Bibliofemme Bookclub An Irish Bookclub

It’s 1947. Sisters Dulcie (8) and May (5) live in an alright area of post-war London where their biggest problems are an over-protective father and a mother who cares more about her appearance than where the next meal is coming from. But when the girls find themselves orphaned they soon wake up to a few harsh realities. Placed in the care of

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The Birth of Venus is set in Florence during the turbulent 15th century. The city, once steeped in years of Medici luxury, is besieged by plague, threat of invasion and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk called Savonarola.

This book interweaves Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of 14-year-old Alessandra. Unlike her counterparts

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In the late eighteenth century all women did what their fathers bid them, but Elizabeth Middleton decided she was different. Raised by an elderly aunt in England, Elizabeth travels to join her father at a remote American outpost. Her dream is to teach the local children and run her own school, but she soon realises that her father has brought her

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Set in England, Belgium and Ireland in the aftermath of World War I, The Picture She Took is a love story uncomfortably pinned onto a reasonably well-drawn historical canvas. Beginning in England in the 1920s, it slowly brings together Daniel, a man mentally, physically and emotionally broken by time spent fighting with the Black and Tans, and Jude

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In her debut novel, Rebecca Reisert has taken one of Shakespeare’s most celebrated works for the stage and retold the story through the eyes of a dispossessed teenage girl.

Gilly is our half-savage heroine. She scavenges amongst the dead bodies on the battlefields that scar the Scottish landscape and lives with Nettle and Mad Helga, two haggard

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A native of Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk abandoned his architecture studies to write his first book, but struggled to find a publisher. That was over twenty-five years and eight books ago. He is now Turkey’s best-selling novelist, one of Europe’s most prominent writers and his work has been translated into languages across the globe. Last year

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In 1798 a young woman from Cornwall, Mary Broad, is caught stealing a bonnet in a market; as the market is on a main street this is deemed as Highway Robbery and the sentence at the time is hanging. The sentence is commuted however and reduced to 7 years transportation.

Though at the time this sentence seems preferable to death, Mary spends many moments

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Sarah Waters shot to fame in 2002 when Fingersmith, her third novel, was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize. The Night Watch is Water’s fourth novel and in my mind every bit as good as Fingersmith.

Based in London, the book is set in three distinct times: post war London, London at the height of World War II, and

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