MORE to BROWSE - Pages that might be of Interest

Saturday 29 October 2022

Book Spotlight: Anna Belfrage: the COFFEE POT BOOK CLUB BOOK of the YEAR AWARD 2022

Shining a Spotlight on Good Books & Good Authors
who recently won a Gold, Silver or Bronze 
Coffee Pot Book Club Award

#BookSpotlight

Welcome to my Blog!
Wander through wonderful worlds real and fictional,
meet interesting people, visit exciting places
and find a few good books to enjoy along the way!


HER CASTILLIAN HEART
BY
ANNA BELFRAGE IS A..



About Today's Spotlight Book

Blood is not always thicker than water…

At times a common bloodline is something of a curse—or so Robert FitzStephan discovers when he realises his half-brother, Eustace de Lamont, wants to kill him.  

A murderous and greedy brother isn’t Robert’s only challenge. He and his wife, Noor, also have to handle their infected relationship with a mightily displeased Queen Eleanor—all because of their mysterious little foundling whom they refuse to abandon or allow the queen to lock away.

Eustace is persistent. When Robert’s life hangs in the balance, it falls to Noor to do whatever it takes to rip them free from the toothy jaws of fate. Noor may be a woman, but weak she is not, and in her chest beats a heart as brave and ferocious as that of a lioness. But will her courage be enough to see them safe?

www.annabelfrage.com

BUY link: http://myBook.to/HEART

cover design by More Visual




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You might also like ... books written by Helen Hollick 

Join My Monthly Newsletter: http://tinyletter.com/HelenHollick

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick 

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

 * * * 

COFFEE POT BOOK CLUB
BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022
BRONZE AWARD
A prequel novella - how Jesamiah Acorne became a pirate 
new edition with new additional scenes 
now in paperback 
and e-book on Amazon


* * *
The SEA WITCH VOYAGES
nautical adventures set during the Golden Age of Piracy

If you liked Pirates Of The Caribbean?
then you'll love the Sea Witch Voyages!
Amazon:
 https://viewbook.at/SeaWitch

* * * 
The Jan Christopher Cosy Mysteries
set in the 1970s

* * *
Plus many more...
fiction, non-fiction

Tuesday 25 October 2022

My coffee pot guest: Elizabeth St.John - The Godmother’s Secret


Welcome to my Blog!
Wander through wonderful worlds
real and fictional,
meet interesting people,
visit exciting places
and find a few good books
to enjoy along the way!


About the Book

The Godmother’s Secret
by Elizabeth St.John

Publication Date: 4th October, 2022
Publisher: Falcon Historical
Page Length: 350 pages
Genre: Biographical Historical Fiction / Historical Mystery

What if you knew what happened to the Princes in the Tower. Would you tell? Or would you forever keep the secret?

November, 1470: Westminster Abbey. Lady Elysabeth Scrope faces a perilous royal duty when ordered into sanctuary with Elizabeth Woodville–witness the birth of Edward IV’s Yorkist son. Margaret Beaufort, Elysabeth’s sister, is desperately seeking a pardon for her exiled son Henry Tudor. Strategically, she coerces Lancastrian Elysabeth to be appointed godmother to Prince Edward, embedding her in the heart of the Plantagenets and uniting them in a destiny of impossible choices and heartbreaking conflict.
Bound by blood and torn by honour, when the king dies and Elysabeth delivers her young godson into the Tower of London to prepare for his coronation, she is engulfed in political turmoil. Within months, the prince and his brother have disappeared, Richard III is declared king, and Margaret conspires with Henry Tudor to invade England and claim the throne. Desperate to protect her godson, Elysabeth battles the intrigue, betrayal and power of the last medieval court, defying her husband and her sister under her godmother’s sacred oath to keep Prince Edward safe.
Were the princes murdered by their uncle, Richard III? Was the rebel Duke of Buckingham to blame? Or did Margaret Beaufort mastermind their disappearance to usher in the Tudor dynasty? Of anyone at the royal court, Elysabeth has the most to lose–and the most to gain–by keeping secret the fate of the Princes in the Tower.     
Inspired by England’s most enduring historical mystery, Elizabeth St.John, best-selling author of The Lydiard Chronicles, blends her own family history with known facts and centuries of speculation to create an intriguing alternative story illuminating the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower. 

