Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                    The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott. www.amazon.com The ship, bow first, was slowly sinking into the water. People began tumbling like broken dolls from the decks, flopping, flailing into the sea. There was a huge cracking sound-and then the Titanic disappeared. Kate Alcott, a pseudonym for Patricia O'Brien, used transcripts of the US Senate hearings over the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. Some of the characters are based on real characters who either survived the sinking such as the Duff Gordons and Margaret Brown as well as Senate William Alden Smith who presided over the hearings, otherwise Alcott admits to this being a work of fiction with the inclusion of factual evidence. I would highly recommend this book. Gripping from start to finish and I mean that! Tess Collins is the kind of heroine I admire and strongly approve of. She comes from modest roots, a large family struggling to make ends meet. Her father is critical and a man of the time,

                       Eloise by Judy Finnigan . The sun gleamed blue in the sunlight and on rainy days, its sullen pewter gloom was thrillingly brightened by crashing white surf that made my heart sing and my head clear of everything except the brilliant beauty of this wondrous place. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder although looks can be deceptive. Finnigan intended to write a ghost story with a thriller touch but it is more of an agonising portrayal of a woman's descent into despair and insanity like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's autobiographical story The Yellow Wallpaper documenting her own decline into madness. A bit depressing. Cornwall. This is Daphne du Maurier country, Menabilly where the famous   Rebecca was conceived, the thriller that we all loved so much. The landscape may well be breathtaking but it can also be bleak and menacing, a god-forsaken, isolated place, shrouded in mist, rain and loneliness which is where Finnigan sets her scene. T