The year is 1018. King Cnut of Denmark is ruling England. He’s in Oxford to collect payment and to try to unite the various groups living in England. This means there’s hundreds of people living in tents. People who were recently at war with each other. People not necessarily happy with their new king. And then there’s a murder. The king is accused by the victim’s wife. Winston, an illuminator/painter and his companion former nobleman Halfdan, accidentally find themselves investigating the murder. They need to […]
Chick lit + historical adventure romance with spies = a very entertaining read
Eloise Kelly is an American history student trying to find material for her dissertation in England. Enamoured with the dashing gentleman spies of the late 18th and early 19th Century, like the Scarlet Pimpernel and his successor the Purple Gentian, what Eloise really wants to do is unmask the identity of the most elusive spy of all, the Pink Carnation, who is rumoured to have stopped Napoleon’s invasion of England in 1803. When Eloise is allowed to browse through a cache of letters and diaries […]
A rake and a matchmaker fight, then fall in love
Lady Belinda Featherstone was a young American heiress whose marriage didn’t exactly work out splendidly, with her husband both blatantly cheating on her and squandering as much of her money as possible before having the good grace to die and leave her a widow. Now supporting herself as a matchmaker for other young American heiresses wanting to make a successful match into English nobility, Belinda is determined that none of her charges ever end up making as disastrous a match as she. So when she […]
From Victorian London to Victorian Ankh-Morpork
I love Terry Pratchett’s books. They’ve got me through the first raw days after breakups, through long train and plane journeys away from people I love, through the gloom of having a cold at the beginning of spring when the world is bursting with light and colour. I love the eerie technology of the clacks in Going Postal, the blood and fire of Carpe Jugulum, the pain and anger and sweetness of the Tiffany Aching sequence, the terrible beauty of Lords and Ladies, and the […]
“There may come a time when a lass needs a lawyer”
The Engagements is one of those books that jumps around in time, but instead of focusing on the secrets and passions of a single family or group of friends, it views the post-World War II era through the prism of a diamond ring, passed down through the decades not as an heirloom but by accident, coincidence and carelessness…and in one case crime. This ring unites different couples and families, serving as a symbol of both hope and disappointment, and providing a window on shifting concepts […]
Growing up motherless is hard to do
3. 5 stars Lily Owens grows up isolated, neglected by her father and lonely on a peach farm in Georgia in the 1960s. Her only friend is the woman who acts as her nanny, Rosaleen, a former field hand who’s taken care of her since Lily’s mother died in a tragic accident when Lily was little more than a toddler. When Rosaleen is forced to flee town after accidentally insulting some white men while on her way to registering to vote, Lily insists on coming […]
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