Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers #ShyCreatures @ClareDChambers @wnbooks #BookReview

In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness. 

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers was published in hardback on 29 August 2024 by W&N. The paperback edition is published in June 2025.
I bought my trade paperback edition at the airport last month. 

I have read all of Clare Chambers books, going back years. She was always an author who seemed to go under the radar a little bit, I didn't know many people who had read her work. It was the publication of her novel Small Pleasures in November 2023 that really brought her to readers attention. That novel was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and was featured on BBC's Between The Covers. I loved it and have been eagerly awaiting the publication of Shy Creatures for months. 

Shy Creatures begins in 1964 as the reader is introduced to Helen Hansford, a thirty-something art therapist who is currently working at a local psychiatric hospital. Whilst Helen appears to all and sundry as a single woman, she has been in a relationship for three years with married doctor Gil.

Chambers excels in creating relatable, realistic characters who the reader gets to know quite intimately. She also creates an incredible sense of time and place. Her detailed descriptions of the hospital; Westbury Park, and the patients, staff and treatments is vividly and colourfully done. 

Helen's life is a round of work, and illicit meetings with Gil. Things change for her when William Tapping is admitted to the hospital. William has spent at least the past twenty years hidden away in his house, with just his elderly aunts for company. His hair and beard are long and matted, and he does not utter a word. He is admitted to the hospital after a fracas at home, his Aunt is admitted with him, but does not live very long. 

William is now alone and it is Helen who takes it upon herself to discover more about his history, to encourage his talent for art and to try to find the man under the dirt and the hair. 

This is an extraordinary story. The author takes the reader back to William's childhood, we learn about his time with his Aunts, his short time at school and about the only friend he really had. We realise that something very serious has happened in the past, but it is not until later in the story that this is revealed. The reveal is tenderly handled, and Chambers' ability to deal with some of the darkest issues is wise and tender. 

This is a coming-of-age story, coupled with the tragedy of misplaced love. The setting is sublime and the characters are wonderful. Highly recommended. 

Clare Chambers's first job after university was working for Diana Athill at André Deutsch. Her first novel Uncertain Terms was published in 1992 and she is the author of eight other novels.

Small Pleasures, her first work of fiction in ten years, became a word-of-mouth hit on publication, was selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers book club and for BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, and was selected as a Book of the Year by The Times, the Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Metro, Red and Good Housekeeping. It also won Pageturner of the Year Award at the British Book Awards 2022 and was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021.

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The Palace Dressmaker by Jade Beer BLOG TOUR #ThePalaceDressmaker #JadeBeer @RandomTTours @HodderBooks #Giveaway #Prize #Competition #Win

 

A royal princess. A dress lost for decades. A love story waiting to be uncovered...

London, 1988: Meredith has landed her dream job at London's most prestigious fashion house, creating beautiful gowns adorned with intricate beads and embroidery. But now Meredith is about to create a dress like no other for the most famous woman in the world: Diana, Princess of Wales.

As Meredith pours her heart into this career-defining dress, she works under the handsome and exacting William in the workroom.

William, and this commission, could end up changing her life in more ways than one...

New York, 1997: The red carpet has been rolled out on Park Avenue for the auction of Princess Diana's dresses for charity. Of the eighty items listed for sale, only seventy-nine will sell.

Because dress Number 19 is missing...

England, 2018: Jayne has met all the neighbours in her new building bar one: Mrs Chalis on the first floor. When she finally meets Meredith Chalis in the hallway, she is taken aback by how upset she seems and offers her help. Entering her home, Jayne immediately knows something is very wrong. The house is in complete disarray and there is no sign of Meredith's husband.

But then Jayne sees the most beautiful evening dress thrown over a chair and reads the note laid beside it.

Jayne realises that Meredith has an incredible story to tell... and only she can help uncover it...

The Palace Dressmaker by Jade Beer was published on 5 November 2024 by Hodder. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour I am delighted to have one copy to give away. Entry is simple; just fill out the competition widget in his blog post. UK entries only please. 

GOOD LUCK!

One copy of The Palace Dressmaker by Jade Beer

Jade Beer is an award-winning editor, journalist and novelist who has worked across the
national press, women's glossies, weeklies and digital channels for more than twenty years


Instagram @jadebeerbrides

Black Storms by Teresa Solana BLOG TOUR #BlackStorms @TeresaSolana1 @CorylusB t. #PeterBush #TranslatedFiction #BookReview

 

A country that doesn't acknowledge its past is destined to repeat its mistakes.

