Tabi’s Recommended Reads

Normally you have three reads, but in this issue, you have 7 reads to choose from!

At this year’s Wigtown Book Festival, I have the pleasure of chairing and interviewing 8 guest authors. As a result, my pile of books to read, which is always considerable, just got much taller.

Here are my reads – I figure if I am going to be reading them, you may enjoy reading some of them along with me.

Queen K, Sarah Thomas

The ‘dark and brilliant’ 2023 debut novel that uncovers the corruption of the Russian super-rich

“On a balmy evening in late March, an oligarch’s wife hosts a party on a superyacht moored in the Maldives. Tables cover the massive deck, adorned with orchids, champagne bottles, name cards of celebrities. This is what Kata has wanted for a long time: acceptance into the glittering world of high society. But there are those who aim to come between Kata and her goal, and they are closer to home than she could have imagined.

Exquisitely written and deliciously unreliable, Queen K takes the reader to some of the most luxurious places in the world. But a dark refrain sounds from the very beginning of the story and grows towards its operatic finale: a novel about insatiable material desire can only ever be a tragedy.”

Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began, Leah Hazard

A landmark book on the womb - its history, its present and the possibilities for its future - by the bestselling author of Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story

The womb is the most miraculous organ in the body - with the power to bring life or cause death; to yield joy or pain - yet most of us know almost nothing about it.

In this book, midwife and bestselling author Leah Hazard sets out on a journey to explore the rich past, complex present and dynamic future of the uterus. She speaks to the Californian doctor who believes women deserve a period-free life; walks in the footsteps of the Scottish woman whose Caesarean section changed childbirth forever; uncovers America’s long history of forced and coercive sterilisation; observes uterine transplant surgery in Sweden and takes a very personal dive into the world of ‘womb wellness’.

Beloved Poison, E.S. Thompson

A dark and richly atmospheric thriller

“London, 1846.

Ramshackle and crumbling, St Saviour’s Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and cramped corridors, the doctors bicker and fight. Ambition, jealousy and hatred seethe beneath the veneer of professional courtesy.

Always an outsider, and with a secret of her own to hide, apothecary Jem Flockhart observes everything, but says nothing. And then six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and a bundle of mouldering rags.

When Jem comes across these strange relics hidden inside the infirmary’s old chapel, her quest to understand their meaning prises open a long-forgotten past - with fatal consequences . . .”

Ritual of Fire, D.V. Bishop

Ceremonial murder has returned to Florence. Only two men can end the destruction. Featuring Officer Cesare Aldo, Ritual of Fire is an atmospheric historical thriller by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Italy.

“Florence. Summer, 1538.

A night patrol finds a wealthy merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city’s main square. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence. Forty years earlier, puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola was executed the same way. Does this new killing mean his fanatical disciples are reviving the monk’s regime of holy terror?

Cesare Aldo is busy hunting thieves in the Tuscan countryside, leaving Constable Carlo Strocchi to investigate the killing. When another merchant is burned alive in public, the rich start fleeing to their country estates. But the Tuscan hills can also be dangerous.

Growing religious fervour and a scorching heatwave drives the city ever closer to madness. Meanwhile, someone is stalking those powerful men who forged lifelong bonds in the dark days of Savonarola. Unless Aldo and Strocchi work together, all of Florence will be consumed by an inferno of death and destruction.”

On The Ho Chi Minh TrailThe Blood Road, The Women Who Defended It, The Legacy, Sherry Buchanan

Part travelogue, part history, and part reflective meditation on conflict and reconciliation, Sherry Buchanan’s new book offers both a personal and historical exploration of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, highlighting the critical role women militia and soldiers played in defending the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War.

Accompanied by two travelling companions, Buchanan winds her way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in the south. Driving through the spectacular scenery of Vietnam and Laos, she encounters locations from the Truong Son mountains, the Phong Nha Caves, ancient citadels and Confucian temples to the Khmer Temple of Wat Phu at the western-most point of the Trail in Laos. Buchanan records her interactions―both scheduled and spontaneous― with those who experienced the Vietnam War firsthand, and these conversations with combatants and civilians provide new perspectives on the War. She listens to the women who defended the Trail roads against the greatest bombing campaign in modern times, walks through minefields with the demolition teams hunting for unexploded ordnance, and meets American veterans who have returned to Vietnam with an urge to “do something.”

Buchanan weaves informative, and often humorous, tales from her journey with excerpts from the accounts of others, situating the locations she visits in their historical and political context. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail brings together geography, history, and personal accounts to readdress the culture of indifference to the War, bringing to light the scale of the tragedy, its lasting legacies, and our memory of it.

The Funny Thing About Death, Jo Caulfield

The Funny Thing About Death is a hilarious memoir of two unconventional girls growing up in the 1970s.

Six years ago, Jo Caulfield was about to go on stage when she found out that her big sister Annie had cancer. Not the best way to start a nationwide comedy tour. But the tour turns out to be a welcome distraction for both sisters. As Jo reports back from various hotels and service stations, they revisit their childhood and adolescence while navigating Annie’s illness, learning through trial and error how to behave when someone you love gets sick.

The Funny Thing About Death is a hilarious memoir of two unconventional girls growing up in the 1970s. They didn’t fit in at the Air Force bases they were raised on or the strict convent boarding school they were sent to. The Air Force was obsessed with communists and the nuns were obsessed with the Virgin Mary, neither of which were of interest to Jo or Annie.

Annie was witty, spiky and greedy for life, rushing to be ‘interesting’ and experience adventures. She travelled the world and became a screenwriter and broadcaster. Jo was equally rebellious but didn’t have a plan. She just wanted to be interesting like her big sister and thought it might involve eyeliner, smoking and being in a band.

Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches: Scottish women to live your life by, Mairi Kidd

For the festival, I have the pleasure of reading Mairi’s new work, which has not been published as yet. But I can highly recommend this. It is the perfect compendium of feisty Scottish ladies to live your life by.

From the Author

The last words in this book are for the countless women whose stories have gone unrecorded over the centuries. Fishwives and herring gutters, farm quines and dairy maids, coalhowkers and millworkers, knitters and sewers and weavers and washerwomen, cooks and cleaners, teachers and bank clerks and bus-drivers and shop assistants and administrators and pharmacists and midwives and doctors and nurses; mothers, daughters, widows, lovers and friends in their millions. Their threads are the ground of our history, the warp and the weft of the fabric of Scotland. This book is for them.