St. Giles in the 1730s was one of the most impoverished areas of London. Widowed Mrs. Temperance Dews runs a children’s home for orphaned and foundling children, with the help of her younger brother, Winter Makepeace, who also tutors the boys until they’re old enough to apprentice out. Caring for nearly 30 children between infancy and nine is hard, thankless work and the siblings have trouble making ends meet. They’re in arrears on their rent and facing eviction at any moment. So when the mysterious […]
The film was better (at least in my memory)
Sometime in the first decade of the 20th Century, young Miss Lucy Honeychurch is in Florence with her older, constantly worrying cousin Charlotte Bartlett as companion and chaperone. When they discover that the rooms they’ve been assigned have no nice view, Lucy is disappointed. An older gentleman, Mr. Emerson, offers to trade them, as the rooms he and his son were given have lovely views. “Ladies care about that sort of thing, men do not”. Miss Bartlett is worried about the impropriety of the trade, […]
Two mysteries for the price of one
This book, which is quite long (longest audio book I’ve listened to to date) gives the readers two mysteries for the price of one. Back in 1984, three 12-year-olds went missing in the wood of a Dublin suburb. Search parties eventually found one of them, Adam Ryan, clutching a tree trunk in catatonic terror, several rips at the back of his t-shirt and his shoes filled with blood. His two friends, however, were gone without a trace. Adam didn’t remember anything since entering the wood […]
This review is mainly pictures. But pictures are worth a thousand words, right? Bam! Instant word count.
When preparing to write this review, I got quite a surprise. I searched in the archives on my blog and on Goodreads to find my review of the first Hark! A Vagrant book and discovered that not only had I not reviewed it at any point, but I hadn’t even entered it as read on Goodreads. I have absolutely no idea why, as I got the first book back in 2011 and was extremely happy that Kate Beaton was finally collecting some of her amazing […]