Read An Excerpt

The Godmother’s Secret
By Elizabeth St.John

The Wars of the Roses have been raging for twenty-five years, decimating families, ruining the land and exhausting commoners and lords alike. Now, the future of England balances on a sword blade. Two anointed monarchs battle for the throne. Mad Henry VI’s faction is presently in power, supported by the House of Lancaster. Exiled in Flanders, Yorkist King Edward IV is amassing an army to reclaim England, while his pregnant wife, Elizabeth Woodville, has fled to the safety of sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with her young daughters.

 

Chapter 1

November 1470 | Westminster Abbey

A secret has been conceived . . .

“Entry, in the name of God and King Henry!” My guard clouts the iron-clad door of Cheyneygates, challenging the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. “The Lady Elysabeth Scrope demands entry!”

A murther of crows startles from the gables, cawing and whirling around my head and circling up into the clouded heavens. I join three fingers in the holy trinity and cross myself; head, chest, sinister and dexter. These ancient purveyors of death do not disturb me, for I have not survived this war to be hindered by a superstition. If there were a crow for every dead soldier, England would be a huge raucous rookery. But it never hurts to invoke God’s protection. The crows swoop and squabble and alight singly among the gargoyles on the parapets of the soot-stained Abbey. Like the granite tors of my Yorkshire home, these walls are impenetrable and inaccessible. And just as hostile. God offers protection to all who claim sanctuary. And men erect walls to keep them safe.

No stirring from within. I sigh. Not unexpected. “Knock again,” I command the guard. “Let them know their visitors will not leave.”

The waning October afternoon trickles shadows into the well of the courtyard. I pull my cloak closer, thankful I had chosen my finest weave to keep the warmth in and the damp out. The sun had shone golden when we rode out from London, but upon reaching Westminster we collided with the rain clouds streaming in from the west.

Fallen mulberry leaves clog the stone steps rising before me, rotting unswept in the hollows. Someone isn’t taking care of the abbot’s house. It is clear that no one has left nor entered for a while. The guard’s hammering is unanswered, and yet to the right of the door a candle flame glimmers through a browed window and a shadow flits elusively.

I push back my hood, and a spatter of rain needles my face. Here, gatekeeper. Here's reassurance I bear your fugitive no threat. I am of middling age, graceful, fair of face, my countenance pleasing, I’ve heard say. Hardly a threat.

The rain unfurls in sheets. I raise my voice. “I am not asking the queen to break sanctuary.” God knows the wretched woman would make it easier on all of us if she did. I motion the guard aside and edge up the slippery steps to the door. “I am here to join her.” My voice competes with a dripping gutter and gets lost under the pitter-patter.

At the foot of the steps, my stepdaughter, Meg Zouche, hums with a redhead’s restless energy; her curly hair springs wildly from her hood, laced with jeweled droplets of Thames mist. “The queen thinks to defy fate with a barred door.” Meg scowls at the blank and blackened oak.

“She will admit us. Eventually. Even one such as she cannot birth her child alone,” I reply. “I may not be her choice for an attendant, but a captive has no say in their guard.” Temper’s blood warms my cheeks. I stand resolute at the door, ignoring the invisible eyes taking my measure. If this time in sanctuary is to be the battle of wills I anticipate, then I must win the first foray. I plant my feet in the composting leaves, ignore the damp seeping from the stone into the soles of my boots, and wait.

Bolts grate top and bottom, and the door creaks open. I swallow a last breath of rain-washed air, hoarding the fresh scent for the stifling weeks to come, for the queen’s confinement shapes my own prison sentence. Reaching for Meg’s warm hand, I cross the threshold into the abbot’s house. The splashing steps of our guard fades, his duty done, mine just beginning. And if I fail and the child dies, I will be shown no mercy from Henry, the king that rules, nor Edward, the king in exile. 

We are herded like moorland sheep into the cramped entry corridor, and the steward squints down his drip-tipped nose and sniffs. Meg glares back at him until he drops his gaze. She may be only nineteen, but she has been mine since she was two years of age, and I have trained her to run a great household. She will brook no truck with an insolent servant. Let Meg practice her learnings on the poor man; he is, after all, the enemy.

“Escort my mother to the queen,” Meg commands, “and then show me our lodgings.”

He grudgingly dips his head. “Wait here, Dame Zouche.”

So the household expects our arrival. They just don’t choose to welcome us. Of course, there is little that will escape the queen, for certainly she has her spies and informers even as she invokes sanctuary to protect her unborn child.

“This way, Lady Scrope.”

I kiss Meg's warm cheek. “Make friends with him, Meg,” I whisper. “We’re going to need all the help we can muster. I'll return shortly.”

She grins and winks. “Bon chance, Belle-maman.”

