The Confessions Of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins (Flash Review)

Flash Review

The author weaves the gothic threads of this strong debut novel on a loom of historical plausibility and sensational 'grotesquerie'. You might not always, if not at all, "sympathize" with the "heroine" of this atrocious murder mystery plot, but her clever and lucid voice will get a hold of your attention for a good span of the book. 
My rating:  4 stars.

***Review copy generously offered by Goodreads Giveaways in exchange for an unbiased opinion.

About the Book

THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON

By

Sara Collins

Published by Harper Collins

May 21, 2019

Hardcover, 384 pages

Historical Fiction, Mystery

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They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done?

1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, [...], seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth.

For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed.

But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved?

In The Night Wood by Dale Bailey (Book Spotlight)

Favorite Quote

"Perhaps stories had no beginnings or endings at all. Perhaps they simply branched out forever, like rivers, one from another, enveloping you for your brief span, each life a story within a story, intersecting with thousands of other stories... ."

My rating: 5 stars

About the Book

IN THE NIGHT WOOD

By

Dale Bailey

Published by John Joseph Adams

(An Imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

October 9, 2018

Hardcover, 214 pages

Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic, Horror

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In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject.

American Charles Hayden came to England to forget the past.

Failed father, failed husband, and failed scholar, Charles hopes to put his life back together with a biography of Caedmon Hollow, the long-dead author of a legendary Victorian children's book, In the Night Wood. But soon after settling into Hollow's remote Yorkshire home, Charles learns that the past isn't dead.

In the neighboring village, Charles meets a woman he might have loved, a child who could have been his own lost daughter, and the ghost of a self he thought he'd put behind him.

And in the primeval forest surrounding Caedmon Hollow's ancestral home, an ancient power is stirring. The horned figure of a long-forgotten king haunts Charles Hayden's dreams. And every morning the fringe of darkling trees presses closer.

Soon enough, Charles will venture into the night wood.

Soon enough he'll learn that the darkness under the trees is but a shadow of the darkness that waits inside us all.