Book reviews

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An unexpected hero – My review of The Forgotten Daughter

Seven years ago, I was lucky enough to read across Dangerous Works. I was gripped by Caroline Warfield’s writing style, her characterisation, her plotting, her gentle sense of humour, and the sense that she understood human nature. So when the rest of the Dangerous books arrived, I devoured them all, and discovered something else that made Warfield a one-click automatic preorder author for me.

That discovery has been confirmed in each of the novels, novellas, and short stories to follow. Each of Warfield’s characters, and especially her heroes, is a unique individual. There’s comfort in authors who always write heroes of a particular type. The warrior, protective of his own feelings and of the heroine when he finally falls for her. The rake, drowning his sorrows in wine, women and song until love makes him strong enough to face his fears. The reader knows what to expect, and the best authors make us love him and look forward to his next incarnation in the next book.

Reading Warfield is an adventure. The scholar. The broken warrior intent on suicide by alcohol. The arrogant duke who manipulates people—for their own good. The kind family man. And that’s just the first four books.

The Forgotten Daughter, book 3 in The Ashmead Heirs has, perhaps, the best hero yet.

Eli Benson, steward to the Earl of Clarion, has spent the last few years cleaning up the mess left by his employer’s horrible father and also putting the earl’s estate—neglected by the old man and ravaged by his widow—to rights. He is known as the man who fixes things, but is nobody’s idea of a hero, especially his own.

Frances Hancock is the illegitimate daughter left out of the will in which the old earl sought to punish his legitimate family by leaving everything not entailed to his bastards.

Can Eli fix it? He can, or will die trying.

I fell in love with this unexpected hero. So did Fanny. I’m willing to bet that you will, too. Read The Forgotten Daughter. Read The Ashmead Heirs. Read everything Warfield writes. You’ll be glad you did.

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Spotlight on Music on the Waters

St Magnus Cathedral, and its organ, play a central part in Music on the Waters, the latest novel from Caroline Warfield. The video above gives the history of the cathedral.

I love stories about two people groping their ineffectual way towards an understanding, and this is a delightful one. The hero is a successful businessman, but hasn’t been quite as successful in understanding his now deceased wife. He needs help with his wild children, especially the daughter who seems increasingly distant. But he is certainly not interested in another meek conventional wife who won’t express an opinion of her own.

Ann appears on the surface to be such a woman, but Alec first sees her when she is playing the organ — can he coax her to be, with him, the vibrant passionate woman she becomes when she plays?

Ann is the daughter of a bullying father, well used to everyone telling her that her thoughts, feelings, tastes, and opinions are wrong. She has learned to hide her appreciation of, and talent for, the music of the great masters. Instead, she teaches and conducts saccharine ballads, while yearning for something more. She has no idea what Alec is up to, but she doesn’t trust it.

The outcome of this romance was never in any real doubt, but the steps and missteps in the developing relationship are wonderfully satisfying, and Warfield has also given us a delightful supporting cast, including a trio of engaging children.

You won’t regret buying this story (for a mere USD99c, or free on KU). Without the twists and the life and death situations of Warfield’s great Children of Empire series or her compelling Christmas Hope, it nonetheless left me with a smile and a warm heart. Perfect comfort reading.

Music on the Waters

Sir Alexander Bradshaw needs a wife, a sensible woman to manage his unruly sons and sullen daughter. No suitable candidates appear, however, and Alec resigns himself to spend another long, dark Orkney winter companionless. When an acquaintance suggests a music teacher might occupy his daughter, he embraces the idea.

Ann Dunwood travels to Orkney for the opportunity to play the Kirkwall organ. For the beauty of the instrument, Ann endures the conservative choir members who wish to perform the most banal of hymns; she’s done it before. She knows how to fade into the shadows and keep to her place.

When he happens upon Ann in the cathedral, Alec is enchanted by the woman at the keyboard, who fills the room with a Bach fugue. Yet, when the music ends, the object of his fascination turns into a demure mouse. Alec determines to reignite the passion he glimpsed in her and fill his home with music.

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Sunday Spotlight on Christmas Hope

A compelling story of love in impossible circumstances

I loved this book.

