It's official: I'm now on a Laura Purcell binge. I fear I may even be coming a fan of Victorian gothic! Jenny is struggling to get to get by and keep her family together after being disgraced from her last job and her older brother abandoning her to look after the rest of the family on her own. Her brother Greg stole the money meant for her brother’s operation and a woman’s ring and then fled to America. I love that the story is so immersive, which is down to a clever plot but more importantly believable characters that evolve over the course of the novel. None of the characters are sugary sweet, they all have an agenda which is tested in different ways as the cost of loyalty is tested. With six original, audio-exclusive stories, the collection includes brand new writing from: Imogen Hermes Gowar, Andrew Michael Hurley, Laura Purcell, Sarah Moss, Oyinkan Braithwaite and Haroun Khan. Your forthcoming book, The Whispering Muse, publishes in February 2023. Can you tell us anything about it?

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President’s Murder, by Susan Wels (Pegasus Crime)* The book is constructed around a series of plays, each one forming an "Act" of the novel. I'm sure there's some very in depth analysis that could be done around the choice of plays and how they drive the plot of the story, but for me they just felt like they fit it really well. The different tragedies staged in the Mercury showed us different aspects of our stars as things grew progressively more perilous and frightening. Winner of Historical Crime Book of the Year category at The Fingerprint Awards 2022. Shortlisted for an Edgar Award and a Dead Good Readers’ Award.

Yet as Camille and Lucy grow close and cross forbidden boundaries, the fine balance of their woodland home begins to shift: death stalks between the trees, claw-marks rake the doors and the moon rises to the song of a creature Camille has never heard before. Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures

Lilith, the lead actress is desperate to have a taste of the good life, to become an actress so ethereal, so beloved, that people will adore her for eternity. Enter Melpomene and with a pact firmly in place, Lilith soon becomes infamous yet she must remember the shadow that begins to turn her world darker will only make her more and more hungry for things beyond her reach, even when those around Lilith try to warn her about what lurks in the shadows. She has been hired by the jealous Mrs Dyer to become the dresser to the theatre's lead actress, Lilith Erikson, but she has another below the radar task, that of spying on the beautiful and troubled actress in a theatre rife with superstitions and rumours of a curse. Her performances are remarkable, stunning in her powers to enter and possess the roles she plays, it is said that Lilith has made a pact with the tragic muse of Greek mythology, Melpomene, who seems to live in the watch that goes everywhere with her, to help her attain the heights of fame, of becoming the greatest stage actress. Jenny's relationship with the tragic and complicated Lilith, a mesmerising character who wants to makes her mark on the world, seeking love, she has truly suffered, her life unravelling, develops into a kind of friendship. It becomes clear little is as it appears, with strange, sinister and menacing events taking place.I also loved the way the supernatural was presented as something that could be real, or could be an aspect of our characters losing their minds and losing the plot. There was nothing that definitively said "The supernatural elements are real" or "They're all just figments of their imagination" and that uncertainty was quite delicious. I’d like to thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury for approving me for an ARC of this book. I first came across Laura Purcell when I listened to the audio, The Shape of Darkness, since then I have been collecting her books and couldn’t resist reading this one. I read this with my lovely friend Bex via Storygraph. Really creepy gothic horror finds its perfect setting in a Victorian theatre, full of superstition, ambition and dramatic exits! Hardyment, Christina. "Review: The Corset by Laura Purcell". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 11 May 2023.