HISTORICAL

THE VOYAGEUR

by Paul Carlucci (Swift Press £16.99, 400pp) RUM-SOAKED, laudanum-addled and at the mercy of amoral ne’er-do-wells, a ‘skinny and feeble and fragile’ anti-hero heads into the wilds of 1830s British north America in carlucci’s swaggering debut.

Alex, easily led, motherless and awaiting the return of his father, is eking out an existence as a stock boy. then along comes charismatic Serge, a drunken fur trader, who offers him friendship, love and a place on a testy expedition. the atmosphere is hostile, characters are unpredictable, guns are loaded and, in a skirmish at a trading post, Alex gets shot.

rescue appears in the shape of Dr Beaumont, but in a dark and violent world, kindness comes with a mercenary agenda, as the doctor sets about exploiting his luckless patient for his own ends in this unrelentingly bleak frontier story.

THE HOUSEHOLD by Stacey Halls (Manilla Press £16.99, 400pp)

PRISONS, a fine townhouse and a small home in the countryside are the settings for halls’ fourth compelling novel.

Based on a real endeavour founded by charles Dickens and wealthy heiress Angela Burdett-coutts, who created a refuge for ‘fallen women’, halls unspools the story of urania cottage and its inhabitants. they include staunch housekeeper Mrs holdsworth, who’s often infuriated by the inept interference of the trustees, elegant Martha, who worked on the streets, and the irrepressible Annie, a petty thief.

As the women test the bounds and freedoms of their new situation, Angela is feeling equally circumscribed; her stalker has just been released from prison and, like the women she’s helping, she feels ‘like a mouse in a skirting board with the hole stuffed’. As ever, halls’s storytelling is acutely observed and beautifully written.

NIGHT WHEREVER WE GO by Tracey Rose Peyton (Borough Press £9.99, 304pp)

THERE’S power and poetry in the pages of Peyton’s harrowing, haunting debut, where trauma and transcendence leave their indelible marks.

telling the stories of six enslaved women, it gives voice to Alice, nan, Lulu, Patience, Serah and Junie, who are attempting to survive the brutal regime on a failing cotton plantation in texas. they are owned by the irascible, quarrelling couple Lizzie and charles harlow, but the six companions know them as ‘just Lucy, spawn of Lucifer, kin of the devil in the most wretched place most of us have ever known’.

the women tell their histories, tales full of loss, love and indefinable, defiant hope, but their bravery and resilience is tested to the quick when charles decides to force the women to bear children for his profit.