HISTORICAL

ELIZABETH BUCHAN

RED SKY AT NOON by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Century £16.99)

BeNyA GOlDeN is released from Stalin’s Gulag in 1942 in order to join a convict Cossack battalion. Mounted on his mare Silver Socks, he sets off to penetrate enemy lines, where he encounters Fabiana, an Italian nurse.

Meanwhile, in the Kremlin, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana is unwisely falling in love with a journalist. In this third volume of the Moscow trilogy, the fate of combatants and civilians is often harsh. with his feel for vivid and immediate drama and impressive research, the author evokes the extreme turbulence and violence impacting on individuals.

writing with passion, Montefiore makes the point that, up against the huge forces of war and change, the struggle for personal resolution can be tragic — but never wasted.

PRAGUE NIGHTS by Benjamin Black

(Viking £14.99) AUthOr of the Dublinbased Quirke crime novels, Benjamin Black is the pen name of Booker prizewinning John Banville.

the setting is Prague in 1599 when Christian Stern, a young German scholar, arrives in the city and stumbles over the body of the emperor’s mistress — which puts him in acute danger of being charged with her murder.

But the emperor asks him to find the killer. why? the court seethes with tricksters, necromancers and the powerhungry. Its politics, alliances and vendettas are labyrinthine and often impenetrable.

Can Stern disinter the truth and keep the emperor’s trust?

the upside is the atmospheric evocation of a city frozen by winter and riddled with intrigue. the downside is the lack of that extra edge.

THE FLOATING THEATRE by Martha Conway

(Zaffre £12.99) ABANDONeD by her actress cousin and penniless, May Bedloe applies for a job as a seamstress on a floating theatre flatboat plying up and down the settlements on the Ohio river.

In 1838, the river marks the boundary between the increasingly hostile abolitionist North and the slaveowning Southern states.

Dogged by debt, May agrees to undertake the dangerous mission of rowing slaves across the water to freedom. If caught, the penalties are dire not only for her, but for the man whom she is growing to love.

An engaging story with lovely detail and moments of comedy, its quirky characters and love story work well in counterpoint to its grim subject.

May is no simpering heroine, in fact, she’s quite snippy — but she is all the better for that.