Blog
Writing The Legend and History of Giulia Tofana by Deborah Swift #GiuliaTofana #HistoricalFiction
Why Giulia Tofana? When I first had the idea to write about Giulia Tofana, all I knew about her was that she’d killed 600 men in Renaissance Italy. Immediately it made me curious to know why, and what sort of a woman she might be. I wondered whether she was really as...
Unspoken by Jann Alexander #Texas #CoffeePotBookClub #Dustbowl #1930s
A Farm Devastated. A Dream Destroyed. A Family Scattered. And One Texas Girl Determined to Salvage the Wreckage. Ruby Lee Becker can't breathe. It's 1935 in the heart of the Dust Bowl, and the Becker family has clung to its Texas Panhandle farm through six years of...
By Love Divided by Elizabeth St John #CoffeePotBookClub #LydiardChronicles
The Lydiard Chronicles Duty, passion, and power collide in The Lydiard Chronicles, a gripping trilogy inspired by true events. Follow three courageous women—survivors, strategists, and storytellers—who defy the constraints of society to shape their family’s fate and...
The Antidotes to 17th Century Poison by Deborah Swift #GiuliaTofana #Poisoner
You are a man living in Naples in the 17th Century and you suspect your wife might be poisoning you. Surprisingly, this is not uncommon. Many men of your own age (late fifties) have died in mysterious circumstances, leaving their young wives, many under twenty years...
Spotlight on The Herb Knot by Jane Loftus #medieval #Winchester #Epic #HistoricalFiction
The Herb Knot A promise to the dead can be a curse to the living... The Hundred Years’ War comes to life in this spellbinding tale of love, betrayal and conspiracy … A quest born on the battlefield will change a young boy’s destiny… Rafi Dubois is five years...
Historical Fiction Spotlight on Uprising by Paul Bernardi #Rebellion #AngloSaxon #CoffeePotBookClub
Summer 1067. Northumbria. Oslac, thegn of the village of Acum, feels cheated - having been robbed of the chance to kill his enemy by his own kinsman. Instead, Gundulf, the erstwhile Lord of Hexham and murderer of Acum's villagers, is now awaiting justice for his...
Death and the Poet by Fiona Forsyth #Roman #HistoricalFiction #CoffeePotBookClub
Read an Excerpt Prologue: Rome, 14 C It was the night of the Ides of May, dark and raining, when they got back to Rome. Fabius decided that he needed to walk home, said a quiet farewell, then set off along the Tiber embankment with one slave accompanying. Not too long...
The Last Bookshop in Prague by Helen Parusel #Review #WW2 #BooksWorthReading
In times of strife, never underestimate the power of stories. Was she incredibly brave or incredibly stupid? Neither. Just a bookshop girl doing what she could against her country’s oppressors. The banned books club was only the beginning; a place for the women of...
Falling Pomegranate Seeds by Wendy J Dunn #CoffeePotBookClub #KatherineofAragon
Falling Pomegranate Seeds Duology: The Katherine of Aragon Story Omnibus Edition A snippet “I have been pleased to see how much my Catalina, my sweet chiquitina, enjoys her mornings with you.” Queen Isabel brought her hands together, drumming her fingertips together...
Her Darkest Hour by Suzy Henderson #Review #Witchcraft #WW2 #HistoricalFantasy
England, 1939. A Witch in Hiding. A Nation at War. A Traitor in the Shadows. Eliza MacLean has spent years suppressing her magic - until war and tragedy force her to flee to Cambridge. Among the women of the WVS, she hopes to find safety, but Cambridge holds dangerous...
Spotlight on The Finding by Jane Hunt #WW2 #CoffeePotBookClub #Wiltshire #Novella
The Finding by Jane Hunt - a WW2 Novella This poignant novella is a tale of forbidden love, resilience, and the human cost of war. In the quiet fields of Wiltshire during World War II, Eveline, a sheltered young woman, stumbles upon a life-altering discovery: a German...
Launch Day for Last Train to Freedom #NewRelease
This was a fascinating book to research and taught me a history that I previously did not know existed. Here is a little background to the book -- The Jewish Community of Kaunas In Lithuania before the war, Jews made up roughly one-third of Kaunas’s population—about...
Bess – Tudor Gentlewoman by Tony Riches #Elizabethan #Tudors #HistoricalFiction
Congratulations to Tony Riches on the launch of BESS - TUDOR GENTLEWOMAN Book Six of the Elizabethan Series “A thrilling portrait of a remarkable woman who witnessed the key events of Elizabethan England.” Bess Throckmorton defies her notorious background and lack of...
The Florence Sisters by Tessa Harris #WW2 #Review #HistoricalFiction
The Florence Sisters A war-torn city. A stolen masterpiece. Two lives in the balance… Italy, 1940. With Florence on the cusp of war, Il Scorpione, the no-nonsense Englishwomen of the city, find their genteel livelihoods under grave threat by the approach of the Nazis....
The Ballad of Mary Kearney by Katherine Mezzacappa
ABOUT THE BOOK ‘I am dead, my Mary; the man who loved you body and soul lies in some dishonorable grave.’ In County Down, Ireland, in 1767, a nobleman secretly marries his servant, in defiance of law, class, and religion. Can their love survive tumultuous times?...