It's a privilege to be able to 'introduce' new books here, to point you towards titles which have only just come out or are about to be released, and we have three such freshly-minted ones today (click on the cover pictures to enlarge them).
Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is described by Elizabeth Strout as "funny, comforting and intelligent - a modern day story of love which takes everyone ... by surprise - as real love stories tend to do."
A retired major and the widow of the village shopkeeper are brought together by a shared love of Kipling; this sounds delightful.
A favourite writer of mine, Sue Gee, says of Judith Allnatt's The Poet's Wife: "meticulously researched, and beautifully realized, Judith Allnatt has steeped herself so deeply in the period and milieu. I admire her very much."
John Clare, poet, genius, "madman"; his wife Patty - what does she do when the man she loves is lost to her through the strange workings of his mind.
And now to seventeenth century Scotland and the Massacre of Glencoe. Corrag, by the acclaimed Susan Fletcher, features a young woman who is condemned for her involvement in the terrible events of 13th. February, 1692. Accused of witchcraft and murder, she awaits her death in prison where she meets Charles Leslie, an Irish propagandist and Jacobite who is keen to implicate the protestant King William in the massacre. Slowly a true friendship develops.
I want to read all three of these right now!
