The Birdcage Library invites the reader to unravel a story of long-buried secrets and dark obsession from the author of The Dictator's Wife, as seen on BBC2 Between the Covers. This is one of the best examples of dual time line I have read in a while. Both women were almost talking to each other across time. Emmy and Hester were very different yet I felt an akinship between them, the way Hester led Emmy via her diary to the hidden crannies of that castle. Ooh there’s those goosebumps again. Switching between the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash that hit Ireland harder than most and the 1960s, The Bee Sting is a hilarious, profound family saga that turns on a single moment to produce wide-spreading ripples in time and space. I thoroughly enjoyed this and could not put it down. Complex plot lines, a number of mysteries to solve with some unexpected plot twists thrown in what more could you want?

This is a wonderful piece of writing that transcends sport to pass into something much more revealing about the 20th century, the legacy of a great sporting institution, the pandemic and, well, life itself. Narrated by a Jewish merchant named Eli Ben Abram, Hunt’s tale is set in 1521 Mexica, vulnerable beneath an ominously smoking volcano as a pandemic rages and news comes of a fleet of ships heading their way led by Benmassoud, an Islamic military leader with a fearsome reputation. Emily, our bright and determined adventurer had such an emotional story arc that I couldn’t help but root for her to succeed, and overcome her alcohol dependency, survivors’ guilt (surrounding her twin’s death) and distant relationship with her father. There’s lots I liked in this book: it’s set in Scotland, strong female protagonist, scientific exploration, mystery. The creepy castle in a remote location was excellent, in spite of it being such a wide space, it felt very claustrophobic. The few but odd inhabitants created a constant, oppressive feeling of malaise. This book did atmosphere very well.

There is also a dazzling list of debut authors to discover, including Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose first novel, Promise, is a meaningful tale of heartbreak, courage and resistance. And if it's prize-winning writing you're after, look no further than Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead, which scored this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.

Emily and Hester were great protagonists. While they lived very different lives fifty years apart there were many similarities between them. Both women are strong yet vulnerable. They are plagued by inner torment, fear, and regret while also possessing a fierce resolve and determination. They are also both surrounded by mystery. For Hester, this is her disappearance, while for Emily it is her past and the secrets she’s keeping from the reader. While you are never completely sure if either woman is a reliable narrator, they are easy to like and I was cheering them on at every step. We can’t talk about the characters without mentioning Heinrich Vogel, Emily’s employer and Hester’s brother-in-law. The nonagenarian is a strange man who gets increasingly creepy as the story goes on. I didn’t trust him or his nephew, Yves, one bit, and was worried for Emily’s safety as she’s trapped in the castle with them. The Birdcage Library is a historical novel with two separate perspectives told about fifty years apart. We meet Emmy, our protagonist as she is given a commission to catalogue a taxidermy collection at a remote property in Scotland. Novels that imagine alternative histories usually leave me cold but Hunt’s tale of South America in the early 16th century two decades after the first Europeans arrived (not Christopher Columbus but a fleet of Moorish traders from al-Andalus in a Europe where Christianity never conquered Muslim Spain) promises something quite different. If that sounds like an invitation to a dazzlingly twisty-turny mystery it most certainly is, and part of what makes The Birdcage Library so brilliantly readable is that Freya engrossingly sustains the slow-burning, utterly enrapturing mystery throughout the novel, doling out a revelation here and an insight there and pulling at the threads of multiple decades of hiding and secrets until they all come crashing upon Emily.Her second novel, The Birdcage Library, is out now: an adventuress discovers an old book containing clues about the disappearance of a woman who vanished 50 years before. Set between a Scottish castle in the 1930s and an exotic animal emporium in Gilded Age New York, it's a twisting Gothic tale of secrets, obsession and murder. Oh, and taxidermy.

No decision, especially ones made under stress of any kind, has no consequences, and so it is in The Birdcage Library which is an instructive lesson in how a momentary twist of the existential knife or a caving into the demands of the heart can have far-reaching repercussions down the decades, so much so that dealing with becomes both a thing of sorrow and terror, depending on where you are standing when the consequential birds of your flawed decision-making come home to roost.

The eponymous Kala is a young Irishwoman who disappeared in 2003 from her home village by the sea in the west of Ireland. Fifteen years later, human remains are found just as three of Kala’s gang of friends, long since moved away from the area, happen to return. Told in their three disparate viewpoints, Kala is a novel of secrets that is also a deep examination of what it means to belong; a literary thriller that promises a bright future for an author already being compared to Donna Tartt and Tana French. Pretty much everyone in the novel has a secret of some kind, and while some are highly destructive and some are desperately sad, they are all the product of people making what they believe are the best decisions at the time, blinded by either character flaws, traumatic situations or a need to preserve a particular perspective to avoid hurt or loss. A most intriguing detective story within the most gothic of atmospheres - a double shiver of pleasure' THE CHAP Emily is given the task to find a long-lost treasure which Heinrich believes has been cloistered, and concealed within the remains of the castle, but how can this be when he has been a resident for so many years for there cannot be left anything of note to discover, surely?

Toward the end of things, one thinks about beginnings,” writes Hunt in this unusual, highly original debut novel that will hopefully not prove his only venture into fiction. Emily doesn't really want to go the Scotland and does not relish cataloguing taxidermy in an ancient castle in Scotland. However, after finding The Birdcage Library, Emily embarks on a journey of discovery. To the reader with a most inquisitive mind and a fearless disposition, you are invited to embark on a quest, a treasure hunt, if you will, down a path only a puzzler may dare tread, for the answers to such a perplexing and beguiling puzzle lie hidden within an old and long-forgotten book… If an author can manage to keep all of their novel’s mysterious balls in the air without a collapse fall to the narrative ground, it’s an impressive feat, all the more so if they are able to craft a mystery within that mystery as there is, to winning effect, in Freya Berry’s slice of gothic deliciousness, The Birdcage Library. Now we’re all grown up we’re expected to make a short hop from summer specials to something similarly undemanding. If summer holiday reading is about escaping, about having more time to read away from the constant sleeve-tugging of the working week and being able to do it in relaxed surroundings, then we should just read exactly what we want.

Freya Berry takes readers to Scotland

Lose yourself in a rich, spellbinding story of long-buried secrets and dark obsession from Freya Berry, author of The Dictator’s Wife, as seen on BBC2 Between the Covers. PDF / EPUB File Name: The_Birdcage_Library_-_Freya_Berry.pdf, The_Birdcage_Library_-_Freya_Berry.epub At the end of a celebratory night, Athena chokes to death on a pandan pancake in her apartment, leaving her new manuscript about the Chinese workers sent to the Western Front during the first world war at the mercy of her friend, who steals it, makes some minor alterations and has it published as her own work.