Mary Anne Yarde's Blog: The Coffee Pot Book Club , page 58
November 2, 2020
Welcome to Day #6 of the blog tour for The Queen's Almoner by Tonya Ulynn Brown #HistoricalFiction #TheQueensAlmoner #BlogTour @MrsBrownee2U @CaigJamie @jroberts1324
The Queen's Almoner
By Tonya Ulynn Brown
SEPTEMBER 28TH – 30TH NOVEMBER 2020AMAZON UK • AMAZON US • BARNES AND NOBLE
Publication Date: June 30, 2020
Publisher: Late November Literary
Print Length: 320 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Sometimes loyalty to the queen comes at a cost.
Thomas Broune is a Reformer and childhood friend of the young queen, Mary Stuart. When Mary embarks on a new life in her estranged homeland of Scotland, Thomas is there to greet her and offer his renewed friendship. But the long-time friends grow closer, and Thomas realizes his innocent friendship has grown into something more. Yet he is a man of the cloth. Mary is the queen of the Scots. Both of them have obligations of an overwhelming magnitude: he to his conscience and she to her throne.
When he must choose between loyalty to his queen or his quiet life away from her court, he finds that the choice comes at a high price. Driven by a sense of obligation to protect those he loves, and crippled by his inability to do so, Thomas must come to terms with the choices he has made and find a peace that will finally lay his failures to rest.
We are visiting two fabulous blogs today. The first stop is over on The Whispering Bookworm for a review.Click HERE!
The second stop of the day is over on The Books Delight where The Queen's Almoner is in the spotlight.Click HERE!
Welcome to Day #4 of the blog tour for The Last Blast of the Trumpet (Book 3 of the Knox Trilogy) by Marie Macpherson #HistoricalFiction #CoffeePotBookClub @Scotscrieve @PenmorePress1 @CraftygasheadZo
The Last Blast of the Trumpet
(Book 3 of the Knox Trilogy)
By Marie Macpherson
October 12th – December 14th 2020
Amazon UK • Amazon US • Barnes and Noble
Publication Date: 24 August 2020
Publisher: Penmore Press
Series: The Knox Trilogy
Print Length: 409 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction / Biographical Fiction
Conflict, Chaos and Corruption in Reformation Scotland.
He wants to reform Scotland, but his enemies will stop at nothing to prevent him.
Scotland 1559: Fiery reformer John Knox returns to a Scotland on the brink of civil war. Victorious, he feels confident of his place leading the reform until the charismatic young widow, Mary Queen of Scots returns to claim her throne. She challenges his position and initiates a ferocious battle of wills as they strive to win the hearts and minds of the Scots. But the treachery and jealousy that surrounds them both as they make critical choices in their public and private lives has dangerous consequences that neither of them can imagine.
In this final instalment of the trilogy of the fiery reformer John Knox, Macpherson tells the story of a man and a queen at one of the most critical phases of Scottish history.
Scottish writer Marie Macpherson grew up in Musselburgh on the site of the Battle of Pinkie and within sight of Fa’side Castle where tales and legends haunted her imagination. She left the Honest Toun to study Russian at Strathclyde University and spent a year in the former Soviet Union to research her PhD thesis on the 19th century Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov, said to be descended from the Scottish poet and seer, Thomas the Rhymer. Though travelled widely, teaching languages and literature from Madrid to Moscow, she has never lost her enthusiasm for the rich history and culture of her native Scotland.
Writing historical fiction combines her academic’s love of research with a passion for storytelling. Exploring the personal relationships and often hidden motivations of historical characters drives her curiosity.
The Knox Trilogy is a fictional biography of the fiery reformer, John Knox, set during the 16th century Scottish Reformation. Prizes and awards include the Martha Hamilton Prize for Creative Writing from Edinburgh University and Writer of the Year 2011 awarded by Tyne & Esk Writers. She is a member of the Historical Writers’ Association (HWA), the Historical Novel Society (HNS) and the Society of Authors (SoA).
