Please welcome another of my favourite writers onto the blog! Jane Cable writes my kind of books – part historical, a bit spooky sometimes and one hundred percent wonderful! Here she is with her Take Three Books. Over to you, Jane!
The book I would most like to have written…
I was going to choose Rosanna Ley’s The Forever Garden as the book I would most like to have written, but as you’ve reviewed it yourself recently I’m going for Elizabeth Buchan’s The Museum of Broken Promises.
There is something about Buchan’s writing which leaves me in awe; there’s an intricacy to it, an eye for every detail, without forcing it down your throat or getting in the way of the plot. As a reader you just sort of absorb it; I read the book four years ago and I still feel as though I was in Prague (somewhere I’ve never been) on a hot summer night at the height of the cold war, and that shows a great deal of skill on the author’s part.
I also loved the premise of this particular book… the Museum of Broken Promises… where all the artefacts have been donated by ordinary people as tokens of loss. I’ve since found out there’s a real museum very like it in Zagreb.
Another recommendation to add to my teetering TBR pile. This blog is seriously damaging my wallet! Now tell us about the book which inspires you, Jane. Think there’s a bit of cheating going on here. Not for the first time on Take Three Books!
Not a book, but a series (and apologies if that’s cheating), but writing as I do in Georgian/Regency Cornwall, it has to be Winston Graham’s Poldark novels. Not only do they have the most wonderful characters, but his depiction of Cornwall at the time is second to none and takes me there in a way no history book ever could.
I have often found myself in libraries and archives, tripping over his meticulous research, so I know I can rely on it. I have caught him out once though – and only once. In The Black Moon, set in the mid 1790s, Ross and Demelza dine with the Daniell family at Trelissick, but they did not take on the lease of the house until 1805. Perhaps Graham simply thought it would be more interesting to take his characters there than the townhouse in Truro where the family lived at the time.
I found myself following the Poldarks again in my most recent book, because in The Four Swans they frequently visit the Bassets of Tehidy.
And now share your third book, your latest release. Also set in Cornwall, I believe?
The Lost Heir is the second of my Cornish Echoes dual timelines, which are standalone novels looking back to the great houses of Regency Cornwall, the heyday of mining, when Truro was second only to Bath as the place to see and be seen in the West Country.
I love walking the country park around where Tehidy house once stood and decided to dig a little more into the history of the Bassets. I was instantly intrigued; in the era I was looking at they had a daughter, Frances, who must have been one of the most eligible young women in England at the time, yet never married. Why not? History gave me scant (but a few) clues, so she absolutely fascinated me. And when I stumbled across the fact she reputedly had a half-brother who was a local smuggler I couldn’t resist telling my own version of their story.
Meanwhile in the twenty-first century, during lockdown Carla meets a man with a very dark aura while walking on the cliffs. He’s handsome and charming, but could he be hiding something? He lives in Tehidy’s former stables… is there a link to the past lurking there?
What a fabulous cover, Jane. It’s gone on my TBR now! Tell us more about where we can buy it and how we can find you.
The Lost Heir is published by Sapere Books and available as an ebook or paperback through Amazon:
https://getbook.at/LostHeir
To find out more about my books, visit www.janecable.com, or follow my Facebook page, Jane Cable, Author.
Thank you so much for guesting and telling us all about your books. Huge congratulations on your new release!