Why murder a sick old man nearing retirement? An investigation into the death of a professor at the University of Barcelona seems particularly baffling for Deputy Inspector Norma Forester of the Catalan police, as word from the top confirms she's the one to lead this case.

The granddaughter of an English member of the International Brigades, Norma has a colourful family life, with a forensic doctor husband, a hippy mother, a squatter daughter and an aunt, a nun in an enclosed order, who operates as a hacker from her austere convent cell.

This blended family sometimes helps and often hinders Norma's investigations.

It seems the spectres of the past have not yet been laid to rest, and there are people who can neither forgive nor forget the cruelties of the Spanish Civil War and all that followed.

Black Storms by Teresa Solana was published on 25 October 2024 by Corylus Books. It is translated by Peter Bush. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Blog Tour.

Before I start talking about the actual writing and plot of this book, please take a moment to look at the amazing cover. The cover design is by Cade Roach and it is absolutely amazing. I could look at it for hours, it is so in-depth and totally fits with the story line. A real genius cover. 

Black Storms is not a long book, my paperback copy is just over 230 pages in length, yet it is a cleverly complex tale of murder and intrigue set in the stunning city of Barcelona. Solana begins the novel with an intriguing, mysterious chapter that introduces the reader to a murderer. Known at the beginning as 'the man who was about to commit murder', this is wonderfully written and sets the scene for the whole novel. 

We are introduced to Deputy Inspector Norma Forester of the Catalan police. This is a woman who carries a lot of baggage along with her. There is almost as much about Norma and her wide and eclectic family as there is about the case, and it's incredibly well told. Each of the characters (and there are a lot of them) have their own distinctive traits, they are an unusual extended, blended family who often drive Norma to despair, but are always loyal and supportive. 

As Norma begins to investigate the murder of a professor from the University of Barcelona, she draws many blanks. There seems to be no motive, the professor was elderly and ill and had no known enemies. The murderer has left no clues, it's most certainly a puzzle. It is only when Norma discovers that an old friend of the professor was also recently murdered that she begins to look deeper into how the two cases may be connected. The first case appeared to be a case of a robbery gone wrong, the man was brutally stabbed, the circumstances are nothing like the professors's case. However, Norma is still convinced that there is a link. 

This is fine crime fiction, with twists and turns to keep the reader engaged throughout and the added bonus of learning more about Norma and her family. There's some humour that lessens the darkness of the plot, and adds another dimension to the story. 

Clever and multi layered. Black Storms is a great crime novel that incorporates some recent history in a setting that is brought to life wonderfully. Recommended. 

Teresa Solana’s fiction is solidly rooted in Catalonia, which forms the atmospheric backdrop to the stories that have made her one of Spain’s best-known writers of crime fiction.

Her a distinctive style blends humour, satire and thought-provoking social issue.

Her new series features Deputy Inspector Norma Forester – and both her colourful family life and her background as the granddaughter of an English member of the International Brigades.

Several of Teresa’s novels have been translated into English, and she was highly commended for a CWA dagger for a story in her collection The First Prehistoric Serial Killer.

Teresa Solana has won several national and international awards, including the Crims de Tinta for Black Storms.

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Peter Bush is an award-winning translator from Catalan, French, Spanish and
Portuguese to English.

He's a former Professor of Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia, and director of the British Centre for Literary Translation.

The Party by Tessa Hadley BLOG TOUR #TheParty #TessaHadley @JonathanCape @RandomTTours #BookExtract

 

Evelyn had the surprising thought that bodies were sometimes wiser than the people inside them. She’d have liked to impress somebody with this idea, but couldn’t explain it.

On a winter Saturday night in post-war Bristol, sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party in a dockside pub; there they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication both intrigues and repels them. Sinden calls a few days later to invite them over to the grand suburban mansion Paul shares with his brother and sister, and Moira accepts despite Evelyn’s misgivings.

As the night unfolds in this unfamiliar, glamorous new setting, the sisters learn things about themselves and each other that shock them, and release them into a new phase of their lives.

The Party by Tessa Hadley was published on 31 October by Jonathan Cape. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you today. 