Caroline Warfield invariably engages our hearts, and Christmas Hope is no exception. Harry has the heart of a poet; a heart that is sickened by life with the Canadian Forces in the trenches of WWI. Rosemarie is a widow struggling to feed herself and her son, Marcel, while withering under the contempt of small-minded locals. Harry’s hunt for his lost bible brings them together. For Harry, Rosemarie and Marcel come to represent all that is good and peaceful. For Rosemarie, Harry is a light in the darkness.

The book follows them through four years, each ending in a Christmas, as their relationship deepens in brief encounters stolen out of the ruinous war. Even the end of the war does not bring peace for this small would-be family — Rosemarie has been evacuated out of the path of the battles, and she and Harry have lost touch with one another.

Part 4 of the book is set in 1919, beginning as Harry faces repatriation from Wales to Canada, his father’s well-meant interference in his future, and the influenza that devastated the post-war world. Rosemarie leaves her son with his uncle to search for her beloved. Nothing is easy.

I enjoy Warfield’s decent men and courageous women. Harry might just be one of my favourites. I particularly cherished his scenes with Marcel. As for Rosemarie, watching her overcome obstacle after obstacle, including her own self doubt, broke my heart — but I trusted Warfield to mend it again, and she did. Right at the eleventh hour, which is the best time, in a novel.

I strongly recommend Christmas Hope.

Christmas Hope

When the Great War is over, will their love be enough?

A wartime romance in four parts, each ending on Christmas, 1916-1919.

After two years at the mercy of the Canadian Expeditionary force and the German war machine, Harry ran out of metaphors for death, synonyms for brown, and images of darkness. When he encounters color among the floating islands of Amiens and life in the form a widow and her little son, hope ensnares him. Through three more long years of war and its aftermath, the hope she brings keeps Harry alive.

Rosemarie Legrand’s husband left her a tiny son, no money, and a savaged reputation when he died. She struggles to simply feed the boy and has little to offer a lonely soldier, but Harry’s devotion lifts her up. The war demands all her strength and resilience, will the hope of peace and the promise of Harry’s love keep her going?

Buy links:
Barnes & Noble * Kobo * Apple 

Amazon: US * UK * CA * AU * IN

Excerpt

Harry woke with a stab of fear. He reared up, groping for his rifle, afraid he had fallen asleep on duty.

He sank back into the bed as awareness flooded in. No enemy lurked. He reposed in soft covers in an unfamiliar room, his clothes had gone missing, and he wasn’t alone. A small boy watched him steadily from the doorway. Memory flooded back—fleeing from Lens, frantic to get to Rosemarie. He hadn’t deserted; he’d gotten leave or rather had it thrust on him with orders from Captain Mitchell to come back whole. He remembered a frantic journey, reaching her cottage, falling against the door, and not much else.

“You are dirty,” the boy said, approaching the bed. Harry ran a hand across the stubble on his face. It came away filthy.

“Apparently so. And you are tall, much too tall to be Marcel.”

The boy stiffened in offense. “I am Marcel. I am three.” He held up three fingers.

Before Harry could think what to say next the boy ran to the stairs shouting, “Maman, ‘arry is awake!”

His soldier’s instinct took stock of his surroundings. The room spread out under peaked roof beams. He doubted he could stand upright anywhere but the center of the room; it had only one way out, the direction Marcel had taken. He had slept in an actual bed. Rosemarie’s bed, it has to be. Did we share it? He thought not. If we had, I would certainly remember.

The blankets he lay in were worn and mended, but warm enough and clean—at least they had been until he lay in them. Since whoever took his clothing left his drawers and nothing else, he thought it best to stay nested where he lay. A tiny window at the peak of the roof let in a beam of light. It appeared to be slanted low in the sky. Does that window face east or west? Did I awake at dawn or sleep round the clock?

He could hear the boy talking with his mother and the sounds of pots and pans. Sharp awareness told him one more thing. Somewhere in this haven, fresh bread baked, sweet dough, he thought. His mouth began to water. With that, came the realization of gnawing hunger.

He debated what to do, undressed and feeble as he was. He envisioned Rosemarie fussing over her baking, and an even greater hunger overcame him, one he might do well to tame before he got out from the covers.

Her appearance in the doorway, his own vision of heaven itself, carrying a basin of steaming water, saved him the decision.

She put it on the little three-drawer chest against the opposite wall, along with the towel and rag she had over her arm.

