One of the non-fiction books I most looked forward to reading was my early Christmas present to myself, Terms & Conditions: Life in Girls' Boarding Schools 1939-1979 by Ysenda Maxtone Graham, based on interviews the author (herself a former boarder) conducted with "Old Girls" – hence the period she chose to cover. I was therefore disappointed by, among other things, the rather crass tone she used in discussing certain topics, the entirely irrelevant facts and anecdotes with which she peppered her account, and her glorification of traumatic experiences (she is definitely a proponent of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger").
Even a few pages into Of Manners and Murder by Anastasia Hastings (one of Connie Laux's many aliases), I could feel my heart sink… When a historical novel is set in 1885 England, it ought to reflect the customs, the class distinctions, the social mores, the manners, and indeed the language, of the Victorian age in order to establish any kind of credibility with the reader. This was a dismal failure; I can't tell what era the author imagined as she wrote, yet it certainly was not the Victorian one. Additional minus points for using the word "chockablock" not once, but three times in this thankfully short book.
In Jane and the Year Without a Summer, Stephanie Barron (a pseudonym of Francine Mathews) shows how it's done! This is the 14th in a series of historical crime novels starring none other than Miss Austen as an amateur sleuth, and it's excellent. It takes place in Cheltenham, where Jane has gone with her sister Cassandra in the hope that her health will improve, and since it's set in 1816, the mood is doubly bleak. Firstly, as the book's title indicates, the weather is severely impacted by the eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year, resulting in what was called a "volcanic winter." And secondly, Jane's illness cannot be cured, and we know she will die in July of the following year. Despite the heavy atmosphere that pervades this narrative, I enjoyed the plot very much. The author used the social prejudices against women, especially ageing spinsters and unwell women, to brilliant effect here. I admit to finding the manner in which the murders were carried out not entirely plausible, but overall, this was a most satisfying read.