Blog
Audiences Behaving Badly – The London Theatre in the 1660’s
Crowd Pleaser In my novel, Entertaining Mr Pepys, the main character ‘Bird’ Knepp, so named for her beautiful singing voice, is an actress with the King’s Playhouse in the city of London, just before the Great Fire. As an actress her job was to please the audience –...
1066 Upside Down – alternative histories – To Crown a King by Helen Hollick #CoffeePotBookClub
Today I present an excerpt from 1066 Turned Upside Down by Helen Hollick To Crown A King by Helen Hollick An appropriate excerpt, for on January 6th in 1066 Harold Godwinson was crowned as King of England... King Edward, later known as ‘The Confessor’ died on 5th...
Fair Mountain Christmas by Heidi Eljarbo #CoffeePotBookClub #Review
Review A real comfort-blanket of a book! I've been getting into the Christmas spirit this week, and what better way to do it than with a heart-warming novella set in Norway! Plenty of snow in this one, along with a schooldays friend who turns out to be more than a...
A Mystery of Murder by Helen Hollick #CoffeePotBookClub #Review
Have you got a nice log fire lit, and your hot chocolate? Because Helen Hollick wants to take you back to the 1970's with this lovely cozy mystery. I last met Jan Christopher in the previous book, but this one has a decidedly Christmassy edge, with lots of snow as she...
Rebel’s Knot by Cryssa Bazos #CoffeePotBookClub #17thCentury
Review of Rebel's Knot I have already read the other two in this series, and was really keen to read the third as I knew I'd be in for a treat. What an adventure! The action never stops as the reader is whisked from one disaster to the next. Set in Ireland, in the...
Seventeenth Century Artists in ‘Hidden Masterpiece’ by Heidi Eljarbo #CoffeePotBookClub
Today I welcome Heidi Eljarbo to my blog to tell us about the 17th Century artists featured in her new novel, Hidden Masterpiece. Over to Heidi! What a joy it is to write a novel about something I have a passion about. Historical fiction is my favorite genre. What’s...
Seadogs and Criminals – a #Victorian adventure by Alex Fisher
I'm delighted to welcome Alex Fisher to my blog today to tell me all about his new novel, Seadogs and Criminals. Over to Alex: Seadogs and Criminals is a historical fiction adventure that begins in the winding cobbled streets of Victorian London and is set amid the...
Traitors Knot by Cryssa Bazos – Read an Excerpt #CoffeePotBookClub #GreatReads
Today I'm hosting an excerpt from the wonderful novel Traitor's Knot by Cryssa Bazos. I've already read this book, and Severed Knot, the one that follows it, and I'm halfway through Rebel's Knot, the last in the series. All three books are immaculately researched,...
Spotlight on ‘Widdershins’ by Helen Steadman #audiobook #17thCentury
The new audio book of Widdershins is narrated brilliantly by talented actor, Christine Mackie, from Downton Abbey and Coronation Street. The first part of a two-part series, Widdershins is inspired by the Newcastle witch trials, where 16 people were hanged. Despite...
Darjeeling Inheritance by Liz Harris #Review #CoffeePotBookClub
Darjeeling, 1930 After eleven years in school in England, Charlotte Lawrence returns to Sundar, the tea plantation owned by her family, and finds an empty house. She learns that her beloved father died a couple of days earlier and that he left her his estate. She...
New Release! A Strand of Gold by Elisabeth Conway #HistFic #Singapore #Review
Singapore 1822: a place tainted by exploitation and dishonesty. This is the world into which Chin Ming disappears, powerless to discover what happened to her missing father and unable to deliver his letter to Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore. This...
Over the Hedge by Paulette Mahurin #WW2 #CoffeePotBookClub
I'm delighted to spotlight the WW2 novel 'Over the Hedge' by Paulette Mahurin today. What's it about? Netherlands 1943 During one of the darkest times in history, at the height of the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1943, members of the Dutch resistance...
Island of Gold by Amy Maroney #CoffeePotBookClub #historicalfiction
A noble French falconer. A spirited merchant’s daughter. And a fateful decision that changes their destiny forever. When Cédric is recruited by the Knights Hospitaller to the Greek island of Rhodes, his wife Sophie jumps at the chance to improve their fortunes. After...
New Release! The Sins of the Father by Annie Whitehead #Mercia #HistFic
A father’s legacy can be a blessing or a curse... AD658: The sons of Penda of Mercia have come of age. Ethelred, the youngest, recalls little of past wars while Wulf is determined to emulate their father, whose quest to avenge his betrayed kinswomen drew him to battle...
The Queen’s Spy by Clare Marchant #BookReview #CoffeePotBookClub
About the book: 1584: Elizabeth I rules England. But a dangerous plot is brewing in court, and Mary Queen of Scots will stop at nothing to take her cousin’s throne. There’s only one thing standing in her way: Tom, the queen’s trusted apothecary, who makes the perfect...