, but strange things occur which jeopardise not just her, but others who come to work on the dive.
The pages turn, the sun shines, the brooding darkness hovers. What’s not to like. Give it a try as Fielding reworks the Greek myth, Aphrodite’s Tears.
Aphrodite’s Tears by Hannah Fielding. HB £15.00 pub London Wall Publishers.
From sunshine to – snow.
After the Snow by Susannah Constantine, journalist, TV presenter and now debut novelist.
We’ve done the elite in Downton Abbey and now for a trawl of the untold story of the scandalous elite in the sixties.
Is it like a modern day Nancy Mitford as Sir Elton John proclaims?
Sort of, is the answer.
After the Snow follows eleven year old Esme Munroe… who wants as a Christmas present her mother to be on one of her ‘good days’ plus she longs for a velvet riding hat
The assortment of wet towels and dirty plates she finds in her stocking fall somewhat short, but at least Father Christmas has remembered her, after a fashion.
Later in the day her mother disappears in the heavy snow. Only the Earl of Culcairn seems to know where she might have gone. As Esme sets about both protecting her mother and uncovering the secrets of Culcairn Castle the one certainty is that life will never again be quite the same.
Mitford’s writing was tight and pithy, and this is not quite up to that almost impossibly high standard, but with Princess Margaret swishing through the novel there is an elite charm which will satisfy many readers. Give this a go too and it will brighten up the dank weather.
After the Snow by Susannah Constantine. pub HQ. HB £12.99