Head over to Zoe's Art, Craft and Life for a sneak-peek between the covers of The Last Blast Of The Trumpet
Click HERE!
Welcome to Day #1 of the blog tour for Lady Estrid: A Novel of Eleventh Century Denmark by M J Porter #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour @coloursofunison @m_morganauthor
November 2nd – January 4th
Amazon UK • Amazon US
Publication Date: 29th October 2020
Publisher: Independently Published
Page Length:
Genre: Historical Fiction
Daughter, Sister, Duchess, Aunt. Queen.
United by blood and marriage. Divided by seas. Torn apart by ambition.
Lady Estrid Sweinsdottir has returned from Kiev, her first husband dead after only a few months of marriage. Her future will be decided by her father, King Swein of Denmark, or will it?
A member of the ruling House of Gorm, Estrid might not be eligible to rule, as her older two brothers, but her worth is in more than her ability to marry and provide heirs for a husband, for her loyalty is beyond question.
With a family as divided and powerful as hers, stretching from England to Norway to the land of the Svear, she must do all she can to ensure Denmark remains under the control of her father’s descendants, no matter the raging seas and boiling ambition that threatens to imperil all.
Our first stop of the tour is over on Mary's Tavern, where you can take a sneak-peek between the covers of Lady Estrid.
Click HERE!
November 1, 2020
#BookReview — The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale (The Yale Trilogy, Book 1) by David Ebsworth #HistoricalFiction @EbsworthDavid
The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale
(The Yale Trilogy, Book 1)
By David Ebsworth
1721, and elderly Catherine Yale discovers that second husband Elihu’s will has left her no bequest except the slur of branding her a "wicked wife.”
True, her private journals are filled with intimacies: her inner thoughts about life in Old Madras, where the East India Company’s intrigues are as complex as any in the Mughal Emperor’s court; and the espionage she has undertaken, despite the danger into which it has thrust both herself and her children.
Perhaps it’s time for her to read them afresh, to go back before the days when Elihu first betrayed her, before she was betrayed by her enemies, and betrayed by the friends who should have stood at her side – before she determined to wreak her revenge on them all.
“You’ll find few around here, madam, with a bad word for Elihu Yale.”
But plenty for me, I suppose. A wicked wife? Is this what was in his mind? Was this what fed those deathbed words of his?
Catherine Yale had to admit that there was some truth in her husband’s statement, but the wickedness was not of her making. She had simply done what she had to do to survive, and she was not going to apologise for that. But to understand the end, one really needed to go back to the beginning. Back to a time before Elihu Yale…
With an elegant sweep of the quill, and an equally impressive narrative, David Ebsworth has composed a tale in which the historical backdrop has been meticulously researched, and the characters seem larger than life. The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale (The Yale Trilogy, Book 1) is a novel that is not only immensely readable but incredibly successful too. This story is, above everything else, a compelling account of an extraordinary time.
Mistress Catherine Yale, the protagonist in this tale, is a woman caught up in a web of conspiracies and lies in a land where superstitions, famine, war and piracy ran hand in hand with whispered threats of regicide. Catherine is a character that is quick of wit and has a crystalline understanding of the world around her. She sees people for what they are, and she uses her judgement accordingly—although this leads her down a dangerous and murky path to a place that she cannot come back from.
Ebsworth starts this first book in his trilogy not at the beginning but at the end of Catherine’s story. Catherine suffers the dishonour of being branded as a wicked woman in her husband’s will, which leads her to contemplate her life and how she had fallen so far from her esteemed husband’s admirations. By telling Catherine’s story through the use of diary entries and letters, Ebsworth allows his readers to glimpse into the most intimate thoughts of his protagonist. There is always a slight risk when approaching a story in such a way for sometimes the delivery can feel disjointed, but I felt that Ebsworth pulled this style off admirably. The letters, which are mentioned and dictated in this novel, also help the reader to understand the political situation in England, but more importantly, they give an understanding of just how cut off these people were from London, from home. A brave new world this may well have been, but it was also an extremely isolated one.
