A lush, sumptuous and vivid historical novel, the language is exquisite, the storytelling brilliant, the characters engaging and the humanity palpable. Ace, King, Knave is full of all the shallow respectability and dark underbelly of 18th Century London and the gentility of Bath as our disparate central characters’ lives are steadily woven together. Hugely enjoyable.
Behind doors is another story. Behind doors you can do what you like. Sophia - rational, demure, and hiding a 'little weakness' - has recently married the charismatic Mr Zedland. But Zedland has secrets of his own and Sophia comes to suspect that her marriage is not what it seems. In cramped rooms in Covent Garden, Betsy-Ann shuffles a pack of cards. A gambler, dealer in second-hand goods, and living with a grave robber, her life could not be more different to Sophia's - but she too discovers that she has been lied to. As both women take steps to discover the truth, their lives come together through a dramatic series of events, taking the reader through the streets of 1760s London: a city wearing a genteel civility on its surface and rife with hypocrisy, oppression and violence lurking underneath.
Maria McCann’s first novel, As Meat Loves Salt, was published by Flamingo in 2000 to huge acclaim: Andrew Marr praised it as ‘outstanding…with all the dirt, stink, rasp and flavour of the time’ and Lionel Shriver called it ‘riveting’. Maria’s fiction has also been published in various anthologies. Since 1986 Maria has been living and working in Somerset, apart from one year spent teaching in France. She combines teaching and writing with other interests such as voluntary communities and the allotments movement.
