Hideous Progeny imagines a meeting between Mary Shelley, creator of Frankenstein, and Andrew Crosse, a scientist and early experimenter with electricity. In this version of events, Mary’s writing was inspired by her attendance at a lecture delivered by Crosse, and she is visiting him in later life in an attempt to lay the ghosts that have dogged her ever since.

Over the course of a day we see flashbacks to Mary’s earlier life, experience a severe storm and mind-boggling experiments, and witness a local mob trying to destroy the “wizard” Crosse and his unholy studies. Meanwhile, a parallel narrative moves to the final months of Mary’s life, when her brain tumour is advanced and she is slipping in and out of consciousness.

The novel takes us through the (mainly tragic) events of Mary’s life. It references her journals and the lives of those close to her: her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and her children, most of whom did not live for very long. Lord Byron haunts the pages, and his daughter Ada Lovelace features in the story.

However, this is in no sense a biography. It is more an exploration of an inner life, a portrait of a woman haunted by the past – not just her lived past but also her fictional creation.

Like Frankenstein itself, Hideous Progeny is a Gothic novel, with an electric thunderstorm, scientific experiments, hallucinations, and intruders with malevolent intent. As with all the best Gothic tales it has supernatural – or at least fantastical – elements. It is multi-layered, bringing together Mary’s life and work with contemporary ideas about science and religion, a blend of knowledge, ignorance and superstition. We are sometimes left to wonder what is real and what is the product of Mary’s fevered imagination, as her brain tumour and increasing use of laudanum take their hold.

There are clear parallels with Frankenstein: “hideous progeny” is Mary’s own reference to her novel – both the book and the monster within it. The looming presence that always hovers around the periphery of Mary’s vision is the ghosts of her past and the monster she created. “Your story left me lost and alone, wandering in a frozen wilderness,” the monster tells her. “So I stole from you all that you have ever loved… I am within you… a malevolence growing in the brain that spawned me.”

Finally I was left to wonder, what would Mary Shelley have made of this book?

Hideous Progeny: Mary Shelley and her Monster, Vaughn Entwistle, Masque Publishing, 2020, 9780982883099

In 1785 the solitary and mysterious Thomas Peach is living in an isolated house in the Somerset countryside. No-one knows anything about him – his family, his source of income or why he keeps a locked trunk full of books he never seems to read. Or even whether his wife – who lives in an invalid state in an upstairs room, and has never been seen by anyone apart from Peach himself – actually exists.

Things start to change when he loses his income and is forced to seek the company of others. As a consequence, he meets the enigmatic Clarissa Riddle, who is said to be possessed of demons. As events unfold, the reader is left to wonder what exactly is going on…

The Infernal Riddle of Thomas Peach is written in the style of the 18^th century, with much exposition, addressing the reader and directing the reader’s thoughts. It frequently references the classics, particularly Richardson’s Clarissa. However the book it most reminded me of was Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, a long rambling work in which the story – such as it is – unfolds slowly amidst a long stream of narrative.

I have to confess that the discursive style made me impatient and that the initially intriguing mysteries were too slight to maintain my interest. I did enjoy the descriptions of the social life of the time, particularly the gentlemen’s club in Bristol. And I liked the character of Arabella Farthingay (it would have been good to see more of her in the story).However I was not entirely convinced by Clarissa Riddle, or by the conclusion of the tale.

This book might appeal to devotees of 18^th century literature. However I think that some readers might be put off by the style and the slow pace of the narrative.

The Infernal Riddle of Thomas Peach by James Treadwell, Hodder & Stoughton, 2021, 9781529347326

It is 1898 and London – now renamed Londres – is ruled by the French. In this version of history Britain lost the Napoleonic Wars: the aristocracy has been abolished, but slavery has not. Now there is a wave of strange and unexplained amnesia. One of the amnesiacs is Joe Tournier, a slave who happens to have a genius for engineering.

With no memory of his past Joe is always searching for the missing element of his life, guided only by flashes of the past: a man who waits and a woman called Madeline. When he receives a mysterious postcard sent a hundred years earlier he finds himself drawn to a remote Scottish lighthouse, and a sequence of unpredictable but bizarrely logical adventures.

The Kingdoms is a sort of mixture of alternate history, time travel and steampunk. As we move backwards and forward in time we see different possibilities: societies that have been shaped in different ways, and lives that could have been lived but were not.

Joe is diagnosed with paramnesia, “the blurring of something imaginary and something real… the sense you’ve seen something new before”. But in this case his hallucinations may be grounded in reality, a manifestation of a different life he could have lived.

I have enjoyed all of Natasha Pulley’s novels, but I think I liked this one the best. I could empathise with the characters (even in their occasionally brutal moments) and the story was full of ambiguity.

It posed some intriguing questions. What would Britain have been like if it had lost at Trafalgar and Waterloo? Better or worse, or just different? How far can brutality be justified in the pursuit of a greater good? And, of all the paths our lives could have taken, is one more “real” than the others? Or can different versions exist concurrently? A great read and thoroughly recommended.

The Kingdoms, Natasha Pulley, Bloomsbury, 2021, 9781526623119

Land of Big Numbers is the debut collection of short stories by Te-Ping Chen, a journalist who has worked in China, Hong Kong and the US. Most of the stories take place in China, but some follow the fortunes of Chinese ex-pats in America. They cover subjects as diverse as a politically radicalised student, a magical fruit with strange powers, and a would-be inventor who builds machines from bits of cast off rubbish.

Whatever the subject matter, the stories share some big themes. A sense of alienation runs through the book: commuters jostle one another on trains; parents and children fail to understand one another; families are scattered; and people migrate to anonymous cities without knowing what they are looking for. Even those who move to the US cannot escape a feeling of dissociation. It is a feeling that is summed up in the image of the house on a cliff, a dingzihu or isolated house that has been cut off from its neighbours and whose inhabitants are trapped with no way out.

