Sara Sheridan

I came across [b:Where are the Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland|45717145|Where are the Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland|Sara Sheridan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557571276l/45717145._SY75_.jpg|70495148] in a charity shop and couldn't resist reading it immediately. An excellent concept with great execution: it's a tourist guidebook to an alternate Scotland that commemorates women's achievements. In reality, my lovely home of Edinburgh is show more notorious for having many, many statues of men but more of animals than women. Sheridan ranges around Scotland from Edinburgh to the Shetland Islands, gleefully renaming landmarks and inventing new statues, memorials, museums, and festivals. The most audacious renamings are probably Magdelene (St Andrews) and Fort Mary (Fort William). Among my favourites are Destiny Station (Waverley), Princess Street (Princes), and Suffragette Square (St Andrews), as all three places are very familiar. However there's so much more to the book than changing names. Sheridan brings out the stories of a great many Scottish women I knew nothing about and conjures memorials worthy of them in appropriate locations. I really appreciated her efforts to incorporate Scotland's history with slavery, witch trials, and the Highland Clearances into the recognition of women's history.

I was left feeling uplifted, fascinated, and eager to visit the many museums in this alternate universe. However the vast majority of the information in [b:Where are the Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland|45717145|Where are the Women? A Guide to an Imagined Scotland|Sara Sheridan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557571276l/45717145._SY75_.jpg|70495148] will not be retained in my memory as it doesn't form a contiguous narrative, so I will keep my copy for future reference. That's certainly no trial, as it is also beautifully presented with lovely art. show less

This is a series which improves with time, as we find out more about the characters, their backgrounds, and their motivations.

This time, Mirabelle Bevan is informed that she has inherited a large some of money - but only if she finds out what happened to a man who escaped a German PoW camp in 1942 and was never seen again. The book follows her investigation into what (obviously, or it wouldn't be a very interesting book) expands beyond the realms of a simple missing person case.

A significant show more subplot is Mirabelle's grieving for her lover, Jack, who died several years ago (before Book 1). This has been a running theme through the books, and Mirabelle is finally starting to move on, and also to realise that the Jack she knew was not the whole man. Just as Jack hid his relationship with Mirabelle from others, he also hid things from Mirabelle. Some of those things are revealed in this book.

I enjoyed the way Sheridan dealt with the various aspects of grief here: Mirabelle's grief for Jack, which she has been compelled to keep secret due to the nature of their relationship; wives' publicly acknowledged grief for dead husbands; grief for the end of an era, as Mirabelle realises how much London has changed, and how many people want to move on and forget the war and those who gave so much.

It's also interesting to consider that in most books, the "other woman" is the husband-stealing villainess: here, Mirabelle is the "other woman", and our sympathies lie with her: Mirabelle's love and grief are no less real for not being socially sanctioned.

The main plot, of course, was that of the missing man; in this, Mirabelle is at her elegant, ruthless best. She moves towards the conclusion with a certain smooth implacability, bringing all the threads together and making all tidy, the way only Mirabelle Bevan can.

I think we are also seeing a change in emphasis away from events of the war, and towards the Cold War of the 1950s, which will doubtless be important in the following books. The next book, [b:Operation Goodwood|29610396|Operation Goodwood (Mirabelle Bevan)|Sara Sheridan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1458820546s/29610396.jpg|48369290] is already out on Kindle. show less

Mary Penney, an actress, is taken in by her sister, Jane after she is abandoned by her married aristocrat lover. She stays with her sister's family, giving birth to a son, but the only chance for her family to cast off the stain she has placed on them is her banishment. She is sent to India, but the ship flounders and she is one of the only survivors. Jane and her husband, Robert, plan for her removal again, but it doesn't go to plan so she ends up travelling with her brother-in-law, a show more botanist with a mission. His assignment is to sneak the closely guarded tea plant from Chinese soil. As foreigners are forbidden to travel in China, and the removal of tea a capital offence, the two must travel in disguise, as Chinese.

Mary Penney and her sister, Jane Fortune, could not be more different. Mary is an actress, expressive and impulsive, whereas her sister's plan was to marry up, to become a lady. Mary initially clashes with her straight up and down brother-in-law, who seems to have more time for plants than people. Mary is a strong woman, she misses her son, but reconciles herself with the fact that she can't stay with him. She also adapts more quickly to Chinese life, to the language, and her observance of people helps get Robert and herself out of many a sticky situation.

I enjoyed this, it wasn't a ground breaking romance, but the back story and setting made it worth a read. China was a country closed off to foreigners, except for the ports, and tea, a necessary staple for us Brits, was a product that the Emperor wants kept secret. Robert and Mary set off on a ground breaking trip, with two warring servants to help them. The detail that Sheridan provides show the clash of two very different cultures and the tense situation at the time.

A good summer read. show less

Naval widow Maria Graham is determined to live outside the confines that Georgian society would place on her. She has travelled extensively in South America and is a published writer. Returning to London to deliver her latest manuscript she finds passage on a ship captained by James Henderson. Henderson and his crew have a special delivery to make but when the Captain finds a secret he decides that he needs to change his life around. As attraction between Maria and Henderson grows so the show more distance to London shortens.
Reading this novel I found it a very gentle romance with a bit of social conscience thrown in. There are references to societal norms and to abolitionism which lift it above the being a merely saccharine sweet story and there is the subplot about smuggling and the taste for chocolate in development. however when I'd finished I read the endnotes and discovered that Maria Graham was an actual person which fascinated me. Sheridan has taken an episode in Graham's life and woven her novel around that, it's complete fiction but is grounded and I like that! show less