Dual-time novels are my absolute favourite to read. They are the most delicious novels to curl up with. A mystery plays out in the past and in the present day, an often plucky heroine solves it while finding the path her own life should take. There’s mystery, history and romance, which for me is the ultimate winning combination. So I’ve picked my top five novels that hooked me from the first page, and inspired me to write my own.
The Forgotten Village
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
The first of Kate Morton’s novels and the one that stands out for me as the first I read in the dual-time genre. Until I read The Forgotten Garden I’d not read a book where every few chapters the story weaves seamlessly between past and present. If you’ve yet to read any Kate Morton, surely the queen of dual narrative fiction, start with this.
The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley
I found this novel quite by chance. A huge underground advertising billboard for The Midnight Rose loomed out at me of the back of a woman in a riding hat. I didn’t get time to read the title but the image struck in my mind proving that we often really do judge a book by its cover. When I eventually found the novel, I devoured it and it really did have a twist I didn’t quite see coming. Once I’d read one Lucinda Riley novel I began on the rest of her backlist in earnest and have been a die-hard fan ever since.
A Gathering Storm by Rachel Hore
A windswept tale of 1930s Cornwall set in a crumbling country house. This just cemented my love for the time and place so neatly and reading it, I felt as if I’d come home.
The Returning Tide by Liz Fenwick
Not my first Liz Fenwick novel, but I have to say, I think this is my favourite. And I’ve read them all, like a total groupie. World War Two plays a starring role as does Cornwall and a pair of twins whose lives go in completely different directions. I love everything Liz Fenwick writes. Pick this up and you will love her too.
Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
My heart broke into a million pieces when I read this. A vicar’s wife falls for an American bomber pilot. I shall say no more but this may have been the first book I actually cried at while reading. And I am not a crier. This is the novel I recommend to anyone who asks for a good weepie, a WW2 novel or a combination of both. Read this, as soon as you can.
Lorna Cook is the author of Kindle Number 1 bestseller The Forgotten Village, which has sold over 150,000 copies and won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Joan Hessayon Award for new writers.