And a couple more

 

    Since we were talking yesterday about bargains for the Kindle, and comments seemed to indicate an appetite for more, here are a couple of books which I haven't yet read but about which I've heard great things, and both are currently available at very low prices.

    Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens was reviewed recently in The Good Book Guide (which I heartily recommend, by the way) and although it was firmly on my radar before that, phrases such as "breathtaking in its imaginative virtuosity" and "utterly original, a book of mesmerising power", had me pressing the 'buy' button.

    It's a new interpretation of the tale of Rapunzel, but it features a real-life character, Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a writer of historical fiction who was exiled to a convent by Louis XIV and while there wrote the version of Rapunzel that we all know. Kate writes about the story behind the book here, and talks more about it in this video.

    

    The Somnambulist by Essie Fox was one of Channel 4's TV Book Club Best Reads of 2012, and you can see Essie talking on the programme about her Victorian Gothic mystery in this short clip.

    "Very evocative, brilliantly researched, and plot-wise it's very, very clever," said Meera Syal in her summing up, and here's the gist:

    "When seventeen-year-old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels, who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women.

    When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel's reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London's East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire - a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths..."

Comments

[LizF]

Bitter Greens is wonderful, Cornflower and I'm sure that you will enjoy it. I'm currently about half way through and rather torn as to whether I should read on quickly or try and slow down to make it last longer.
I have also got another book by Kate Forsyth, 'The Wild Girl', in my library pile; this keeps up the fairytale related theme but moves to the Germany of the Brothers Grimm and looks just as good.

[Cornflower]

I have my eye on The Wild Girl, too, as Kate's work sounds so interesting, and on a superficial level, aren't those covers beautiful?

[LizF]

I could try denying that the cover was the reason I first picked up Bitter Greens - but I would be telling fibs!
Just hope that they keep the same cover when the paperback version comes out - I was really disappointed with the change of cover between editions of John Saturnall's Feast!

[Cornflower]

I agree with you about that lovely JSF jacket; the paperback is not nearly as attractive.