[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]
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{{newreview
|title=The Luminaries
|author=Eleanor Catton
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for you.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison MacLeod
|summary= Hannah Gardner Price lives in Nantucket, a small New England island with fortunes based on the whaling trade. As it's 1845, Hannah's life is based on what her father feels is best for her. This is unfortunately reinforced by the fact that Nantucket is not just an island geographically but also insular in outlook and expectations as the claustrophobic, small community revolves around the weekly Friends' Meeting of its Quaker faith. Why unfortunately? Hannah is highly intelligent, in her mid-20s, unmarried, practically runs her family's navigational instrument business since her twin brother dashed off to sea and has a scientific passion for astronomy, all of which are at odds with societal normality. However, this is just the beginning. When Isaac Martin, a ship's black second mate, brings Hannah a chronometer to repair he becomes a presence that will shake her community as it shakes her world.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718159926</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rhidian Brook
|title=The Aftermath
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''The Aftermath'' is set amongst the devastated ruins in the fire-bombed city of Hamburg in 1946. The British have occupied the ruined city and Colonel Lewis Morgan, an officer and a gentleman, is charged with overseeing the restoration of order. However, Colonel Morgan must first deal with the human cost of the bombing including remnants of fanatic Nazis, the ''trummerkind'' - children of the rubble, and the starving civil populace. He also, in 1943, lost a child due to a Luftwaffe bomb and he must support his deeply grieving wife, Rachel, when she arrives after months of separation with their surviving twelve year old boy, the impressionable Edmund.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921122</amazonuk>
}}