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Books re-issued

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BOOKS RE-ISSUED

I am delighted that Hodder and Stoughton have decided to re-issue my first two novels, WE’LL MEET AGAIN and NEVER SAY GOODBYE. It’s wonderful to see them having a new lease of life. The are now available as paperbacks but also as a Kindle edition. You can even read them for nothing if you have signed up to Kindle Unlimited.

This is what one reader says about We’ll Meet Again:

There have been a slew of new releases set during WWII to coincide with the various anniversaries and landmark moments in our 20th century history, and its easy to miss some of the novels released a while ago that are still well worth reading. We’ll Meet Again, is an engaging drama and romance.
The novel has a feisty protagonist – Frankie, a young woman of Italian descent, who, desperate to escape the dead end job prospects in Liverpool, finds herself being trained as a morse code operator and eventually a spy. (Hope I’m not giving too much away) This is a novel that builds in excitement to a nail-biting climax in Nazi-occupied Italy. What makes the novel a delight is the beautifully drawn friendships and allegiances that we share with Frankie during her training and beyond, for example the snob whose brittle exterior masks a deep insecurity, the stoic friend who risks her life to help the Resistance in France. There is also a believable and tender romance.
This was easy entertainment and ideal reading during my cosy nights before the fire over the Christmas. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I will be buying more of Hilary Green’s books in the future.

This is what a reader wrote about NEVER SAY GOODBYE:

Never say Goodbye was even better in my opinion than the first book and was a real page turner, more so (if possible) than the first one. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was enlightened a great deal by it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes WW2 novels and I can safely say I will be reading every other title this author has written. An absolutely cracking read.

Reviews like this mean a great deal to writers and the more reviews a book gets the more prominence it is given on Amazon. So if you, too, enjoy these books PLEASE write a review and post it on Amazon.

New Year, New Adventure

Hello everyone!

I’ve been remiss over these last months about keeping in touch, but the fact is I haven’t had anything to tell you. Penguin decided to stop publishing my kind of fiction, which left me homeless and with the lockdown and everything else that was going on there wasn’t much incentive to produce new work. I am happy to say, however, that things are looking up on the writing front. I am now working with a company called Joffe Books, and independent publisher specialising in on-line sales. They will publish my latest novel early in the New Year. It is called OPERATION BOLT LIGHTNING and it’s a thriller set in World War ll, which I know will please many of you. I’m not going to give away the plot but I will tell you it brings me back to my earlier happy hunting ground of SOE.

Joffe are also re-issuing three books I had published by Robert Hale. OPERATION KINGFISHER came  out as an e-book last Sunday and TWICE ROYAL LADY and APHRODITE’S ISLAND will follow in the New Year. I know many of you prefer a ‘real’ book but there will be a paperback edition available from Amazon soon after the digital version is published. Since the books were previously only available as hardbacks I think this makes them much more accessible. The link for anyone wanting to get the e-book of Kingfisher is  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09NRP8MKP

I have more news. My first venture into non-fiction will be out in April. INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN THE MIDDLE AGES will be published by Amberley Books. It may sound a rather dry subject but I promise you it’s not. I got into it through the research for my novel IRONHAND in which the hero becomes a successful merchant trading around the Mediterranean at a time when the competition for exotic spices from the east and silk from China was opening up new horizons and bringing Europeans into contact with Arabic civilizations that were far ahead of us is medicine and mathematics and astronomy and many other subjects. It was this contact with the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, passed on by the Arab and Persian scholars, that sparked the Renaissance. It was an era of discovery and of swashbuckling adventurers and I found it really exciting. I hope you will too.

Please can I ask you for one big favour? If you read any of the books, post a review on Amazon. The number of reviews a book gets is in direct proportion to the amount of exposure it is given, so reviews really make a difference to sales.

Secrets of the Frontline Nurses

My latest novel, the third in the Frontline Nurses series is out today, This story was originally published by Severn House as HARVEST OF WAR but has now been republished by Penguin. It is available from Tesco or on line from Amazon, Waterstones and others. The Amazon link is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Frontline-Nurses-gripping-historical/dp/1785039601/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1610109428&sr=8-1

For more details, go to the BOOKS by Holly Green page.

Short Story anthology

Those of you with an interest in Medieval history might enjoy this collection of short stories put together my members of the Historical Writers Association.

I have contributed one of the stories, THE QUEST, which I hope will serve as an introduction to my two First Crusade novels IRONHAND and GOD’S WARRIOR.

Here’s the link. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08BX1TLMQ

Short Story Collection

Modern productions of Shakespeare

I know many of us have been watching the National Theatre Live performances being streamed on YouTube. I am enormously grateful to the NT for allowing us to see productions which we would otherwise have not had a chance to see. However, it has brought to my mind a complaint I have had in mind for a long time now, about the contemporary approach to staging Shakespeare.

I was really looking forward to the NT production of Twelfth Night but I have to confess I turned it off after the first ten minutes or so – unheard of for a bard lover like me. I wasn’t impressed from the start, but it was when Orsino and the disguised Viola were made to deliver their lines while shadow boxing that I gave up. It is a short scene but fraught with subtle ambiguity, completely obscured by ridiculous and unnecessary ‘business’. It confirmed mysuspicion that modern theatre directors are so terrified that audiences will not be able to understand the words that they have come to the conclusion that the best way of dealing with the problem is to speak them very fast and very loudly, while peforming irrelevant actions in the hope of distracting the audience’s attention.

