Here at Stanfords we get a lot of customers asking for recommendations for fiction set in the place they are planning to go so that they can enjoy some in situ reading. With the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards later on this month, we thought we would take a closer look at the shortlisted titles in the Viking Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place category. Perhaps something on the list will inspire your next trip.
Last night we hosted the launch of debut author Flora Carr’s historical novel The Tower.
Three women cross a loch. It is 1567, one of them is pregnant, two of them fretful. The boat takes them to Lochleven castle in the middle of the water. Awaiting them are courtiers braying for blood, hellbent on keeping one of them under lock and key: Mary Queen of Scots.
In the tower, Mary’s maids Frenchwoman, Cuckoo and watchful Scot, Jane are her only allies, and the chamber their entire world. A new reality sets in where they are at the mercy of not only their keepers, but of raging Scotland itself.
In the outside world, Mary’s kin, Queen Elizabeth claims she can do little but write. Downstairs, the shrewd jailor-courtier Margaret Erskine places her daughter-in-law Agnes in the chamber as her pair of eyes. Hope seems futile until the bewitching Lady Seton arrives. Seton’s power shifts everything in the tower and soon a plan is hatched.
But which of them will risk it all to save their mistress? Which woman loves her queen best? The Tower is a triumphant story of desire, grit, God-given power and wiles from a striking new voice in historical fiction.
