Books
by Kate Mosse
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Citadel |
Set during WW II, this final novel in Mosse's Languedoc trilogy (bwl 33 and 47) has all the hallmarks of its predecessors. Atmospheric, mystical, peopled with extraordinary but believable characters, it pits the forces of evil and darkness against those of life and light, as it tells the story of 18 year-old Sandrine as she is gradually drawn into the role of resistance fighter. If you like Mosse, you'll love it, if not - best avoid.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 70 Autumn 2013) |
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Labyrinth |
Set around Carcassonne, jumping back and forth across 800 years, it's the story of two women's parallel quests to protect three books holding the secret of the Grail. The medieval sections are tremendously atmospheric: you can really imagine Carcassonne before the tourists came. A rollicking good read, if you're prepared to accept some of the more mystical elements (and much better than the over-hyped Da Vinci Code, bwl 23) - I couldn't put it down.
(Annie Noble - bwl 33 February 2006) |
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Sepulchre |
Another mystical tale centred around the Carcassonne area of France. It focuses on a young girl in the 1890s who flees Paris to a country estate in Rennes-les-Bains to escape her brother's violent enemy; a parallel story, set in 2007, focuses on an American researching a biography of Debussy who comes to the same place. While, like Labyrinth (bwl 33), the story is completely preposterous in places, for some reason I simply couldn't put it down.
(Annie Noble - bwl 47 September 2008) |
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The Joubert Family trilogy: The Burning Chambers; City of Tears; The Ghost Ship |
If you want to escape from this world's horrors then bag yourself this trilogy - set in 16th century Languedoc with its Cathars and Huguenots, it begins with a letter Minou receives SHE KNOWS THAT YOU LIVE - from then on it is all love, intrigues, betrayals, conspiracies - pure fantasy. And now there's a fourth book!
(Jenny Baker - bwl 114 Autumn 2024) |
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The Winter Ghosts |
In 1928 the car in which a young Englishman is driving through the French Pyrenees spins off the road during a snowstorm, seeking help he stumbles through woods into a remote village, where all is not as it seems, people behave oddly, time plays strange tricks . . . and so begins a delicious spooky tale set in the author's beloved Languedoc haunted by the lives and fate of the Cathars.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 56 Spring 2010) |
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