The steward sets off at a brisk trot through a passage that runs alongside the entry courtyard. He does not look back to see if I keep up nor to extend me the courtesy of a deferential bow nor even a head tilt that my rank demands. So. This is how we will engage.

He leaves me at the open door to a dim chamber, and I pause to let my eyes adjust to the shadows and to reclaim my dignity. I am aware that whoever is in the room sees me before I see them.

The lofty wood panelling is underlit by half-burned candles struggling in the damp air. At the end of the chamber is a diamond-paned window, beyond which the Abbey lurks, blocking the waning light. Resting in a high-backed chair before the hearth, her pure profile dark against the blue flames of a meagre fire, is Queen Elizabeth—I still think of her as Elizabeth Woodville—her belly swollen under a beaver-fur mantle. Three little girls huddle on red velvet prayer cushions at her feet, the youngest child perhaps eighteen months.

So this is the commoner queen and her brace of healthy children. Yet still no male heir to claim the throne. What are the odds this next child is a boy? High, I reckon. Especially given the wellspring of prayers God must be receiving daily from the queen and her followers.

* * *
Buy Links:

This title is on #KindleUnlimited. 



About the Author

Elizabeth St.John spends her time between California, England, and the past. An acclaimed author, historian, and genealogist, she has tracked down family papers and residences from Lydiard Park and Nottingham Castle to Richmond Palace and the Tower of London to inspire her novels. Although the family sold a few country homes along the way (it's hard to keep a good castle going these days), Elizabeth's family still occupy them— in the form of portraits, memoirs, and gardens that carry their legacy. And the occasional ghost. But that's a different story.
Having spent a significant part of her life with her seventeenth-century family while writing The Lydiard Chronicles trilogy and Counterpoint series, Elizabeth St.John is now discovering new family stories with her fifteenth-century namesake Elysabeth St.John Scrope, and her half-sister, Margaret Beaufort.

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You might also like ... books written by Helen Hollick 

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick 

The Jan Christopher Cosy Mysteries
set in the 1970s

episode 1:
Amazon: https://getbook.at/MirrorMurder
set in a north London Library
in the 1970s

episode 2:

~~ ~ ~ ~ 
THE SAXON SERIES
the events that led to 1066
the Battle of Hastings

1066 - the events that led to the
Battle of Hastings
from Amazon
Harold the King  (UK edition)
I Am The Chosen King (US/Canada edition)
1066 Turned Upside Down -
an anthology of alternative stories

* * * 
With RICHARD TEARLE


* * * 
ANTHOLOGIES

Amazon: FREE ebook!
featuring a story by Elizabeth St John

* * *
Plus many more...
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Sunday 23 October 2022

Book Spotlight Kathryn Gauci - the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year Award

Shining a Spotlight on Good Books & Good Authors
who recently won a Gold, Silver or Bronze 
Coffee Pot Book Club Award

#BookSpotlight
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Wander through wonderful worlds real and fictional,
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THE VIENESE DRESSMAKER
BY KATHRYN GAUCI IS A...



About Today's Spotlight Book

From USA TODAY Bestselling author, Kathryn Gauci, comes a powerful and unforgettable story of one woman’s incredible will to survive and protect those she loves against insurmountable odds.

“In the half-light of a new day, the city resembled a macabre scene from hell. The gay Vienna of her youth had disappeared – vanished as utterly as if it had never existed.”

Vienna 1938: Austria’s leading couturier, Christina Lehmann, sits at the pinnacle of Viennese society. Her lover, the renowned painter, Max Hauser, is at the height of his career. But Max harbours a secret, and it is only a matter of time before the Gestapo finds out. The situation takes a dramatic turn on Kristallnacht, when the pogrom against the Austrian Jews escalates and one of Christina’s Jewish seamstresses is brutally murdered.
In order to protect both Max and her couture house, Christina begins a double life, plunging her into the shadowy world of Nazi oppression, fear, and mistrust fuelled by ancient hatreds.

As Vienna descends into chaos, hunger and disillusionment, will her deception be enough to save Max – or will it end in tragedy?

Based on actual events, this is an epic story of courage and resilience. It is the kind of book that wraps around your soul and leaves an impression.

“Brilliant and moving, The Viennese Dressmaker is a compelling and vivid portrait of wartime Vienna; a story of human relationships, and the will to survive under the shadow of the most evil power the world has ever known.” – JJ Toner, author of The Black Orchestra

"Filled with suspense from the first chapter to last, The Viennese Dressmaker is a nail-biting story masterfully crafted to show the oppressive reality of life in Vienna during the dark days of WWII. I feared for Christina at every turn as she confronted threats and dangers lurking in every corner to help the victims and those she loved. For WWII resistance fiction fans, Gauci never disappoints.” — Alexa Kang, USA Today bestselling author of the Rose of Anzio series.