Extract from The Party by Tessa Hadley 

The party was in full swing. Evelyn could hear the sexy blare of the trad jazz almost as soon as she got off the bus at St Mary Redcliffe and began walking over to the Steam Packet, the pub which Vincent – who was a friend of Evelyn’s older sister Moira – had commandeered for that evening. He’d decided they all needed a party to cheer them up, because the winter had been so bitter, and because now in February the incessant rain had turned the snow to slush. It was raining again this evening; the bus’s wiper had beat its numb rhythm all the way into town, the pavements were dark with wet, the gutters ran with water. Frozen filthy formless lumps, the remainders of the snow, persisted at the street corners and in the deep recesses between the buildings, loomed sinisterly in the gaping bombsites. Crossing the road, Evelyn had to put up her umbrella – actually her mother’s worn old green umbrella with the broken rib and the duck’s head handle, which she’d borrowed without asking on her way out, because she’d lost her own somewhere. Probably she’d get in trouble for this tomorrow, but she didn’t care, she was too full of agitated happiness. Anything could happen between now and tomorrow. Evelyn couldn’t believe her luck, that she was going to an actual party – and not just any dull ordinary party but this wild one with her sister’s friends, in a half- derelict old pub with a terrible reputation, hanging over the black water in the city docks. If her parents had known where the party was they’d never have let her out, but she’d lied to them so fluently and easily, saying that Moira had promised to look after her, and that they were meeting in the Victoria Rooms. She was proud of herself. Who knew that you could be a Sunday school teacher one minute, asking the children to crayon in pictures of Jesus holding up a lantern, with a lost lamb tucked under his other arm, and then lie to your parents with such perfectly calibrated inno- cent sweetness? 

The rain didn’t matter, Evelyn was impervious to it. Picking her way between the streams of water rip- pling on the roads, not wanting to spoil her fashionable unsuitable black ballet flats, she enjoyed the contrast between this desolate outer universe and the heat of her life burning up inside. When she’d had to change buses at the Centre, she’d gone into a cubicle in the Ladies public toilets to take off her wellington boots, and also the decent wool dress she’d put on over her actual party clothes, so that her parents couldn’t see what she was wearing: skin-tight black slacks zipped up along the inside of her calves, black polo-neck jumper, wide red leather belt with a black buckle. Evelyn was very thin, with a long neck – a swan neck, she thought – and flat stomach, jutting hip bones; she hoped that she looked spectacular, hair scraped back from her face like a dancer’s and breasts thrust up in a new brassiere. She longed for and feared the moment when she would shed her thick winter coat and reveal herself. To tell the truth she feared everything: part of her wanted to get straight back on the 28 bus and go home. Peering at her reflection in the square of tin which served as a mirror above the sink in the Ladies toilet, she had clipped huge false pearls on her ears – those were her mother’s too – and painted her mouth stickily with red lipstick. The boots and the dress were bundled now into a shopping bag which she’d have to jettison somewhere, along with her coat and the umbrella, for collection later.

 

Tessa Hadley is the author of eight highly praised novels, Accidents in the Home, which was long listed for the Guardian First Book Award, Everything Will Be All Right, The Master Bedroom, The London Train, Clever Girl, The Past, Late in the Day, Free Love and three collections of stories, Sunstroke, Married Love and Bad Dreams. 

She won the Windham Campbell Prize for Fiction in 2016, The Past won the Hawthornden Prize for 2016, and Bad Dreams won the 2018 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. 

Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker.

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe #HareHouse @sallyhinch @panmacmillan #BookReview

 

Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . .

In the first brisk days of autumn, a woman arrives in Scotland having left her job at an all-girls school in London in mysterious circumstances. Moving into a cottage on the remote estate of Hare House, she begins to explore her new home. But among the tiny roads, wild moorland, and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.

Striking up a friendship with her landlord and his younger sister, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch.

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe was published in paperback in September 2022 by Pan Macmillan. 

Hare House was the choice of my local book group for our November read. I'd heard of this novel before, but have never read the author. I wasn't really quite sure what I was going to get, but packed my copy for my four-day break to Portugal at the end of October and absolutely devoured it in one day! 

The group discussed the book last night. It was a lively and intelligent debate, with varying views of the book. I'm going to try my best not to let other member's opinions sway my review! 

As I said last night at book group. I loved this book. I am a huge fan of the unreliable narrator and in Hare House we have one of the very best. I personally quite liked her (she remains without a name throughout the story). I always think that it must be more difficult to create a flawed character who often makes very strange decisions than to produce a lovely, fluffy, kind person! 

There is no doubt that this is a novel that the reader has to work on. Very little is actually explained and the ending feels some abrupt. However, I do like that type of book. I like an ending that makes me ponder, that makes me think about what may or may not have happened. 

