The Fugitive Colours is perhaps not quite as exciting and fast-paced as The Blue, but I found it equally gripping. Yet again Genevieve is forced to wonder who she can and cannot trust, but this time one wrong decision could mean the end of her dreams, the loss of her business and even the destruction of her marriage. Due to the parts played by Genevieve and her husband in the recent search for the blue, their names have come to the attention of some very powerful people who are hoping to enlist them in further conspiracies.

This in itself would have been the basis for an interesting novel – a woman trying to build a career for herself in what was still very much a male-dominated field – but there’s a lot more to the story than that. However, she has not given up on her dream of becoming a serious artist and when she is invited to a gathering at the home of the portrait painter Joshua Reynolds, it seems she could still have a chance of achieving her ambition. With the help of her two young assistant artists, Caroline and Jean, Genevieve is beginning to find buyers for her silk designs and is determined to make the business a success. It’s 1764 and Genevieve Planché, heroine of The Blue, is now a married woman running her own silk design business in Spitalfields, London. The Fugitive Colours is a sequel to The Blue and another great read the two books stand alone, so it’s not necessary to have read the first novel before beginning this one, although I would recommend doing so if you can. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by her so far: her Joanna Stafford trilogy, about a nun displaced in Tudor England after the dissolution of the monasteries Dreamland, set in a Coney Island amusement park and The Blue, a wonderful historical thriller involving spies, art and the race to create a beautiful new shade of blue. A new Nancy Bilyeau book is always something to look forward to.

The fugitive colours nancy bilyeau