Catherine is a character who suffers tremendously throughout this novel—her loss, her grief, and her comprehension of the levels of corruption that is all around her made this book an enthralling read. Despite the setbacks, despite the loss, Catherine is determined to secure her future and that of her sons. Wealth, and the determination to require more of it, drives this story forward, but at the same time the sacrifices and the enemies that are made along the way demonstrate that wealth may well be able to cover over a multitude of sins, but the one thing it could not buy is happiness and, more importantly, peace of mind. Catherine does not live a life filled with joy, and several of the trials she faces are brought about by her own hand. Saying that, however, I could not help but sympathise with her. The loss of her husband and children, and then her subsequent marriage to a man who married her only to increase his position and personal fortune, made me somewhat sympathetic to her plight even though it was her idea. She is also plagued with bouts of mental illness. Unfortunately, her mental health is not easily understood, nor does her husband try to understand it. At times, Catherine’s diary portrays a woman who is trapped in a prison of her own making. And yet, she is silently screaming for someone, anyone, to help and comfort her. It is a deeply touching portrait.
As is so often the case with history there is more documented evidence of the men in this era, and therefore Ebsworth had slightly more to work with when it came to his depiction of Elihu Yale. Yale’s determination as well as his ambition sees him rise in station. He views his marriage to Catherine as a means to help his dreams come to fruition. I found it exceedingly hard to like Yale, simply because of the history behind the name, but I thought Ebsworth penned a fair portrayal. Yale is a man of commerce—if he sees an opportunity to make money, he will do it. However, this book does not give us a balanced account of his life because it is told through Catherine’s perspective.
The majority of Catherine’s diary entries are composed of conversations that have occurred around the dinner table and a few lavish garden parties. The rich, complicated and at some times shameful history of Fort St. George in the 18th Century is brought back to life in a story that is set in a time so profoundly different to our own. When slavery was a legal form of commerce any moral arguments at the abomination of such a cruel and heartless trade were easily excused by quoting the scriptures. This was an era so foreign to our own that at times the complete lack of compassion and the unfathomable excuses made for some harrowing reading. The flourishing slave trade in Madras and the attempts to curb the practice of English merchants kidnapping young children and selling them for profit seems almost counterproductive when the buying and selling of fellow humans continued to flourish legally. Add to that a muddled mix of religions, beliefs and practises reminds the reader that this novel encompasses the collision of eastern and western culture, with the western cultures believing that their idea of civilisation had to be adopted for the greater good—the irony of that statement is not lost on Catherine. I thought Ebsworth really captured the essences of what it must have been like to live in Fort St. George during this time and, although we only see things through Catherine’s perspective, her narrative does allow the reader to envisage the suffering that those less fortunate natives and other discriminated populations experienced under Company rule.
The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale by David Ebsworth is astoundingly ambitious, but it is also one that is utterly triumphant in its delivery. With a vast cast of characters and a compelling protagonist, Ebsworth has given his readers a book that was next to impossible to put down. I am looking forward to reading Book 2 in what promises to be a mesmerising series.
I Highly Recommend.
Review by Mary Anne Yarde
The Coffee Pot Book Club.
Pick up your copy of
The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale
Add The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale to your 'to-read' list on
David Ebsworth
DAVID EBSWORTH is the pen name of writer Dave McCall, a former negotiator for Britain’s Transport & General Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool but has lived in Wrexham, North Wales, with his wife Ann since 1981.Following his retirement, Dave began to write historical fiction in 2009 and has subsequently published six novels: political thrillers dealing with the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, the Battle of Waterloo, warlord rivalry in sixth century Britain, and the Spanish Civil War. His sixth book, Until the Curtain Falls returns to that same Spanish conflict, following the story of journalist Jack Telford, and is published in Spanish under the title Hasta Que Caiga el Telón. Jack Telford, as it happens, is also the main protagonist in a separate novella, The Lisbon Labyrinth.