I did stick with the performance of Antony and Cleopatra to the end, but even there I felt the same attitude to the verse was in evidence. Sophie Okenedo as ‘the serpent of old Nile’ sounded mostly angry and aggressive. Where was the subtle seductress who kept Antony in thrall for years? ‘Nor custom stale her infinite variety’ as Enobarbus says. Her stock in trade is the sudden changes in tone that keep Antony wrong-footed and desperate to please her. In this production I found myself wondering what he saw in her. Ralph Fiennes convinced as a strong man gone to seed through too much good living, but gave me no glimpse of the clever and wily Antony who won the Roman crowd round with his ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech in Julius Caesar. Again, too much of his internal struggle between honour and lust was lost in the rush to get the words out before the audience got bored.

It is so unnecessary. Everything we need is there in the lines. It was not a capacity for speed and action that made Shakespeare ‘the immortal bard’. It was the beauty and subtlety of his poetry. I know some of the words are unfamiliar to modern ears, but if spoken with real comprehension by the actors any difficulty can be overcome. I have produced Shakespeare’s plays with teenagers and I know that by patiently unravelling the meaning of the text with the actors the lines can them be made completely comprehensible to the audience. We need to be able to listen to the poetry, not have it obscured by noise and irrelevant action.

I often think poor Shakespeare must be turning in his grave. He made it perfectly clear in Hamlet’s speech to the players how he wanted his work to be performed. ‘Speak the speech, I pray you, as I prononced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand – thus – but use all gently…. Suit the action to the words, the words to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature …’ I am afraid that many of our current actors and directors have opted for the Town Crier approach!

A New Departure

I suppose it is unusual for an author who has had a successful career writing in one genre to suddenly embark on a series of books that take her in a totally new direction, but this is what i have done. To me it does not seem such a sudden break. I have always had a fascination with medieval history and I have long wanted to escape from the label of ‘saga writer’ or ‘author of historical romance’. I have never understood why sagas and historical romance novels are shunted off into a sub-category of their own, as if they are nor ‘proper’ historical fiction. My books have always been as carefully researched and as faithful to the historical facts as any of the better respected titles. However, this is my attempt to join the likes of Elizabeth Chadwick and Robyn Young – and my idol Dorothy Dunnet – and write ‘proper’ historical fiction.

IRONHAND and GOD’S WARRIOR are set in the period between the Norman Conquest and the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 by the warriors of the First Crusade. It was a time of ferment, with minor warlords competing for territory all over Europe, while Turkish soldiers were harassing pilgrims on their way to the Holy City. It was partly to distract these bellicose lords and divert their energies elsewhere that led Pope Urban ll to call for a crusade to free Jerusalem from the infidel. This was the beginning of one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the Middle Ages.

It was also a period that saw the first flourishing of trade between Europe and the Levant, not only bringing exotic spices and silks to the markets of Italy and Flanders but also allowing the dissemination of the wisdom of ancient Greece, preserved through translations into Arabic. It was the first stirring of that great flowering of art and culture that later became known as the Enlightenment. For some reason it is not a time that has attracted much attention from fiction writers – a deficit that I hope to repair.

My hero, Ranulph, orphaned by the Conqueror’s ‘harrowing of the North’, is haunted by the guilt of having inadvertently caused the death of a man who abused him. He becomes convinced that God has a special purpose for him; but before he can be ready to accomplish it he has to undergo a long apprenticeship, first as a sailor, then as a mercenary soldier, then as a merchant and finally as a galley slave in the service of the Emir of Malta. By the time Count Bohemond comes looking for recruits to join his army heading for Jerusalem, Ranulph is ready to play a key part in the trials and struggles that follow.

Historical Novels Review of Workhouse Orphans

I have just read a very snooty review of my book in the magazine of the Historical Novel Society. The critic begins by saying that this is not the sort of book she normally reads and, after damning with faint praise for most of the article, concludes that it is an enjoyable read and would probably appeal to those who like sagas and ‘rags to riches’ stories. Since this is exactly the brief I received from the publisher I guess that means it is a success. It ‘does what it says on the tin’!
But it does beg the question, why give a book to be reviewed by someone who does not understand the genre? All the reviewers in the magazine are amateurs and books are allocated by editors who deal with the work of a particular publisher. Couldn’t he have found someone who enjoys that kind or book?
As a consolation, the book continues to receive 5 star ratings on Amazon.

Great review of Workhouse Orphans

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Workhouse Orphans is a fascinating and richly detailed book focusing on the poor of Victorian Liverpool and the world they live in.

In mid-Victorian Liverpool, two young children, May Lavender and her brother Gus are orphaned by the death of their mother. They are sent to the Workhouse, a cruel, cold place, where they are separated. Beaten by the teachers, starved and over worked, they manage to make friends and learn the skills they need to survive.

Finally escaping, May and Gus embark on difficult lives, always aware they are tainted by their past. May becomes a servant, and barely escapes an horrific fate to work in a department store, while Gus runs away to sea and becomes involved in the American Civil War.

Workhouse Orphans is a very enjoyable read. Holly Green has obviously done meticulous research for this book, and it shows in the level of detail. She clearly knows the history of Liverpool well, including the docks and the streets. I was fascinated by the scenes on the ships, and in the shops, and by the descriptions of Victorian Liverpool.

The lives of the two children, and their friends, manage to reflect the roles of the poor in Victorian England – abused, used, discarded and reliant on luck and friendship to see them through. Having said that, this isn’t a bleak book. May and Gus are likeable characters, and manage to navigate their way through the many dangers they meet. It’s the other characters who tend to fall victim to the darker side of Victorian life prostitution and abuse are everywhere. Holly Green doesn’t shy away from the ugly scenes, but she also shows us the strength and companionship these people had.

The characters are well-drawn, including the minor ones, and the places – not just Liverpool, but all over the world –  are vividly drawn. I knew nothing about Liverpool before reading this and now I want to visit.

I found Workhouse Orphans an absolutely compelling read that will appeal to those who like sagas of the poor and dispossessed making their way in the Victorian world.