Helena Fairfax

This summer I’m running a literary tour featuring books set Yorkshire. We started with the quaint town of Saltburn-by-the Sea, moved on to books set in Bradford, followed by a historical tour of books set in Yorkshire’s abbeys.

Today I’m featuring eleven books set in the fabulous City of York.

I was lucky enough to live in York as a child. I moved to this northern city from a small village in northern Uganda at the age of six. You can imagine what a culture shock it was.

The cold, the stone buildings, even the accent was completely impenetrable. When another child asked me ‘Ah yer pleh-in’ ow’ ont’ moo-er?’ I had no idea I was being politely invited to go and play out in the field.

It was at this time that I first discovered the wonder of reading. My mum bought me a book called Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, by Rumer Godden. The heroine, Nona, had moved to chilly England from India. She felt exactly as I did! I remember the incredible feeling that here was someone in the covers of a book I could relate to.

The power of stories to affect us has stayed with me all my life, and I still have my battered copy of this book.

Of course I soon settled in York, as so many children do adapt, and looking back it was an amazing place to go to school. The phrase ‘steeped in history’ is made for this city.

To give a feeling of what it could actually mean to someone to grow up surrounded by the past, every day I used to walk along the Roman walls to my secondary school, a convent that had been established in the seventeenth century, when Catholicism was still illegal.

The nuns told us how centuries ago our building was once surrounded by an angry mob who wanted to burn it to the ground. Saint Michael appeared above the building flourishing a flaming sword and the mob retreated. Ever since, the school had a holiday on 29th September, the feast of Saint Michael and All the Angels – a day that also happens to be my birthday.

The past was always alive around me as a child, and this amazing city makes a brilliant setting for fiction, whether historical or contemporary.

Here are my eleven books set in York, a setting that’s inspired everything from family sagas, to romance, to tales of vampires, and historical mystery and murder. I hope you enjoy my selection. If you know of any others to add to this list, please do let me know in the comments!

The Memory of Midnight, by Pamela Hartshorne

One hot day in Elizabethan York, young Nell Appleby is trapped in a wooden chest, and a horror of the stifling dark – and of the man who trapped her – dogs her for the rest of her life. Wed to the sadistic Ralph Maskewe, Nell must find joy where she can, until the return of her childhood sweetheart offers a chance of flight to the New World. Will Nell risk all to escape the dark at last?

Four and a half centuries later, Tess and her small son Oscar move to York. Eager to start a new life, away from her overbearing and manipulative husband, Martin, Tess tries to put her marriage behind her. But time in York has a way of shifting strangely, and memories of a past that is not her own begin to surface with disturbing effect. Living two lives, torn between two worlds, Tess must unlock the secrets of the past before she can free herself – and Nell -once and for all..

Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson

Ruby Lennox was conceived grudgingly by Bunty and born while her father, George, was in the Dog and Hare in Doncaster telling a woman in an emerald dress and a D-cup that he wasn’t married.
Bunty had never wanted to marry George, but here she was, stuck in a flat above the pet shop in an ancient street beneath York Minster, with her children – sensible and sardonic Patricia aged five, greedy cross-patch Gillian who refused to be ignored, and Ruby…
In Behind the Scenes at the Museum, young Ruby tells the story of ‘The Family’, from the end of the nineteenth century when a travelling French photographer catches frail beautiful Alice and her children, to the startling, witty, and memorable events of Ruby’s own life.

Deep Cover, by Leigh Russell

In the midst of a murder investigation surrounding the suspicious death of a sex worker in York, Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel finds herself facing a dual challenge. Not only does she need to untangle the dark secrets behind the victim’s demise, but she’s also plagued by worry for her partner and colleague, Ian Peterson, who has mysteriously vanished.

As Steel grows closer to her new DS, Matthew, little does she know that Ian is deep undercover in the dangerous underworld of London. His mission? To expose a criminal gang who have set their sights on targeting her.

With every passing moment, the tension escalates. When a second victim emerges in York, the urgency of the investigation heightens.

Meanwhile, Ian’s life hangs in the balance as a sadistic psychopath threatens his very existence. Failure could spell doom not only for Ian but also for Geraldine herself.

As the stakes reach a boiling point, Geraldine must navigate treacherous paths and face her own fears to unravel the truth. Will she and Ian emerge unscathed from the shadows, or will their lives be irrevocably shattered?

Found in a Bookshop, by Stephanie Butland

Loveday Cardew’s beloved Lost for Words bookshop, along with the rest of York, has fallen quiet. At the very time when people most need books to widen their horizons, or escape from their fears, or enhance their lives, the doors are closed. Then the first letter comes.
Rosemary and George have been married for fifty years. Now their time is running out. They have decided to set out on their last journey together, without ever leaving the bench at the bottom of their garden in Whitby. All they need is someone who shares their love of books.
Suddenly it’s clear to Loveday that she and her team can do something useful in a crisis. They can recommend books to help with the situations their customers find themselves in: fear, boredom, loneliness, the desire for laughter and escape.