Each of Dave’s novels has been critically acclaimed by the Historical Novel Society and been awarded the coveted BRAG Medallion for independent authors.
This seventh novel, The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress Yale, is the first in a trilogy about the life of nabob philanthropist (and slave-trader) Elihu Yale, told through the eyes of his much-maligned and largely forgotten wife, Catherine.
Connect with David: Website • Twitter • Goodreads.
Book Title: The Doubtful Diaries of Wicked Mistress YaleSeries: The Yale Trilogy, Book 1Author: David EbsworthPublication Date: April 8th 2019Publisher: SilverWood BooksPage Length: 270 PagesGenre: Historical FictionReview By: Mary Anne Yarde, The Coffee Pot Book Club.
October 30, 2020
Welcome to the Final Day of the blog tour for The Potential for Love: A Regency Novel by Catherine Kullmann #BookReview #RegencyRomance #CoffeePotBookClub @CKullmannAuthor @cathiedunn
THE POTENTIAL FOR LOVE: A REGENCY NOVELBY CATHERINE KULLMANN
OCTOBER 19TH - OCTOBER 30TH 2020AMAZON • WATERSTONES • BARNES AND NOBLE
Publication Date: 31 March 2020
Publisher: Willow Books
Print Length: 414 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction/Historical Romance/Regency Romance/Historical Women’s Fiction
1816
For over six years, Thomas Ferraunt’s thoughts have been of war. Newly returned to England from occupied Paris, he must ask himself what his place is in this new world and what he wants from it. More and more, his thoughts turn to Arabella Malvin, but would Lord Malvin agree to such a mismatch for his daughter, especially when she is being courted by Lord Henry Danlow?
About to embark on her fourth Season, Arabella is tired of the life of a debutante, waiting in the wings for her real life to begin. She is ready to marry. But which of her suitors has the potential for love and who will agree to the type of marriage she wants?
As she struggles to make her choice, she is faced with danger from an unexpected quarter while Thomas is stunned by a new challenge. Will these events bring them together or drive them apart?
We are celebrating the release of the special hardback edition of The Potential for Love during this tour. With a beautiful dust jacket over an elegant laminated cover, it will enhance any library and is the perfect gift for lovers of historical women’s fiction and historical romance.
The first stop of the tour is over on Candlelight Reading for a fabulous review.
Click HERE!
October 29, 2020
Have a sneak-peek between the covers of John Copenhaver's fabulous book — Dodging and Burning #HistoricalFiction #HistoricalMystery @johncopenhaver
Dodging and Burning
By John Copenhaver
A lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott's doorstep with no return address―and it's not the first time she's seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken fifty-five years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life.
In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story “A Date with Death” and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone. They soon discover a local woman named Lily Vellum is missing and begin to piece together the threads of her murder, starting with the photograph Jay took of her abandoned body.
As Ceola gets swept up playing girl detective, Bunny becomes increasingly skeptical of Jay’s story about the photograph and begins her own investigation into Lily’s murder. A series of clues lead her to Washington, DC, where she must confront the truth about her dear friend—a revelation that triggers a brutal confrontation that will change all of them forever.
Inspired by the turmoil abroad and nationalistic unity at home that encapsulated post-World War II America, Copenhaver’s debut sheds light on the lives of those who were largely overlooked during this historically over-documented era: the LGBTQ community.
Excerpt
Bunny Prescott, one of the two primary narrators, is coming over to Jay’s house to look at photos that he has taken of her 18th birthday party. She has a crush on him. He has just handed her the photos.
