“The dancing orange flames cast huge grey shadows of us on to the wall of the cave, our every movement parodied in a grotesque form, like a mummers’ play performed for our mockery. Our shadows poured into one another, so that monsters appeared with two shaggy heads. Humpbacked dragons curled in sleep and mermaids flicked their sinuous tails. Shadows are such insubstantial things, yet they are bigger than any of us.”

“Do you think words have the power to kill? Who knows where they go once they are spoken aloud; they drift off like seeds in the wind. ‘Speak no evil’, my nursemaid used to say, ‘for tiny demons lurk everywhere just waiting to catch your words and use them to tip their arrows with poison.’”

“It was hard to adjust to, but the old laws and the old order were crumbling about our ears. There was a new king and his name was pestilence. And he had created a new law—thou shalt do anything to survive.”

• The Story of Silence, by Alex Myers
• The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
• The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings, by Dan Jones
• Lapvona, by Ottessa Moshfegh—TBR
• Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel 
• Bernard Cornwell
• Sharon Kay Penman