Our narrator has moved into a remote cottage that is situated on the Hare House estate in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. We know that she left her teaching job under mysterious circumstances, but we have no idea what these are. 

There are not many other people about. A strange woman called Janet lives in the adjoining cottage and Hare House is occupied by Grant and his teenage sister Cass. Their parents are dead and these two young people now run the estate. 

As the narrator explores her cottage and the surrounding area, she realises that there is certainly something sinister about the place. Especially Hare Hall which contains a collection of stuffed hares, mounted in cases in the entrance hall. Hares do play a large part in this story, from the opening paragraph, right through to the ending chapters. 

What I loved most about Hare House was the fabulous sense of place. Despite me reading this in the sunshine of Portugal, I was easily transported to the cold, rain and snow of Scotland. The author cleverly incorporates the landscape and the weather to create more tension to her story. 

The characters are quite odd. It's difficult to find much to admire or like about any of them. Grant seems weak, his sister Cass is fragile and vulnerable. Janet next door is downright rude, but seems to know a lot about what has happened in the area. Then there is Ann, with her two dogs, seen by the narrator, but not noticed by anyone else. 

Decide for yourself about the witchcraft and the madness. We could look at each character and assume that, yes, they are a witch ... but are they, or are they just regular people with terrible traits? 

The reader needs to invest a lot into this story. I enjoyed every page, I was gripped, I loved the setting, I was enchanted by the mystery. Recommended by me. 

Sally Hinchcliffe was born in London but grew up all over the world in the wake of her father’s diplomatic career. 

She spent many years working at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew developing research systems for taxonomists until a two-year sabbatical in Eswatini gave her the impetus to take her writing seriously. 

After completing an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, her first novel, Out of a Clear Sky, was published by Macmillan in 2008. 

She moved to south-west Scotland to work as a writer and freelance editor full time, when she is now out exploring rural Dumfries and Galloway on her bike. 

Hare House is her second novel.

www.sallyhinchcliffe.net

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Someone To Blame by J J Green BLOG TOUR #SomeoneToBlame @JJGreenwriter @BookGuild @RandomTTours #BookReview

 

Shay Dunne is a poison pen. 

Not that she wants to be one. But a recent tragedy in her life has left her hell-bent on dishing out some punishment to the two people she blames. 

Sending them a letter containing a vague accusation will do the trick.

Only the letters set in motion a series of unintended consequences, and Shay soon discovers that in the close-knit Irish village she calls home, a community still reeling from Covid, there are sinister secrets everywhere.

Someone To Blame by J J Green was published on 28 October 2024 by The Book Guild. My thanks to the author who sent my copy for review as part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour. 

I am always drawn to books set in Ireland, and this one particularly resonated. My later Mother was from Donegal and we spent every summer in the small town that she grew up in. J J Green draws on her own personal experience of living in Donegal and has created a place that is realistic and feels so familiar. 

She's also created a large cast of colourful characters. There are a lot of them, and all seem to be connected - such is the way in a small Irish town.  The story revolves around Shay Dunne; a woman whose life so far has not really amounted to much. She's experienced the difficulties of being a single mother to son Ryan, and is now almost drowning in grief. When she receives a terrible diagnosis from the hospital, she doesn't know quite where to turn. Shay's sister Ciara and her husband Joe run the local pub; the heart of the community. The pub and the village shop is the place to learn all of the local news, some of it true, a lot of it is invented. 

Shay is angry. She is angry about two people in particular. Local, wealthy businessman Peter Feeney, and wideboy Eoin Devine. Feeny just happens to be the grandfather of Shay's son, although he's never acknowledged him, and Eoin is the guy who made Ryan's life so difficult recently. What possesses her to write poison pen letters to them?  She wants to hurt them. The letters are short and to the point. Shay posts them and then sits back. 

What happens next is totally unexpected. More and more people in the town receive poison pen letters. Shay knows that she didn't send them. There's a copycat out there, but who is it? 

What the letters do is to open a lot of previously sealed up boxes. They make people frightened, they make people look at their lives and things that they have done. The most unexpected people will have the most terrible of secrets to hide and slowly but surely, the whole town will learn just who lives amongst them. 

This is a complex and multi layered tale that is written well. The sense of place is so well done and the different characters are all well rounded. There are some poignant and quite heart breaking scenes, there are also a few that made me chuckle. It's a well thought out mystery, with an ending that will really pull at the emotions. 

