Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

.                                Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey. "I've missed this tiny thing for nearly seventy years. And now the earth, made sludgy and chewable with the melting snow, has spat out a relic. Spat it into my hands. But where from?" It seems that Healey's paternal grandmother who had been showing signs of senility came out with the simple but inspiring phrase that prompted this debut novel: "My friend is missing." The critics loved it. I loved it. Healey didn't want it to be too bleak portraying a vulnerable octogenarian showing signs of dementia, trapped in a life of boredom and tedium: watching or attempting to watch  tv, attempting to read when the words don't make sense, waiting endlessly for the carer or the daughter. What a life! Nine publishers fought over its publication and the tv rights hav...

                  The Harlot's Garden by Nikki Dee. "I run a brothel, I sell babies and have offered protection to those you would see hanged, and you concern yourself with the way separating my boys will reflect on me." The story is set around 1774, mainly covering Worcester and constitutes Book 1 of the Sansome Springs Trilogy. The public hanging of Matthew Morgan in Red Hill had taken place a few years prior, in 1760. Simultaneously, his young bride Susan was giving birth to his twins: Ruby and Ellie to celebrate her widowhood. Note the irony! Looking after one unwanted baby for a young lass of 17 was more than enough but a second one? Susan asked her friend Ann to drown one of the babies but she refused. It was commonplace to abandon unwanted babies although Worcester saw a thriving trade in selling babies. Destitution, abandonment and being the mother of two unwanted babies without a husband to support her seemed like a de...