Bunny
I sipped my water, which he then gingerly lifted from my hands and placed on the tile floor beside his seat. I slipped my finger under the flap of the envelope and, being careful not to bend the photographs, slid them out. The first few were panoramic shots of the party before dusk. They were well composed, but not especially remarkable. We noted some of the bad dresses and laughed at the unfortunate facial expressions on several of the guests—eyes half shut, double chins, that sort of thing. There was a photograph of my mother and father dancing; my father’s eyes were a bit dim and my mother’s arms were loose around his neck. Her chestnut hair was pulled back carelessly, and her silver half-moon earrings reflected light onto her face, warming the hollow under her high cheeks and softening her jawline. They appeared tipsy, and their posture was a little inappropriate.
“I don’t like this one,” I said.
Jay removed the photo and flipped it face down beside him. He didn’t seem offended.
The photographs of me were at the bottom of the stack.
This is what I expected to see: A lovely young woman with rich, dark hair in a clean white cotton dress, posing playfully in front of the camera. There would be equal amounts of carelessness and caution to the image. The right arm stretched out, the left hand planted firmly on a hip, leaning forward a little, inviting the viewer, but gently, with grace—the same poise I had always admired in my mother. This young lady would be bright about the eyes, might even be thought flirtatious, but not indiscreet. She would approximate the perky Carole King dress models in Ladies’ Home Journal, or an elegant fashion model juxtaposed with a handsome military man in Life magazine.
Oh, what vanity.
A few years ago, I stumbled upon a retrospective of Weegee’s work. His photographs of the underbelly of New York City during the 1940s—the winos, the prostitutes, the exotic dancers, the transvestites, the crooks, the dead bodies, his obsessive love for sensational grit—reminded me of these photographs.
These images were phantasmagoric, a sort of nightmare of myself. The background of each was inky darkness, and in the foreground, I glowed so white that the folds of my dress had disappeared and my skin shone pale gray, almost two-dimensional. My face, however, was distinct in each photograph. In one, the expression was exceedingly desperate, almost angry. In another, slack-jawed and empty-eyed, arms straight at my sides—graceless, even absurd. The last image had me bending forward, my cleavage luridly, if carelessly, accentuated. I looked to be folding in on myself, white enveloping white, a phantom preparing to vanish in a ripple of cold vapor.
I touched the surface of that final photo, leaving my fingerprint over my face. Jay caught my hand, gently moved it away, and said, “I dodged it in the darkroom to make that effect.”
I liked that he was touching me. “What does that mean?” I asked.
“I covered you with a piece of cardboard for a few seconds during exposure to create more contrast between you and the night sky. I wanted you to float in the darkness, like a white bird.”
I thought he was telling me my photos were beautiful, that the real me, the absurd, frightened, desperate me, was something extraordinary and desirable. If I had stripped down in front of him, I thought, it wouldn’t have been more intimate than those photographs.
Of course, that wasn’t the case. But I didn’t know it at the time, so I kissed him.
Pick up your copy of
Dodging and Burning
Add Dodging and Burning to your 'to-read' list on
John Copenhaver
John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. Copenhaver writes a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight,” and he is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His work has appeared in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, Glitterwolf, PANK, New York Journal of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books, and others. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and currently lives in Washington, DC with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul (Herrity).
Connect with John:
Website • Twitter • Facebook • Instagram.
Publication Date: 10th September 2019
Publisher: Pegasus
Print Length: 288 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Welcome to Day #9 of the blog tour for The Potential for Love: A Regency Novel by Catherine Kullmann #RegencyRomance #CoffeePotBookClub @CKullmannAuthor @BritonandDane
THE POTENTIAL FOR LOVE: A REGENCY NOVELBY CATHERINE KULLMANN
OCTOBER 19TH - OCTOBER 30TH 2020AMAZON • WATERSTONES • BARNES AND NOBLE
Publication Date: 31 March 2020
Publisher: Willow Books
Print Length: 414 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction/Historical Romance/Regency Romance/Historical Women’s Fiction
1816
For over six years, Thomas Ferraunt’s thoughts have been of war. Newly returned to England from occupied Paris, he must ask himself what his place is in this new world and what he wants from it. More and more, his thoughts turn to Arabella Malvin, but would Lord Malvin agree to such a mismatch for his daughter, especially when she is being courted by Lord Henry Danlow?
