The next book to be featured on the Zoe Ball Radio 2 Book Club will be A True Account, a breathtaking adventure by celebrated author and historian Katherine Howe. The book was released on 23 November and Katherine’s full interview with Zoe will be available on BBC Sounds.
We have an exclusive extract available for you to read, an exclusive set of reading group questions, and we also have a set of 10 copies to give way to one lucky reading group!
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A True Account
In Boston, as the Golden Age of Piracy comes to a bloody close, Hannah Masury – bound into service at a waterfront inn since childhood – is ready to take her life into her own hands. When William Fly is hanged for piracy in the town square, the teenage Hannah is watching. Forced to flee for her life, Hannah disguises herself as a cabin boy and joins the pitiless crew of another notorious real-life pirate, Edward “Ned” Low. To earn her freedom and finally change the tide of her own future, Hannah must hunt down William Fly’s lost treasure.
Meanwhile in 1930, Professor Marian Beresford pieces this bewitching story together, seeing her own lack of freedom reflected back at her as she watches Hannah’s transformation. At the centre of Hannah Masury’s account, however, lies a centuries-old mystery that Marian is determined to solve. It soon becomes clear that Hannah was once just as determined to take this secret to her grave.
A True Account tells the unforgettable, interleaved stories of two women in different worlds, both shattering the rules of their own society, both daring to risk everything to go forge their own adventure.
Selection panel review
The book was selected with the help of a panel of library staff from across the UK. Our readers loved A True Account – here are some of their comments:
“This is a swashbuckling riot of a book! It’s fast, furious and I’ve certainly never read an historical novel like it. It’s told via dual timelines of Hannah Mausary who escapes Boston dressed as a boy on a pirate ship and Marian Beresford, a professor in the 1930s who researches Hannah’s account. Both women operate well outside the normal bounds of their society either by choice or by necessity. I felt as a reader you get more of Hannah’s story as is right – the author’s writing is so descriptive you really feel you’re on a ship – not good if you don’t like being at sea! The characters of the crew are well drawn and believable; they show all facets of life at sea and its harshness and vulnerabilities. Enemies are made, allegiances forged – they are depicted with rawness that took my breath away, being out at sea leaves nowhere to hide behind social niceties. The crewmen are everything you’d expect them to be; cruel, harsh, superstitious, dirty, weather beaten and loyal. They are a heady mix of characters and you can literally smell them as they reek off the page. A great read.”
“I would recommend this book as I found it an enjoyable, quick paced read that included elements of history, adventure and mystery.”
“This book was a joy to read. I was drawn in almost immediately, and found myself reading it every opportunity I could, even if I only had time for a few pages. Some of the descriptions of what occurred amongst the Pyrates were difficult, but it helped to better understand as a reader the discomfort that Hannah felt in those situations. I found it refreshing to see media, especially pirate media, with realistic representations of queerness in history. It is well established that people who identify against modern western social conventions have existed for the entirety of recorded human history, but I think that there is sometimes a desire to write stories of the past through a modern lens, especially when they are fantastical stories. Queer expression in the past is complicated, and it was interesting to see elements of non-heteronormative desires in both historical eras of this book.”
About the author
Katherine Howe is the author of the #2 New York Times bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, as well as The House of Velvet and Glass. She is widely considered an expert on American colonial life and the Salem Witch Trials, having written both as an academic and a novelist on the subject. She is the author of The Penguin Book of Pirates (published in Feb 2024). Katherine lives and sails in New England with her family.
A word from Katherine
“I was beside myself when I learned that A True Account had been chosen for the Radio 2 Book Club. The story begins in Boston in 1726, when Massachusetts was still a British colony, and British sailors pepper all the actual true accounts of piracy in the Golden Age. I’m so excited to share Hannah’s story with readers in the UK!
Historical fiction like this is impossible without the help of a great library and the librarians within. I owe so much of my pirate research that went into this novel to the incredible collections of the New York Public Library and its Center for Research in the Humanities. But even beyond that, libraries play an invaluable role in creating access to literature for everyone. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that a great public library is the linchpin of democratic thought. Thank you, Radio 2 Book Club and The Reading Agency, for all that you do to bring books and readers together."
Get involved
Tune in to the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show regularly to keep up with the latest news. You can also listen to all of the full-length interviews on BBC Sounds.
Have you read A True Account? You can share your thoughts with us on Twitter using #R2BookClub and you can also follow Katherine.
Planning to buy A True Account for your group? Buy books from Hive or from Bookshop.org and support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no extra cost to you.
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