At times the stories seem dystopian. We have a city where visitors are obliged to wear a card that “synced with the city’s sensors and recorded the bearer’s activity”; piped music designed to “soothe tempers”; and electronic games played like sport in a stadium packed with spectators. We have the chilling statement that “if you want to understand your own country, then you’ve already stepped on the path to criminality”. And a group of people stuck for months in an underground station, literally trapped by mindless bureaucracy.

But at the same time we have the minutiae and small pleasures of everyday life. There are kindnesses towards friends and neighbours, flowers left for a dead man, and food raised in a bucket for the inhabitants of the dingzihu house. And people can still dream, whether of love or of riches, of the perfect invention or of an unknown, but better, future.

The stories in Land of Big Numbers are sometimes dark, sometimes humourous, sometimes fantastical. They are small cameos of Chinese life and Chinese people, a window into a very different culture. I look forward to seeing more from this author.

Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen, Scribner UK, 2021, 9781471190599

The Other Daughter is Caroline Bishop’s first novel, a multi-period story set in England and Switzerland. In the present day Jess has travelled to Switzerland in search of answers to questions about her own life. Meanwhile, back in the 1970s, her mother, Sylvia, is trying to forge her career as a journalist. In the course of her work she meets some Swiss women who are fighting for the most basic rights.

The background to the novel is the struggle for women’s rights in the 1970s. It looks back to a time when Swiss women had only just got the vote and were still fighting for legal recognition. Women in Britain had more rights, but society and social expectations still needed to catch up. An additional element is the scandal of the “forced placement” scheme in Switzerland, in which children were removed from poor families and sent to work on farms, sometimes in brutal conditions.

This is also a story about family secrets and personal identity. Secrets are gradually revealed as the book progresses: Jess has had some shocking revelations, but there are more to come. She knows that she was born in Switzerland, and that there is a mystery around the circumstances of her birth, and she is determined to find out more. But at what cost?

The novel poses many questions. How important is it to know the truth? And what makes us what we are? What would have happened if an alternative path had been taken? As the publisher’s blurb describes it, “you only get one life – but what if it isn’t the one you were meant to live?”

I found this a satisfying and absorbing book. I particularly enjoyed the historical aspect – although I previously knew something of the struggles of Swiss feminists, I was completely unaware of the child placement scheme. And, at the same time, the personal stories of Jess and Sylvia created a real page-turner. I couldn’t put it down – a recommended read!

The Other Daughter, Caroline Bishop, Simon & Schuster, 2021, 9781471190056

The premise of the story is interesting and there were some promising themes. I liked the contrast between the misfit Josef and his more compliant, people-pleasing, brother. There is an emphasis upon the human cost of the elite schools, their effect upon young lives. And there the narrative of an inarticulate boy who communicates through paint and colours, and a story of adolescent love.

Yet I felt that there were several missed opportunities. I would have expected most of the boys at the school to have become hardened by the regime (that, surely, was the purpose of the elite schools), but there was little evidence of the characters developing or changing. And the story wasn’t shocking enough. Given that this was wartime, there should have been more casualties among the central characters and their families.

However, my main problem with this book was with the way it was written. There was much more telling than showing, with no subtlety in the way the tale was rolled out. The reader was told what to think at every turn. And the main conceit of the book – Josef’s synesthesia – felt as if it was superimposed upon the story rather than an integral part of it.

That is not to say that there were not good parts to the writing. Some sections and phrases held potential, but generally the writing felt raw and unpolished. This may have been the author’s intention, but it didn’t really work for me. I was never drawn into the story, and as a consequence I didn’t have much empathy for the characters and never felt the tragedy of their fate. Overall, I thought that The Boy Who Saw In Colours had some good ideas, but that they were not fully developed.

The Boy Who Saw In Colours is published by the author, 2020.

The Age of Witches is a tale of witchcraft in late 19^th century New York; of two different traditions of magic; and of the ways in which magic impacts upon its practitioners and those around them. It is the story of the descendants of Bridget Byshop, hanged as a witch in Salem in 1692. Harriet, descended from Bridget’s daughter Mary, is in the tradition of a wise woman, making traditional remedies and helping others. Whereas Frances, a descendant of Bridget’s second daughter, wants to use her powers for her own advancement. Both women have an interest in the future of Annis, who is Harriet’s great-niece and Frances’ stepdaughter.

The story moves from New York to England, taking in fashionable London and an impoverished country estate in Dorset. As the action progresses Annis, who prefers horses to polite society, and who has no wish to marry, starts to learn about her family’s heritage, and has to make decisions about her future. Decisions that may put her at odds with her ambitious stepmother. Ultimately this is the history of three strong willed women, battling for survival in what is still a man’s world.

I enjoyed Louisa Morgan’s earlier novel A Secret History of Witches, and I found this one equally engrossing. In both cases the author starts from the premise that witchcraft and magic are real, that they are necessary tools for women in a society where men hold all the power. But their magic is rooted in the everyday: Harriet’s remedies are based on herbs and other plants, and she emphasises the importance of words and intentions. And Frances’ maleficia is used as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, ordinary sexual attraction.

One of the pleasures of this book is the descriptions of the herbs that Harriet gathers, and the mixing of the remedies. Another is the character of Annis, a determined yet principled young woman, and her prickly relationship with James, the English aristocrat her stepmother intends her to marry.

The Age of Witches is a must for anyone who enjoys novels about witchcraft. It is also recommended as a work of historical fiction, with strong characters and a compelling plotline.

The Age of Witches, Louisa Morgan, Orbit, 2020, £9.99, 9780356512570