“You’ll want to wash up,” she said. “I’m sorry we have no bathing tub. I found Raoul’s robe in storage,” she added, pointing to a purple robe draped over a trunk. The trunk, Marcel’s pallet at the foot of the bed, and a chest of drawers furnished the tiny room. She looked oddly shy, as if having him tucked in her bed with her late husband’s things nearby made her awkward.

Raoul. He had forgotten the husband, long dead now. The acid of pointless jealousy ate at him, and he could think of nothing to say. He sat up, letting the blanket fall to his lap, and her eyes dropped to the floor, but not before he caught the heat when she spied his naked chest. The jealousy fell away.

For more about the book and a giveaway, go to Silver Dagger Tours. The stops are near the foot of their tour post, and the Rafflecopter is under that.

Meet Caroline Warfield

Caroline Warfield

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog                http://www.carolinewarfield.com/

Meet Caroline on Facebook                          https://www.facebook.com/carolinewarfield7

Follow Caroline on Twitter                            https://twitter.com/CaroWarfield

Email Caroline directly                                   warfieldcaro@gmail.com

Subscribe to Caroline’s newsletter            http://www.carolinewarfield.com/newsletter/

Amazon Author                                                   http://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Goodreads                     https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8523742.Caroline_Warfield

Bookbub                                             https://www.bookbub.com/profile/caroline-warfield

 

 

Caroline’s Other Books

Amazon                       https://www.amazon.com/Caroline-Warfield/e/B00N9PZZZS/

Bookshelf                      http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf

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Valentines from Bath in Spotlight on Sunday

It’s here. Valentines from Bath is published, and I love it.

In five original stories, Jessica Cale, Sherry Ewing, Jude Knight, Amy Quinton, and Caroline Warfield bring you Valentines From Bath

The Master of Ceremonies announces a great ball to be held on Valentine’s Day in the Upper Assembly Rooms of Bath.

Ladies of the highest rank—and some who wish they were—scheme, prepare, and compete to make best use of the opportunity.

Dukes, earls, tradesmen, and the occasional charlatan are alert to the possibilities as the event draws nigh.

But anything can happen in the magic of music and candlelight as couples dance, flirt, and open themselves to romantic possibilities. Problems and conflict may just fade away at a Valentine’s Day Ball.

Find buy links on the Belles’ project page on their website.

Here are my brief thoughts about each story.

Beauty and the Bounder, by Jessica Cale

He’s a liar and a fortune-hunter… and exactly what she needs.

As usual, Jess gives us a completely different slant on balls, dresses, and bounders. Her heroine is too smart, too wary, and too invested in the idea of true love to have fallen for any of the suitors who were prepared to overlook her sharp tongue and her Welshness in favour of her dowry. But this fortune hunter might just have something more to offer. I adored this story. Lady Emilia was the right mix of wryly aware and self-deprecating, and Seb was a hero to die for.

The Earl Takes a Wife, by Sherry Ewing

It began with a memory, etched in the heart.

Sherry has returned to the de Courtney family, who featured in her Holly and Hopeful Hearts story a couple of years ago. In that novella, the hero’s niece, barely out of the schoolroom, asked the heroine’s brother to wait for her to grow up. The Earl Takes a Wife follows Celia and Adrian as they try to forget one another, until Adrian’s other sister Miranda plots to bring them together and almost destroys them. Celia’s innocence and sincerity don’t make her a pushover. I loved her determination to win the love match she wants, despite everything. Adrian acted like a prat for much of the story, but he had reason. He figured it out in the end, for a signature Ewing happy ending.

The Beast Next Door, by Jude Knight

In all the assemblies and parties of Bath, no-one Charis met could ever match the beast next door. 

Obviously, I’m not going to review this one. Here are my characters.

The Umbrella Chronicles: John and Emma’s Story, by Amy Quinton

A serious-minded, scientific man of learning seeks a complex and chaotic practitioner of all things superstitious who will upend his well-ordered life.

Another fine addition to the Umbrella Chronicles. John is endearingly bumbling in matters of emotion, which he avoids like the plague. Emma is refreshingly honest. She wants him, but she wants him to her as she is; his complete opposite in almost all things. Can too such different characters find love? Let Amy show you how.

Candles in the Dark, by Caroline Warfield

Doug Marsh and his candles bring light to many, none more than Esther. They may light the Assembly Rooms even as his love lights her life.