J. J. Green is an Irish writer who hails from Donegal and lives in Derry. She writes both
fiction and non-fiction. Her non-fiction work is published as political essays focusing on economic and environmental injustice. Her first novel, The Last Good Summer, was published in February 2023. Someone To Blame is her second novel.

J. J. Green explains: “The inspiration for the book came from a story I was told when I was little about a woman who sent anonymous letters to people living in her village. I found the story fascinating and it always stayed with me. I thought it might make an intriguing story, writing about the consequences that anonymous letters would have on a tight-knit community where some people had carefully guarded secrets.”

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IG @jjgreen_writer 

Beautiful People by Amanda Jennings #BeautifulPeople @MandaJJennings @HQstories #BookReview

 

When Victoria escapes her broken home for university in London, she is determined to reinvent herself and make a fresh start. She falls in love with Nick, who welcomes her into his privileged circle of friends, opening her eyes to a world she only ever dreamt of.

Then life takes a darker turn.

Twenty-five years later, the circle is reunited alongside a host of glittering guests to celebrate the wedding of Hollywood darling Ingrid Olsson to ruthlessly well-connected Julian Draper. Victoria has spent years trying to forget Nick and put the horror of what happened behind her. Now she has to face the past she tried so hard to bury.

As the champagne flows and painful memories resurface, Victoria can’t shake the feeling that some people seem to get away with everything.

But maybe not this time.

Maybe this time, someone will pay the ultimate price.

Beautiful People by Amanda Jennings is published in hardback by HQ on 7 November 2024. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review. 

I have been a fan of Amanda Jennings for well over ten years. She writes dark, emotionally challenging novels filled with beautiful prose and expertly created characters. 

I think Beautiful People is my favourite of her books so far, her best novel to date. It totally captured me, thrusting me into a world of glamour and wealth, but at the same time, exposing the dirt and the grubbiness that the beautiful people so often hide from people outside of their circle. 

The reader knows from the prologue that someone dies. We do not know how, or who it is, or who the person standing close to the body is, but this short scene sets the pace for the rest of the novel. 

One of my favourite narrative structures is a dual time line, and in Beautiful People, Amanda Jennings does this to absolute perfection. As we meet Victoria in June 2024, and then go back and acquaint ourselves with her when she was known as Vix, at University in 1999, the stories are wonderfully woven together. 

Present day Victoria lives in France, alone. She's an artist and has been commissioned to create a portrait for the wedding of a very famous, wealthy couple. However, Victoria really doesn't want to attend the wedding, but the bride insists that she attend for the unveiling. It becomes clear to the reader that Victoria and the groom, and many of the invited guests have history, a painful history and one that Victoria doesn't want to re-visit. 

We learn about young Vix. Fleeing a dysfunctional family to find refuge at University. Making friends with the grand and the elite. Slightly changing her accent to fit, examining the clothes that the other girls wear, making sure that she can fit in, and also falling in love. This is not an ordinary, romantic love though, it becomes something of an obsession for Vix and leads to her making many many decisions that are not the best for her. 

Let's talk about the 'beautiful people' themselves. A bunch of wealthy, entitled, gorgeous people who want for nothing. Who go through life expecting to receive everything that they wish for, who rarely consider the feelings of others, yet who attract so many hangers-on. People want to be seen with them, they think their beauty will rub off on them. 

This is a complex, captivating and extremely dark story, one that lures the reader in and doesn't let go until the crescendo of a finish. The toxicity of this group of friends is palpable, and the vulnerability of Vix and her desperation to be accepted is both heart breaking, and recognisable. There are characters who do go some way to redeem themselves, there are others who just become worse and more evil as the story progresses. It is a finely tuned tale of privilege and power and the absolute destruction that this can cause. 

Powerful, emotive and utterly brilliant. Highly recommended by me. 

Amanda Jennings has written seven novels, and numerous short stories for anthologies
and magazines, and is published both in the UK and abroad. 

She is a contributor to BBC Radio Berkshire and a long-standing judge for the Henley Youth Festival literary competition, has taught writing workshops, and enjoys appearing at literary festivals. 

Before becoming an author, Amanda worked at the BBC as a researcher, and studied History of Art at Cambridge University. 

She lives in a cottage in the middle of the woods in Oxfordshire with her family and a varied assortment of animals.

www.amandajennings.co.uk

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IG @amanda_jennings1