"At the Sign of the Sugared Plum" , "Petals in the Ashes" (The Fever and the Flame) - Tapa blanda

Mary Hooper is another writer to watch The Independent

Two tales following the remarkable life of a girl in London in the tumultuous years of the Great Plague and the Great Fire. Hannah is excited as she is about to embark upon her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop 'The Sugared Plum', making sweetmeats for the gentry. She does not, however, get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome, Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away - the Plague is taking hold of London. In the second of these stories, Hannah returns to her beloved London to re-open the sweetmeats shop with younger sister Anne. Londoners are reeling from the plague epidemic of the previous year, but Hannah and Anne are keen to start enjoying everything the bustling city has to offer. But this is 1666, and it has been prophesised that terrible things will happen, and on Pudding Lane, flames are raging through the bakery ...Based on meticulous research, Mary Hooper evokes with complete mastery the sights, sounds and terror of a London gripped firstly by the shocking and gruesome plague, and then by the ferocious and terrible fire.