My favourite in the set, and the only one that doesn’t involve people who are part of the Bath social set. Esther works in the Assembly Room. Doug owns the candle manufactory. These are two lovely people from different worlds brought together by her urgent need and his kind heart. With her usual light touch, Caroline gives us real world problems with serious potential consequences, and then practical solutions that lead to a happy ever after and a deep satisfied sigh from this reader. Love will find a way.

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Sunday Spotlight on Brainstorm Your Book

I was a beta reader for this practical workbook, and it’s impressive. I expected no less from Mari, who for sure knows what she’s doing as a writer, as a writing coach, and as an editor. I’ll be using the worksheets and other ideas in my future planning sessions for my own books, and I recommend it to those who want a robust way to improve and shorten their planning process (before, during, and after that crucial first draft).

Brainstorm Your Book: Planning the Parts of Your Next Novel

Brainstorm Your Book: Planning the Parts of Your Next Novel is a hands-on, pen-to-paper, rubber-to-road workbook to help you generate ideas for all the elements of your next fiction book—character, setting, plot, and theme—to produce a more robust first draft more easily, and improve on your later versions. Whether you are writing your first book or your fifty-first, no matter your genre or personal process, Brainstorm Your Book will spark creativity, increase productivity, and make writing your novel a whole lot more fun.

In a series of questions, prompts, and exercises, Brainstorm Your Book probes your imagination, pulling small and large details from your creative mind and the world around you. The workbook will introduce you to your characters and help build solid friendships with them, show you both a bird’s-eye and closeup view of your settings, generate action to drive the plot forward, and enhance the underlying messages in your manuscript. It will walk you, step-by-step, through choices you might never have considered, act as a catalyst driving progress through the whole first draft, and increase your chances of ending with a high-quality finished novel.

Coming soon: Brainstorm Your Book Workbooks for Memoir and Nonfiction!

Buy link: https://mariannechristie.com/brainstorm-your-book/

Contest:

Win a Kindle Fire 7 and free extra brainstorming worksheets for life!

For the entire month of August on Mari’s blog, you will find daily brainstorming prompts from the book. If you follow the prompts and comment with some of the writing that results, you will be entered to win.

Follow Mari on the web:

Author Website www.MariAnneChristie.com

Facebook www.facebook.com/MariChristieAuthor

Twitter www.twitter.com/MChristieAuthor

Pinterest www.pinterest.com/MariChristie

Goodreads www.goodreads.com/author/show/5055425.Mari_Christie

 

And, for more tools to improve your writing and your novel, find Mari on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/MariAnneChristie

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Run, don’t walk, to buy Unexpected Wife

I was introduced to Caroline Warfield’s books when I read her first published novel, Dangerous Works, and within a few pages knew she was giving me everything I want in an historical romance. Well-rounded characters I cared about. Stories soundly grounded in historical fact, including real challenges and issues consistent with the times. Interesting plots with unexpected but logical twists. A solid passion between the hero and heroine ending in a commitment that I can expect to last well beyond the last page of the book.

Each book in the Dangerous series just got better and better, and the novella A Dangerous Nativity was just plain funny, besides. I loved the three delightful boys and their plan to put on a nativity scene with animals in all the parts.

You can imagine how excited I was when she spoke about Children of Empire, in which the three boys, now grown and estranged (thanks to a vicious lying harpy), each have a book. The story of Canadian timber baron, Rand, is told in The Renegade Wife. Fred, who went into the army, meets the love of his life in The Reluctant Wife. Charles, the Duke of Murnane, appeared in the story for each of his cousins. Good as they were, each better than the last, I was holding out to hear what happened to Charles. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Take everything I said about Dangerous Works and magnify it. The Unexpected Wife stars my beloved Charles, as wonderful as ever, and a heroine who is worthy of him. Zambuk is brilliant, passionate, magnificent — and deeply frustrated at the constraints on her as a woman. Together, they face the challenges posed by her opium-addicted brother, rogue Western traders determined to break the Chinese ban on opium, a Chinese magistrate dedicated to stamping out the vile trade, small-minded gossip, and Charles’s wicked wife.

Who could ask for more? A sigh-worthy ending goes without saying in a Warfield book. And I know I’ve said it before, but this is Caroline’s best yet.  Can’t wait to see what she does in her next series.

