I found this a rich and intriguing book covering continents and centuries. Love, passion, and best of all, chocolate!''In 1518 the 20-year-old Diego leaves Seville bound for Mexico where he joins Cortes's conquistadors and falls in love with the beautiful Ignacia. When Diego is ordered back to Sp...
I like to paint & it's hard to imagine a world without ultramarine, which is made from lapis lazuli. So I was intrigued to read what I thought was a novelized version of the story of its introduction to Western art. The novel touches on a painting called Maestra by Simone Martini as among the fir...
The loveable full-time priest and part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960's Cambridge. On a snowy Thursday morning in Lent 1964, a stranger seeks sanctuary in Grantchester's church, convinced he has murdered his wife. Sidney and his wife Hildegard go...
The students had completed their exams, the punts were out on the river, picnic rugs fluttered down on to daisy-decorated grass, Pimm’s was poured, strawberries were served and the barefoot dancing began. Sidney had just finished a meeting in King’s Parade for a diocesan ministry commission that ...
One account mentioned that the Russian cosmonaut had complained about his inability to find God. He had looked and looked, he had apparently said, but could see no sign of his creator. Sidney expressed irritation at this glib propaganda but Leonard Graham was not worried. He replied that there wa...
He called her mobile but it was switched to automatic answer. He tried to work out what he felt: Fear. Krystyna had never got on the bus at all but had hitched a lift and been abducted. Perhaps he should report her missing. It seemed a bit melodramatic. Anger. She was back in Poland, thinking of ...
He filled a saucepan with water, lowered a speckled specimen into position and placed it on the stove. As the water began to heat up, Sidney commenced his morning routine. It was vital to complete his shaving at the exact moment the water reached boiling point. Then he would prepare his toast. Th...
We dressed in bright-blue cagoules and tried to pretend we preferred wet weather. We’d given Lucy a camera and she took photographs of everything: not only the views and the boats but Coke cans, bits of rope in the road, Martin shaving, the food on her plate in a restaurant, even her own knee. St...
He was on his way to the consecration of Coventry Cathedral where he had worked shortly after the war. Now, seventeen years later, a new building had arisen from the bombed remains; a symbol of defiance against the horrors of history. How much, he wondered, could people recover from the evil of s...