“Triumphs, defeats, and loss. Kathryn Gauci’s characters bleed from the pages in this perfectly paced novel set in Vienna. This great historical novel transported me to Austria and allowed me to see, smell and feel the streets beneath my feet as I walked alongside the characters.” – Jana Petken, the #I bestselling author of “The German Half-Bloods Trilogy.”

“With The Viennese Dressmaker, Kathryn has once again created a page-turning story based on well-researched historical detail. Searing and heart-breaking, Christina’s story will stay with you long after you finish the final page. I loved it.” – Eoin Dempsey, bestselling author of White Rose, Black Forest and The Longest Echo.

“The Viennese Dressmaker is a WWII novel in all the best traditions of the genre. Deeply touching and captivating, this is a powerful tale of courage and self-sacrifice under the pressure of unrelenting terror. The brilliantly portrayed characters, breathtaking twists of fate, and a surprise ending will take you on a journey you won’t soon forget.” – Marina Osipova, multi-award-winning historical fiction author of How Dare the Birds Sing.


*** *** 

You might also like ... books written by Helen Hollick 

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick 

COFFEE POT BOOK CLUB
BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022
BRONZE AWARD
A prequel novella - how Jesamiah Acorne became a pirate 
new edition with new additional scenes 
now in paperback 
and e-book on Amazon


* * *
The SEA WITCH VOYAGES
nautical adventures set during the Golden Age of Piracy

If you liked Pirates Of The Caribbean?
then you'll love the Sea Witch Voyages!
Amazon:
 https://viewbook.at/SeaWitch

* * * 
The Jan Christopher Cosy Mysteries
set in the 1970s

* * *
Plus many more...
fiction, non-fiction

Saturday 22 October 2022

Book Spotlight Deborah Swift: the COFFEE POT BOOK CLUB BOOK of the YEAR AWARD 2022 WINNER'S SPOTLIGHT

Shining a Spotlight on Good Books & Good Authors
who recently won a Gold, Silver or Bronze 
Coffee Pot Book Club Award

#BookSpotlight
Welcome to my Blog!
Wander through wonderful worlds real and fictional,
meet interesting people, visit exciting places
and find a few good books to enjoy along the way!

THE SILKWORM KEEPER
BY 
DEBORAH SWIFT IS A...



About Today's Spotlight Book

The Silkworm Keeper by Deborah Swift

Rome 1638

Old sins have long shadows ~ Italian Proverb

Giulia Tofana never wanted to be a nun, but she is determined to atone for her past misdeeds by making her new monastery a success.

When an unexpected disaster closes the convent, Giulia is forced to turn to her old friend Fabio Pasello for help. Giulia still has intense feelings for Fabio and Fabio’s passion for her has never diminished.

But they are not the same people they were before. Giulia has taken her vows, and Fabio is apprenticed to Gianlorenzo Bernini the famous sculptor, and has become one of Bernini’s rakish libertines. They could not be further apart.

To add to their problems, Giulia cannot escape her reputation as a poisoner, and is soon embroiled in a plot against Fabio’s patron, Pope Urban VIII. Faced with the idea of murder, will Giulia renounce her vows or embrace them?

Inspired by true stories, this is a novel of nuns and courtesans, artists and priests, in the shadow and splendour of the Eternal City.

'Swift is a consummate historical novelist, basing her books on immaculate research and then filling the gaps between real events and real people with eloquent storytelling, atmospheric scene setting and imaginative plot lines.' - The Visitor




*** *** 

You might also like ... books written by Helen Hollick 

Website: https://helenhollick.net/

Amazon Author Page: https://viewauthor.at/HelenHollick 

COFFEE POT BOOK CLUB
BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022
BRONZE AWARD
A prequel novella - how Jesamiah Acorne became a pirate 
new edition with new additional scenes 
now in paperback 
and e-book on Amazon


* * *
The SEA WITCH VOYAGES
nautical adventures set during the Golden Age of Piracy

If you liked Pirates Of The Caribbean?
then you'll love the Sea Witch Voyages!
Amazon:
 https://viewbook.at/SeaWitch

* * * 
The Jan Christopher Cosy Mysteries
set in the 1970s

* * *
Plus many more...
fiction, non-fiction