Giveaway

To celebrate the launch, Caroline will give a copy of any of her books to one randomly selected person who comments. They can choose from the books found here: http://www.carolinewarfield.com/bookshelf/

 

The Duke of Murnane expects work to heal him. He doesn’t expect to face his past and find his future in China

Charles Wheatly, Duke of Murnane, accepts an unofficial fact finding mission to the East India Company’s enclave in Canton, China on behalf of the queen. He anticipates intrigue, international tensions, and an outlet for his grief over the death of his young son. He isn’t entirely surprised when he also encounters the troublesome offspring of his mentor, the Duke of Sudbury, but the profound love he discovers for the determined young woman is unforeseen and untimely. Charles certainly doesn’t expect to also face his troubled marriage in such an exotic locale. The appearance of his estranged wife in the company of their enemy throws the entire enterprise into conflict, and tensions boil over when the woman he loves is put at risk by his wife’s scheming—and the beginnings of the First Opium War.

Zambak Hayden seethes with frustration. A woman her age has occupied the throne for over a year, yet the Duke of Sudbury’s line of succession still passes over her—his eldest—to land on a son with neither spine nor character. She follows her brother, the East India Company’s newest and least competent clerk, to Macau to protect him and to safeguard the family honor—if she also escapes the gossip and intrigues of London and the marriage mart, so much the better. She has no intention of being forced into some sort of dynastic marriage, and she may just refuse to marry at all. The greed and corruption she finds horrifies her, especially when her brother succumbs to the lure of opium. She determines to document the truth. When an old family friend arrives she assumes her father sent him. She isn’t about to bend to his dictates nor give up her quest. Her traitorous heart, however, can’t stop yearning for a man she can’t have.

As an epic historical drama unfolds around them, both Charles and Zambak must come to terms with a love that neither expected.

PREORDER LINKS (ebook only) — published 25 July

US  ♥  UK  ♥  Canada    ♥  EuroZone   ♥   India

The Trailer:                 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CQ9QWkqLvw

Bookbub   ♥  Book Trailer   ♥    Book Page    ♥  Pinterest Storyboard

Excerpt

At the mention of Jarratt her stomach clenched, and a vile taste crept into her mouth. “What else,” she rasped.

Charles looked down. His sigh sounded deep and weary. “Elliot fears the Chinese response will eventually ensnare an English user or dealer. If they arrest someone or threaten violence he may be forced to act.”

If Thorn is as closely allied to the opium dens as Jarratt implied—and out of his senses from the narcotic—he could be… cow turds!

“Charles, I have to get to my brother. I can’t leave him in Jarratt’s circle.”

The duke’s eyes held hers until she felt him boring into her soul. He put out a comforting hand, and she gripped it to steady herself. “How exactly do you propose to do that, Zambak?” he asked.

“Jarratt said to come back. I’ll go tomorrow. He implied Thorn might be well, might be willing to come with me.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” he corrected.

She stiffened in outrage for a moment before Jarratt’s face leered at her in memory, and she sagged toward Charles. When he cupped her cheek with one hand and searched her face, she thought for an insane moment he meant to kiss her. Absurd. Charles is a married man, and we’re friends. Only friends.

“We’ll go together, Zambak. We will get Thorn help together.”

Together. Relief flooded her. She had thought that accepting help made her weak, but the tenderness in the duke’s eyes gave her strength.

Author bio

Award winning author Caroline Warfield has been many things: traveler, librarian, poet, raiser of children, bird watcher, Internet and Web services manager, conference speaker, indexer, tech writer, genealogist—even a nun. She reckons she is on at least her third act, happily working in an office surrounded by windows where she lets her characters lead her to adventures in England and the far-flung corners of the British Empire. She nudges them to explore the riskiest territory of all, the human heart.

Visit Caroline’s Website and Blog

Meet Caroline on Facebook 

Follow Caroline on Twitter

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Sunday Spotlight on the Hellions of Haversham

Somehow, I managed to miss this series from one of my favourite authors, Lorraine Heath, until last month, though the third book came out over a year ago, and the little novella that rounds things off was published in March.

I’m so glad I discovered it!

The Hellions are four boys raised at Haversham Hall by a Marquess who is sunk in a grief so deep that the world calls him mad. One is the son whose mother died giving birth to him; three the children of the Marquess’s best friends who died in a train crash.

I say ‘raised’, but for the most part they bring themselves and one another up, reaching adulthood to travel the world and conquer Society, which will forgive them anything for their charm and their tragic pasts.

Each of the three novels tells the story of one of the Hellions.

