#Blogtour The Ghost Ship by Kate Moses @katemoss @MantleBooks @annecater #RandomThingsTours #TheGhostShip

The Blurb

The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It is known only as the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate those enslaved during the course of their merciless raids, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands.

But the bravest among them are not who they seem. The stakes could not be higher. If arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?

A sweeping and epic love story, ranging from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is a thrilling novel of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the High Seas. Most of all, it is a tale of defiant women in a man’s world.

My Review

Kate Mosse has to be one of the biggest advocates of female authors worldwide but she is also one of our best historical authors.

The Ghost Ship is the third in her series of novels featuring the Jouberts. Now before you say ‘I haven’t read the other two’ fear not, it was definitely not necessary.

A strong family with a rich heritage Louise Joubert appeared to be the last. She was wealthy, intelligent, independent and after reading this book one of my all time favourite heroines.

Mosse portrayed a woman who lived in a man’s world, land the place she so disliked, her ship and the open seas her home, her comfort. Respected by those she worked with, hated by those who felt threatened, Mosse had created one hell of a woman.

Yes, she was strong, brave, but Mosse didn’t let Louise lose her femininity, a sense of vulnerability, the occasional lapse in confidence. It was her right hand person, her lover, Gilles, who Mosse used beautifully to bring out Louise’s more genteel side.

They were a formidable team as they waged battle against pirates freeing their human cargo destined for slavery. Her crew were full of misfits, their loyalty and ingenuity in the tightest spots provided pure drama that you couldn’t help but admire.

When the worst happened and Louise found herself cornered by those who despised her, her life in danger, the loyal Giles stepped up.

Mosse showed a person steadfast in their determination to put his Captain back on board her ship. It was a tense, nail biting race against time that saw the furtive turning of pages at great speed to get it the end and hope for a happy conclusion.

The historical detail was superb, the sense of time and place beautifully captured. I didn’t want to use the word swashbuckling, but you can’t not when your imagination runs wild, images of ships on the big seas battling it out to come out victorious.

A fantastic novel and long life Louise Joubert piratess of her time.

I would like to thank Mantle Books for a copy of The Ghost Ship to read and review and to Random Things Tours for inviting My Bookish Blogspot to participate in the blogtour.

About the author

Kate Mosse is an award-winning novelist, playwright, essayist and non-fiction writer, the author of eight novels and short story collections, including the multimillion-selling Languedoc Trilogy, The Burning Chambers Series and number one bestselling Gothic fiction The Winter Ghosts and The Taxidermist’s Daughter. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and published in more than forty countries. The Founder Director of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, she is the Founder of the global Woman In History campaign.

#Blogtour Our American Friend by Anna Pitoniak @annapitoniak @noexitpress @annecater #RandomThingsTours #OurAmericanFriend

No Exit Press 29th June 2023

The Blurb

A mysterious First Lady. The intrepid journalist writing her biography. And the secret that could destroy them both.
Tired of covering the grating dysfunction of Washington and the increasingly outrageous antics of President Henry Caine, White House correspondent Sofie Morse quits her job and plans to leave politics behind.
But when she gets a call from the office of First Lady Lara Caine, inviting her to come in for a private meeting with Lara, Sofie’s curiosity is piqued. Sofie, like the rest of the world, knows little about Lara – only that she was born in Soviet Russia, raised in Paris, and worked as a model before moving to America and marrying the notoriously brash future president.
When Lara asks Sofie to write her official biography, and to finally fill in the gaps of her history, Sofie’s curiosity gets the better of her. She begins to spend more and more time in the White House, slowly developing a bond with Lara.
As Lara’s story unfolds, Sofie can’t help but wonder why Lara is rehashing such sensitive information. Why tell Sofie? And why now? Suddenly Sofie is in the middle of a game of cat and mouse that could have explosive ramifications.

My Review

Ohh Our American Friend was so good, as Pitoniak gave us her version of an American first lady, incidentally Russian, who decided to tell her story to a personally chosen journalist, Sofie.

Sofie was surprised and shocked with that niggling doubt at the back of her mind that maybe there was an alternative reason she had been chosen, but pushed those thoughts to one side as she set up that first meeting.

Pitoniak infused the narrative with simmering tension as Sofie and Lara tiptoed around each other, Lara the one with the upper hand, the one who could dismiss her at anytime.

Step by step Lara’s story unfurled and it wasn’t at all I was expecting. Pitoniak hurtled us back to the cold war, to Paris, Lara’s family ensconced in an apartment, courtesy of her father’s job as a KGB agent. Life was good until Lara met her first and only love, a love fraught with danger, one that went against everything her parents and indeed her country had taught her.

I loved the growing closeness between Lara and Sofie, almost as if Lara drew her in before unceremoniously spitting her out, leaving her high and dry and left Sofie with the difficult choice to publish the sensational story she already had or to hold fire and see if Lara re-emerged.

