Giulia Tofana never wanted to be a nun, but she is determined to atone for her past misdeeds by making her new monastery a success. When an unexpected disaster closes the convent, Giulia is forced to turn to her old friend Fabio Pasello for help. Giulia still has intense feelings for Fabio, and Fabio’s passion for […]
Slashing the face: punishing unfaithful women in Italy
Deborah Swift writes about the background to a scene in her latest book, The Silkworm Keeper: a cruel punishment carried out on women in 17th-century Italy. In my new novel, The Silkworm Keeper, there is a scene in which the sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini sends a servant to slash the face of his unfaithful lover, Costanza […]
Review: The White Rajah by Tom Williams
Author Deborah Swift embarks on an adventure in the South China Seas to review Tom Williams’s reissued novel, The White Rajah, and finds much to enjoy. I’d never heard of James Brooke before reading Tom Williams’s excellent biographical novel, so I have been educated as well as entertained. Set at the beginning of the 19th […]
The Poison Keeper by Deborah Swift
Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell her the hidden keys to her success. But the day Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade. Giulia […]
Review: The Lifeline by Deborah Swift
Tom Williams reviews The Lifeline by Deborah Swift, an adventure story with a dash of romance set in German-occupied Norway during a lesser-known episode of resistance to Nazi rule. Deborah Swift’s latest continues the Second World War theme of her latest books. We’re in German-occupied Norway in 1942. We are thrown into the action practically […]
The Lifeline by Deborah Swift
1942, Nazi-occupied Norway. Schoolteacher Astrid Dahl has always kept out of trouble. But when she is told to teach the fascist Nazi curriculum, she refuses and starts a teachers’ rebellion, persuading 8,000 teachers to go on strike. The Germans arrest her, and terrified of what punishment her trial might bring, she is forced to go […]
A different kind of WWII resistance
There were many ways to resist the Nazi regime. Deborah Swift tells Historia about a quiet, but very effective, form of resistance which she came across while researching her new book, The Lifeline, set in Norway and Shetland during the Second World War. I’ve always been interested in the French Resistance, but when I was […]
The Occupation by Deborah Swift
1940, Jersey. When Nazi forces occupy Jersey in the English Channel Islands, Céline Huber, who is married to a German, must decide where her loyalty lies. Love for her island, and fear for her Jewish friend Rachel, soon propel her into a dangerous double life. Meanwhile, Céline’s husband Fred is conscripted into the Wehrmacht in […]