An unconventionial heiress, a rakish duke

In Falling Into Bed with a Duke, Minerva Dodger is an unconventional heiress whose fortune has been courted but who never expects to be loved for herself decides to attend the Nightingale Club, where women can maintain anonymity while choosing a lover. Spinsterhood is better than a marriage of convenience, but she would like at least one night of passion.

The Duke of Ashebury has one inflexible rule: never more than one night with a woman. He will not risk love, and when he meets Minerva wants nothing more than a photograph of perfection to add to his collection. It will be one more item in the wall of loveliness he builds to keep away the thoughts that haunt him. But he is soon intrigued, and  sets out to find her identity and woo her in earnest.

She has no reason to trust. He has every reason to be afraid. Heath deftly manages the reveal of his secret and Minerva’s hurt and repudiation of her deceitful betrothed without me losing sympathy for either of them. And Ashe’s response is just perfect.

On a side note, Minerva’s father is a delightful character.

The substitute

The Earl Takes All is my favourite of the books, mainly because of the character of the hero. He’s a better man than he realises.

Edward Alcott, twin of the Earl of Greyling, returns from his last adventure with his brother to bring the tragic news of his brother’s death. But to honour the vow he made to his dying brother, he must masquerade as Greyling until his brother’s wife has her baby.

It’s complicated. Edward has been in love with Julia since he kissed her in a dark garden, a kiss she accepted thinking he was Grey. Since that night, Julia has despised Edward, and Edward has acted to widen the breach to keep a distance between them.

Now Julia finds that her husband has changed, and is appealing in an entirely different way. But what will happen when she discovers the truth?

This could all have gone horribly wrong in the hands of a lesser writer. If Edward’s internal decency had not been so well drawn — the conflict between his desires and the differing calls on his honour — I would not have been nearly so invested in the outcome. And I loved Julia, too. A worthy heroine, truly in love with her husband, and capable of loving again, a different man in a different way.

I couldn’t see how this was going to work out. A man cannot marry his brother’s wife; that’s the Anglican rule. But Heath had a surprise up her sleeve, and I couldn’t have been happier.

One of the best marriage of (in)convenience stories I’ve read

The Viscount and the Vixen is about the fourth of the Hellions. Viscount Locksley is never going to fall into the trap of love. He knows that way lies madness, as happened to his father, the Marquess of Marsden.

But when his father advertises for a bride and Portia Gadstone arrives, Locke reads the contract and realises she just might be the answer to his need. She has been guaranteed a marriage. He wants a bride he can feel nothing for: and a fortune hunting vixen prepared to marry an elderly man for his title should be perfect.

But Portia is there out of desperation, not greed, and her secrets may ruin them both.

Portia is a wonderful heroine. I occasionally wanted to shake Locke, but his actions were totally in keeping with his character and the times, and he came through in the end. Another amazing novel to round off a superb series.

Not sorry I read it

When the Marquess Falls is a novella telling the love story of Locke’s mother and father, the doomed Linnie Connor and Marquess of Marsden.

The story is charming. He always follows the rules set by his inflexible mother. She is the baker’s daughter, and therefore completely unsuitable. And I liked both the main characters.

I thought Heath had set herself an enormous challenge in writing a novella for which readers of the series know the end, since we know that Marsden spent most of his lifetime sunk in grief.

I tell you, people, she just about pulls it off. The last three chapters are beautifully evocative. For me, the paranormal elements grate, but that’s me.

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Sunday Spotlight on Blind Tribute

The Battle of Fort Sumter was the first engagement in the American Civil War.

Today’s Sunday Spotlight is on Blind Tribute, by Mari Anne Christie.

Good non-fiction gives us a new perspective on the facts. Great fiction puts us into someone else’s shoes, letting us live a life so different from our own that we withdraw dazed and changed. The view from Blind Tribute will remain with me always.

Blind Tribute begins on the same day as the Battle of Fort Sumter, the start of the American Civil War, and the conflicts and attitudes underpinning the war are the central themes of the book.

Harry, the protagonist, has been a newspaper man since his university days, first in his hometown of Charleston, then in war zones around the world, and—for the past twenty years—in Philadelphia, as editor of its most successful newspaper. The conflict between the States is played out in his family, his birth family demanding allegiance to the South, and his wife and son castigating him for lack of loyalty to the North.