And so it begins.

Sovereign, by C.J. Ransom

England, 1541. King Henry VIII has set out on a spectacular Progress to the North to attend an extravagant submission by his rebellious subjects in York.
Already in the city are lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak, whom have reluctantly undertaken a special mission for Archbishop Thomas Cranmer – to ensure the welfare of an important but dangerous conspirator who is to be returned to London for interrogation.
But the murder of a York glazier involves Shardlake in deeper mysteries, connected not only to the prisoner in York castle but to the royal family itself. And when Shardlake and Barak stumble upon a cache of secret documents which could threaten the Tudor throne, a chain of events unfolds that will lead Shardlake to face the most terrifying fate of the age…

The Last Pearl, by Leah Fleming

1879, York. Greta Costello must rely on her wits to survive. She finds refuge as a Saturday girl for an old jeweller, Saul Abrahams, and her eye for detail, her long fingers and appreciation of beauty persuade Saul to train her as a pearl stringer. This skill will lead her through hardship and pain towards a new life.
1879, Scotland. Jem Baillie knows the immense power of a perfect pearl. His father was a fisher on a tributary of the Tay river in Perthshire, Scotland, and together they found the rarest of pearls, a great white pearl they call Queenie. When this is stolen from them, Eben vows revenge.
Spanning generations and continents, tracing the rivers of Scotland and the Mississippi, The Last Pearl is a sweeping novel of desire and revenge, of family and freedom, and of one woman’s journey to open the shell she has built around herself to reveal the true beauty within.

A Clubbable Woman, by Reginald Hill

Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel investigates a murder close to home in this first crime novel featuring the much-loved detective team of Dalziel and Pascoe.

‘So far out in front that he need not bother looking over his shoulder’ Sunday Telegraph

Home from the rugby club after taking a nasty knock in a match, Sam Connon finds his wife more uncommunicative than usual. After passing out on his bed for a few hours, he comes downstairs to discover communication has been cut off forever – by a hole in the middle of her forehead.

Andy Dalziel, a long-standing member of the club, wants to run the murder investigation along his own lines. But DS Peter Pascoe’s loyalties lie elsewhere and he has quite different ideas about how the case should proceed…

The Apothecary Rose, by Candace Robb

York: 1363: people are dying in mysterious circumstances…however, there seems to be a common thread – the herbal remedies dispensed by Nicholas Wilton, Master Apothecary. The first victim is an anonymous pilgrim, but when a highborn nobleman dies after taking the same potion the authorities finally decide to act.
Dispatched to York, in disguise, to unravel the mystery, Owen Archer, former Captain of Archers, apprentices himself to the Apothecary. Yet it is from Wilton’s beautiful wife Lucie that he must learn the arcane secrets of the trade.
Slowly but surely Owen begins to uncover the truth. And when the deaths continue he realises to his horror he must count Lucie among the suspects…

Murder by the Minster, by Helen Cox

It’s a perfectly normal day for Kitt Hartley at her job at the University of the Vale of York library, until Detective Inspector Halloran arrives at her desk to tell her that her best friend, Evie Bowes, is under suspicion of murder. Evie’s ex-boyfriend Owen has been found dead – with a fountain pen stabbed through his heart – and all the evidence points to her.
Kitt knows there is no way Evie could murder anyone – let alone Owen, who she adored. Horrified that the police could have got it so wrong, Kitt decides there’s only one thing to do: she’s going to investigate Owen’s murder herself. She’s read hundreds of mystery novels – how hard can it be?
With the help of her assistant Grace, and the occasional hindrance of the library’s eccentric regulars, Kitt summons up all her investigative powers (absorbed over years of reading everything from Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin) and gets to work.
She soon discovers that down the quaint streets and snickelways of York lie darker doings than she’d ever dreamed, but she needs to watch her step: the murderer is watching her. And they haven’t finished killing yet…

Vampire State of Mind, by Jane Lovering

Jessica Grant knows vampires only too well. She runs the York Council tracker programme making sure that Otherworlders are all where they should be, keeps the filing in order and drinks far too much coffee. To Jess, vampires are annoying and arrogant and far too sexy for their own good, particularly her ex-colleague Sil, who’s now in charge of Otherworld York. But when a demon turns up and threatens not just Jess but the whole world order, she and Sil are forced to work together, and when Jess turns out to be the key to saving the world it puts a very different slant on their relationship. The stakes are high. They are also very, very pointy and Jess isn’t afraid to use them, even on the vampire that she’s rather afraid she s falling in love with…