What Sofie hadn’t bargained for was the fall out, the surprises that arrived in her own home, the need to flee, to fear the danger that lurked in the shadows.

There were blindingly obvious similarities to the Trump administration but that was secondary to the main crux of the novel. What stood out were the descriptions of a cold war, of a young girl in love, who committed the ultimate betrayal but was strong enough to rebuild her life and succeed.

Pitoniak gets better with each novel and I look forward to the next one.

I would like to thank No Exit Press for a copy of Our American friend to read and review and to Random Things Tours for inviting My Bookish Blogspot to participate in the blogtour.

About the author

Anna Pitoniak is the author of The Futures, Necessary People, and Our American Friend. She graduated from Yale, where she majored in English and was an editor at the Yale Daily News. She worked for many years in book publishing, most recently as a Senior Editor at Random House. Anna grew up in Whistler, British Columbia, and now lives in New York

#Blogtour One by Eve Smith @evecsmith @OrendaBooks @annecater #RandomThingsTours #one

Orenda Books 20th July 2023

The Blurb

One law. One child. Seven million crimes…

A cataclysmic climate emergency has spawned a one-child policy in the UK, ruthlessly enforced by a totalitarian regime. Compulsory abortion of ‘excess’ pregnancies and mandatory contraceptive implants are now the norm, and families must adhere to strict consumption quotas as the world descends into chaos.

Kai is a 25-year-old `baby reaper´, working for the Ministry of Population and Family Planning. If any of her assigned families attempt to exceed their child quota, she ensures they pay the price.

Until, one morning, she discovers that an illegal sibling on her Ministry hit-list is hers. And to protect her parents from severe penalties, she must secretly investigate before anyone else finds out.

My Review

We never knew how far into the future Smith took us, but that didn’t matter, all we had to know was that climate change had destroyed much of the country, the government penalised you if you went over your energy limit and you could only have one child.

Were we in China?? Absolutely not, this was England and apparently over population had done much to contribute to the current climate catastrophe.

Kai was all in, if the government said jump then she was there, her job as a ‘baby reaper’ a sign of success and a great source of pride. But was it, as women dreaded her knock on the door, as she delivered what they didn’t want to hear. Their pregnancy was doomed, it contravened the one child policy, or what about those who accidently fell pregnant, the father not wanting to waste his one child opportunity on a fling, a mistake.

I found it utterly terrifying, Kai unlikeable, her holier than thou power distasteful, her impatience with her parents, her grandparents when they outstripped their energy limit disrespectful.

No doubt this was Smith’s intention before the curve ball arrived and suddenly Kai’s reasoning, her whole belief system collapsed around her. How could she have an illegal sibling, who was she, why did her parents lie?

The collapse was slow and prolonged so Smith could challenge her, make her think, discover more and more about what lay behind the machinations of government, or should we say regime.

Meeting her sister Senke, was restrained, suspicion on both sides, trust something that had to be earned. It was like Smith used Senke as a little hammer that slowly chipped away at everything Kai truly believed in, throwing little nuggets of information that Kai could not resist investigating.

Danger loomed, the government trembled as their hold over the population teetered on the brink, until finally the truth, as it finally toppled them over.

It wasn’t quite the hearts and flowers ending, but then that is not something I would expect from Smith. What Smith did so brilliantly was leave you with questions, and thoughts about what you had just read.

Coercive control of women is nothing new, but would those in authority in our country use birth control as a way to hold power, to dangle climate change in our faces, frighten us, hold us in the palm of their hand and slowly crush any individuality from us.

Of course their are countries in the world that do just that, but the UK, really, would they, could they? All speculative but then that’s what Smith does best, she challenges, uses her furtive and ingenuous imagination to write what we don’t want to think about. Maybe we should pay more attention, maybe’s Smith’s fiction could one day become fact?

I could say I don’t care because I enjoy reading Smith’s novels, but I do care and I for one will be wondering just what Smith’s crystal ball will be revealing next.

I would like to thank Orenda Books for a copy of One to read and review and to Random Things Tours for inviting My Bookish Blogspot to participate in the blogtour.

About the author

Eve Smith writes speculative fiction, mainly about the things that scare her. She attributes her love of all things dark and dystopian to a childhood watching Tales of the Unexpected and black-and-white Edgar Allen Poe double bills. In this world of questionable facts, stats and news, she believes storytelling is more important than ever to engage people in real life issues.

Longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize and described by Waterstones as “an exciting new voice in crime fiction”, Eve’s debut novel The Waiting Rooms, set in the aftermath of an antibiotic resistance crisis, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award and was selected as a Book of the Month by Eric Brown in The Guardian who compared her writing to Michael Crichton’s.

Eve’s previous job as COO of an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places. When she’s not writing she’s racing across fields after her dog, trying to organise herself and her family, or off exploring somewhere new.

Follow Eve on Twitter @evecsmith & www.evesmithauthor.com
Instagram: evesmithauthor Facebook: EveSmithAuthor