But Harry is loyal to the neutrality of the press, and determined to make of himself his greatest news story. When he returns to Charleston but refuses to take sides, he expects to offend. He wonders if he will survive. He almost doesn’t.

Blind Tribute is a book about integrity, about the real meaning of family, about pride and its costs, about who pays for our acts of conscience. The exploration of the relationship between government and media is timely in today’s political climate, but also timeless, applying as much today as it did when Lincoln and Davis saw newspapers as propaganda machines. Harry’s view of neutrality is no more popular today than then, and more needed than ever.

Blind Tribute is meticulously researched and brilliantly written. Mari Anne Christie’s characters are real, her plot lines compelling, and her descriptions vivid. The scene that describes Harry’s ordeal is one of the most grueling things I’ve ever read.

I’ve been reading bits of this book for three years, as Mari reshaped, rewrote, and polished every line. I’ve seen it grow from good to great. If you read one historical fiction book in 2017, make it this one.

Blind Tribute

Every newspaper editor may owe tribute to the devil, but Harry Wentworth’s bill just came due.

As America marches toward the Civil War, Harry Wentworth, gentleman of distinction and journalist of renown, finds his calls for peaceful resolution have fallen on deaf—nay, hostile—ears, so he must finally resolve his own moral quandary. Comment on the war from his influential—and safe—position in Northern Society, or make a news story and a target of himself South of the Mason-Dixon Line, in a city haunted by a life he has long since left behind?

The day-to-day struggle against countervailing forces, his personal and professional tragedies on both sides of the conflict, and the elegant and emotive writings that define him, all serve to illuminate the trials of this newsman’s crusade, irreparably altering his mind, his body, his spirit, and his purpose as an honorable man. Blind Tribute exposes the shifting stones of the moral high ground, as Harry’s family and friendships, North and South, are shattered by his acts of conscience.

Universal Link

Buy from Mari’s website

Facebook Launch Party, July 28th, 2pm – 8 pm MDT

Giveaway

Mari will be giving away a quill pen (like Harry’s) and powdered ink, a swag pack including Harry’s Editorials Collection, and a e-copy of the book to one winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Meet Mari Anne Christie

Mari was “raised up” in journalism (mostly raising her glass at the Denver Press Club bar) after the advent of the web press, but before the desktop computer. She has since plied her trade as a writer, editor, and designer across many different fields, and currently works as a technical writer and editor.

Under the name Mari Christie, she has released a book-length epic poem, Saqil pa Q’equ’mal: Light in Darkness: Poetry of the Mayan Underworld, and under pen name Mariana Gabrielle, she has written several Regency romances, including the Sailing Home Series and La Déesse Noire: The Black Goddess. Blind Tribute is her first mainstream historical novel. She expects to release the first book in a new family saga, The Lion’s Club, in 2018.

She holds a BA in Writing, summa cum laude and With Distinction, from the University of Colorado Denver, and is a member of the Speakeasy Scribes, the Historical Novel Society, and the Denver Press Club. She has a long family history in Charleston, South Carolina, and is the great-great niece of a man in the mold of Harry Wentworth.

Author Website & blog: www.MariAnneChristie.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MariChristieAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mchristieauthor

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/marichristie

Blog: http://marichristie.wordpress.com

Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/author/marichristie

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5055425.Mari_Christie

Wattpad (romance only): https://www.wattpad.com/user/marianagabrielle

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/mari-anne-christie

Authorgraph: https://www.authorgraph.com/authors/mchristieauthor

Street Team: https://www.facebook.com/groups/marismuses/

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Sunday Spotlight on Broken Things

Broken Things is Meg Henshawe’s book. Hers and Jake Cohen’s. If you’ve read the early books in Jessica Cale’s Southwark Saga (especially Virtue’s Lady), you’ll remember Meg. Loud, coarse, ready to trample over everyone to get what she wants, known far and wide for her beauty and her lovers. And if you haven’t read the earlier books, get them first, because this book will change everything you thought you knew about Southwark’s favourite whore.

Cale takes us into London’s worst slum in the years after the Great Fire. Her characters are irreverent, coarse, often violent, always real and compelling. Her training as an historian shows in the depth and texture of the life she portrays. Her skill as a novelist means we simply enter that life, never aware of Cale the scholar as we live the story with Meg and Jake.

What’s broken in this book? Meg and her hopes for the future. The Rose and Crown, the inn that she runs with those of her sisters still under her fierce protection. Her relationship with her son’s father. Jake’s hands, his job (for a second time—in the Great Fire, he had lost his family, his betrothal, and his future as a goldsmith), his sense of himself.

