Red Island House by Andrea Lee

Red Island House is loosely short stories or anecdotes about people who live on an island in Madagascar, with the perspective of Shay, a black American woman, as the observer. The through line of the stories is that Shay's wealthy Italian husband has built a gargantuan house there, and the stories take place on our …

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Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary Of A Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale

This book is really beautifully bound if you get the hard cover edition. It's soft blue, with embossed gold flowers on the cover, and a swathed Victorian lady pictured in the centre. Perhaps it's slightly beside the point, but I do love a the pleasure of reading a beautifully bound volume. Kate Summerscale once again …

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The Watchmaker Of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

London, 1883, three lives are drawn together. Thaniel, a young man who works for the Home Office as a telegraphist, an eccentric Japanese watchmaker who may have links to a bomb set my Irish revolutionaries, and Grace, a woman at Oxford who longs to be able to work on her science experiments in peace. When …

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