Other Women: Emma Flint

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Other women is a haunting love story that evolves into something horrifying, it is a crime thriller that mixes historical fiction with overflowing and unsettling tension (think Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl level of terror). The continued existence of libraries in our modern world seems like a miracle to me. We must protect what they offer: access to centuries of knowledge, to different cultures, different histories, different ways of thinking and expressing ideas. Just as important as what they offer is what they represent: escape, quiet contemplation, and the importance of telling stories. As I wrote the novel, I came to relate to Bea even more strongly – like me, she moved to London from the north of England seeking a different kind of life from the one she had grown up expecting to lead. She was ambitious and independent. She was unmarried and childless (and given the shortage of men in the years after the First World War, she seemed likely to remain that way) – but she set out to make a different kind of life for herself. I admired that, and I admired her courage in moving hundreds of miles from her home town at a time when that was fairly unusual. Overall, I think this is a terrific book, a five star winner with an ever changing plot that keeps you absorbed. Highly recommended. But Beatrice Cade is not a wife, not a widow, not a mother. There are thousands of other women like her: nameless and invisible. Determined to carve out a richer and more fulfilling life for herself, Bea takes a job in the City and a room in a Bloomsbury ladies’ club. Then a fleeting encounter changes everything. Her emerging independence is destroyed when she falls in love for the first time.

Kate is also in her thirties and also works in an office. However, she's a proud mother and wife. Married for thirteen years, with a young daughter, Kate is proud of her family and her house in a middle class area of London.Since childhood, she has been drawn to true-crime stories, developing an encyclopaedic knowledge of real-life murder cases from the early twentieth century. Her first novel, Little Deaths, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, for the Desmond Elliott Prize, for the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award, and for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Other Women is her second novel. A word from Emma Based upon a true life crime which took place in London during the 1920’s Other Women is told from the perspective of two women, the wife and the lover brought together by devastating circumstances. The tension grows throughout the book until it's almost unbearable. This is a book that will stay with you. -- Ann Cleeves

Based on a true story, it tells the stories of two women in the life of handsome & dashing, Thomas Ryan - his wife, Kate, and his mistress, Bea. Alternating between the two, it is gripping, fast paced, and full of intrigue - you’ll not want to put it down. The tension that builds is palpitation-worthy.

The darting silver girls were for noticing, for flirting with and tipping hats to, while the older women were wives and mothers and widows. They had made sacrifices. They had earned the deference of Madam. Beatrice Cade unmarried and childless who in seeking to escape her painful past moves into a ladies club and takes up an administrative position in the City when she falls in love with a married man. January 1924 saw the election of the first Labour government in the UK – but the country was already seeing the effects of falling coal production and wage reductions which would lead to the General Strike of 1926. Other Women was researched and written in libraries around London, and some the most joyful moments of its creation took place in libraries. It’s a privilege to have been chosen by librarians and readers, and to be able to say thank you.” Get involved Six years after the end of the Great War, the country is still in mourning. Thousands of husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts were lost forever, and the sea of women they left behind must carry on without them.

Beatrice Cade is an orphan, unmarried and childless – and given the dearth of men, likely to remain that way. London is full of women like her: not wives, not widows, not mothers. There is no name for these invisible women, and no place for their grief. On the south coast of England, an anguished moment between lovers becomes a horrific murder. And two women who should never have met are connected forever. I really enjoyed this book. Based on a real-life murder that took place just after WWI, 'Other Women' tells the story of two women's lives and the fatal love triangle that consumed them. This is a meticuously well written historical crime thriller, that focuses on characterisation and gives a voice to ordinary and forgotten women from history.The BBC Radio 2 Book Club announced on 24 January that its new home is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. The women's ruminations are just too detailed, become boring, and the reader loses interest. How many kettles of tea do you want to read about, or how much of the women's distant memories. No doubt, part of this belongs in the women's perspective but Ms. Flint overdid it, which makes the book almost insufferable. In a lonely cottage on a deserted stretch of shore, a moment of tragedy between lovers becomes a horrific murder. And two women who should never have met are connected for ever.