This book is about two people who have little to lose, and that about to be ripped from them. Alone, Jake is ready to give up and Meg can see no way out. Together, they find a reason to hope; a reason to keep fighting and to win.

If you read only one book this month, make it this one.

About Broken Things

Rival. Sister. Barmaid. Whore.

Meg Henshawe has been a lot of things in her life, and few of them good. As proprietress of The Rose and Crown in Restoration Southwark, she has squandered her life catering to the comfort of workmen and thieves. Famous for her beauty as much as her reputation for rage, Meg has been coveted, abused, and discarded more than once. She is resigned to fighting alone until a passing boxer offers a helping hand.

Jake Cohen needs a job. When an injury forces him out of the ring for good, all he’s left with is a pair of smashed hands and a bad leg. Keeping the peace at The Rose is easy, especially with a boss as beautiful—and wickedly funny—as Meg Henshawe. In her way, she’s as much of an outcast as Jake, and she offers him three things he thought he’d never see again: a home, family, and love.

After Meg’s estranged cousin turns up and seizes the inn, Meg and Jake must work together to protect their jobs and keep The Rose running. The future is uncertain at best, and their pasts won’t stay buried. Faced with one setback after another, they must decide if what they have is worth the fight to keep it. Can broken things ever really be fixed?

Content notes: Diverse characters, profanity, violence, graphic sex

Amazon buy link

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Sunday Spotlight on What the Scot Hears

Amy Quinton has produced another fun romp in her Agents of Change series. MacLeod, the Scot of the title is superb: gloomy, pessimistic, suspicious, and totally befuddled by the brash American woman who keeps stumbling across his work as a spy for the British Crown.

For all her cheerful outgoing personality, Amelia hides secrets of her own, not least her identity and her background.

Read this book to discover how this mismatched pair discover they are perfect for one another, while negotiating people determined to kill them and MacLeod’s reaction to Amelia’s lies. Better still, read the series. Two other couples already matched are in this novel, and it was fun to see them again. I very much enjoyed What the Duke Wants, and am now itching to read What the Marquis Sees, which I’ve skipped. See? The books can be read independently and out of order, but I want to see how Beatrice won her man. I’ve a suspicion she may be my favourite of the three heroines so far.

I’d have loved a bit more of a sense we were in 1814. The voice is very modern, and there’s little period detail. But still a rollicking good yarn, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

What the Scot Hears

Agents of Change, Book 3

England 1814: Reticent Scottish Lord pursues Mouthy, Independent, American Woman… She is an outspoken American orphan with a questionable past and a dubious purpose. He is a man of few words on the lookout for a traitor. How could they NOT get along?

Mrs. Amelia Chase is a highly-opinionated, 23-year-old woman from America on the run from her past with a penchant for self-preservation and a healthy love for Shakespearean insults. Much to a certain Scotsman’s dismay:

She isn’t:

  • Quiet – not with her tendency to talk to everyone about anything…
  • Demure – highly overrated if one cannot wear red and show off one’s curves…
  • Equine-savvy – she once fled some currish, toad-spotted, coxcombs – er, villains – in a stolen carriage at a pace slower than a meandering walk. Oh, and mistook a common mule for a thoroughbred. But other than that…

And she is:

  • Brave – Smart, Loyal, Witty. Er, charming. Plus, Modest, Lonely, Secretive – Um, forget that last part…
  • And In love – with a distrustful Highlander of all things…

Lord Alaistair MacLeod is an agent for the Crown and a man with secrets. He doesn’t speak of them, he doesn’t dwell on them, and he certainly doesn’t let them define his future. Much. One thing is for certain, he definitely doesn’t share his confidences with a peery, outspoken American woman who is obviously trouble, acts highly suspicious, and is far too nosy for her own good… No matter:

He is always:

  • Focused – men who cannot stay to task are foolish…
  • Pointed and Reserved – enough said…

And he isn’t:

  • Cheeky – like a certain American firebrand…
  • Led by his… ahem…even when following on the heels of a curvy, red-wearing… ahem
  • Or In love… especially not with a Troublesome, Meddlesome, so-called Independent American Woman…

Can he trust enough to embrace such an enigmatic woman? Can she awaken the passions of such an intensely private man?

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