About to embark on her fourth Season, Arabella is tired of the life of a debutante, waiting in the wings for her real life to begin. She is ready to marry. But which of her suitors has the potential for love and who will agree to the type of marriage she wants?
As she struggles to make her choice, she is faced with danger from an unexpected quarter while Thomas is stunned by a new challenge. Will these events bring them together or drive them apart?
We are celebrating the release of the special hardback edition of The Potential for Love during this tour. With a beautiful dust jacket over an elegant laminated cover, it will enhance any library and is the perfect gift for lovers of historical women’s fiction and historical romance.
Head over to Let the words shine... where Catherine Kullmann is talking about the inspiration behind her fabulous book, The Potential for Love.
Click HERE!
Welcome to Day #2 of the blog tour for Bright Helm (The Byrhtnoth Chronicles: Book 4) by Christine Hancock #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @YoungByrhtnoth @CaigJamie @BritonandDane
BRIGHT HELM(THE BYRHTNOTH CHRONICLES: BOOK 4)BY CHRISTINE HANCOCK
OCTOBER 22ND – 24TH DECEMBER 2020AMAZON UK • AMAZON US
Separated by anger and unanswered questions, Byrhtnoth and Saewynn are brought together by a tragic death.
Re-united, they set out on an epic voyage to discover the final truth about his father.
The journey takes them far to the north, to Orkney, swathed in the mists of treachery, and to Dublin’s slave markets where Byrhtnoth faces a fateful decision.
How far will he go, to save those he cares for?
We are visiting two blogs on our tour today.
The first stop is over on The Whispering Bookworm with an exclusive author interview!
Click HERE!
Our second stop is also an interview over on Let the words shine...
Click HERE!
Welcome to Day #2 of the blog tour for Bright Helm (The Byrhtnoth Chronicles: Book 4) by Christine Hancock #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @YoungByrhtnoth @CaigJamie
BRIGHT HELM(THE BYRHTNOTH CHRONICLES: BOOK 4)BY CHRISTINE HANCOCKOCTOBER 22ND – 24TH DECEMBER 2020AMAZON UK • AMAZON US
Separated by anger and unanswered questions, Byrhtnoth and Saewynn are brought together by a tragic death.
Re-united, they set out on an epic voyage to discover the final truth about his father.
The journey takes them far to the north, to Orkney, swathed in the mists of treachery, and to Dublin’s slave markets where Byrhtnoth faces a fateful decision.
How far will he go, to save those he cares for?
Today's stop is over on The Whispering Bookworm with an exclusive author interview!
Click HERE!
Welcome to Day #3 of the blog tour for Anke: The Beginning by Anas Hamshari and Caroline Snodgress #HistoricalFiction #ShortStories #CoffeePotBookClub @ExoticReads @ADarnGoodRead
Anke: The Beginning
By Anas Hamshari and Caroline Snodgress
October 15th – December 17th 2020
Publication Date: September 16th 2020
Publisher: Exotic Reads
Page Length: 111 eBook / 170 paperback
Genre: Historical Fiction
Living in the city of Mechelen, just south of once-prosperous Antwerp, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, Anke Verhaegen, an ambitious nineteen-year-old, is determined to make the most of her life.
When her brother Johan suggests crossing the Atlantic to New Netherland, Anke knows this is her destiny. Together, the two set about attempting to secure passage across the sea.
Before long, their plans are in motion, and hopes are high. Yet, with vengeful enemies, secrecy, and danger on the high sea waiting to be faced, will Anke really be able to secure a better life for herself?
Today's stop of over on A Darn Good Read where you can find out about the inspiration behind this wonderful novel!
Click HERE!
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