The Map of Bones

I kept thinking about Hilary Mantel’s Reith lectures as I was reading The Joubert Family Chronicles. Mantel spoke about fact and fiction being blended in her work like olive oil and egg yolk in mayonnaise – you can’t return them to their original states. Here, Mosse gives us both the satisfying intricacy of historical fact and a fictional narrative that carries us along at a rollicking pace. The long, rich, tragic history of the Huguenots deserved a series of novels as brilliant and well researched as [The Joubert Family Chronicles], in which the past is felt deep in the reader’s bonesThe Observer

The fourth and final instalment in Mosse’s Joubert Family Chronicles . . . this is adventure-stuffed historical fiction in the grand traditionThe Telegraph

[The Map of Bones] demonstrates Mosse’s skill in constructing a multi-stranded narrative and filling it with memorable charactersThe Sunday Times

The fourth instalment in Mosse’s Joubert Family Chronicles is a fittingly terrific conclusion, with intrepid women, perilous journeys, a search for the truth, and a narrative spanning 17th to 19th century South Africa, it's a gripping, atmospheric noveli