2018 Reading Goals: Adding a Layer to the Challenge | #amreading
I was going through some old posts the other day and ran across my post in which I reported the results of my 2014 reading challenge. And it made me start thinking about the books I’ve already completed in 2018 and how they’d fit into those categories. So I decided it was a good idea (?!?!) to add a layer to my 2018 reading challenge. In addition to my A-to-Z-times-two challenge (two authors/books for each letter of the alphabet), I’m adding a list of categories to read to challenge myself to ensure I’m stretching myself out of my comfort zone as much as possible.
2018 Reading Challenge Categories:
- Annual Austen
- Book by Fellow Grad-School Alumnus
- Classic Lit from Somewhere Other than Britain or the U.S.
- Classic American Lit
- Classic British Lit
- Fantasy
- Contemporary Fiction (non-romance)
- General-Market Contemporary Romance
- Inspy Contemporary Romance
- Historical Fiction (non-romance)
- Inspy Historical Romance
- Lifelong Favorite (re-read)
COMPLETED: A Wrinkle in Time - Contemporary Mystery
- Historical Mystery
- New-to-Me Non-Romance Author
COMPLETED: Thomas Penn (The Winter King) - New-to-Me Romance Author
- Nonfiction: American History
COMPLETED: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Nonfiction: Biography
COMPLETED: Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History—without the Fairy-Tale Endings - Nonfiction: British History
COMPLETED: 1066 (The Great Courses) - Nonfiction: Literary Criticism (loosely defined)
COMPLETED: Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters - Nonfiction: Religion or Self-Improvement
- Nonfiction: Writing/Professional Development
- Paranormal or Horror
- Romantic Suspense (contemporary or historical)
- Science Fiction
- Goodreads: Sequels to Read Board
- Goodreads: Sounds Interesting Board
COMPLETED: Laird of the Mist - Goodreads: To Read Board
COMPLETED: Jackaby - Time Travel
CURRENTLY READING: The Jane Austen Project - Young Adult
COMPLETED: Leia, Princess of Alderaan
As you can see, even though it’s not quite March yet, I’ve already completed 1/3 of the list! I spent a few hours this weekend going through the books I own (mostly Kindle content, as I got rid of most of my hard-copy books when I moved) as well as the several hundred I have saved in my library wish lists—and I was able to add multiple titles for each category without having to go beyond those sources!
(And, no, I don’t include Historical Romance as a category when I do this kind of challenge . . . because I already know I’m going to read those, so it’s more of a cheat than a challenge!)
How is your reading challenge going so far? Would you be willing to add a layer to it, to add to the ‘degree of difficulty’?
Get Motivated: Make Your Voice Heard!
One of the things that can be hardest for beginning fiction writers to grasp is that they must develop a voice that is unique, and natural to them. One of your main jobs, throughout your writing life (it doesn’t necessarily come easy, or soon, or ever stop changing) is to discover and/or develop that voice. It might not be the same as your speaking voice. It is the unique way you have of expressing yourself in the written word, and the more straightforward and honest you are in the words and sentences you put on the page, the more your voice will shine through. For the most part, this means forgetting about using big words, complex sentence structures, ornate language, unless that comes naturally to you. . . .
The goal is to find your voice, the voice that isn’t like everyone else’s. And this is a very difficult thing to do, for the plain reason that we have mostly spent our lives trying to fit in. Mostly, we don’t want to be noticed because we’re different. We want to make sure that we dress appropriately, speak appropriately, act appropriately. Well, creative writing is the one area where you don’t want to be “appropriate.” Appropriate is for dinner parties. This is the place where the things that make you weird, the things about yourself that you know are different and even difficult, count the most.
~Alice LaPlante
The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Creative Writing
p. 37
Fun Friday Favorites: Screen Queens
Last week, I listed the ten Screen Kings that get my heart racing a little faster. This week I pay homage to the women in power!
This is SO much harder of a list to narrow down to just a top ten—oddly, it’s easier to find queens represented in TV/movies than kings. Or, at least, it is in the movies I tend to watch.
Favorite Queens (real or fictional) Portrayed on Screen
10. Alison Pill as Queen/Empress Maud/Matilda (The Pillars of the Earth)
9. Helena Bonham Carter as Jane Grey (Lady Jane)
8. Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette)
7. Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine (Lion in Winter)
6. Claire Foy as Elizabeth II (The Crown)
5. Emily Blunt as Victoria (The Young Victoria)
4. Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves (The Tudors)
3. Rene Russo as Frigga (Thor and Thor: The Dark World); a.k.a., my MCU boyfriend’s mother 😉
2. Judi Dench as Victoria (Mrs. Brown and Victoria and Abdul)
1. Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I (Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age)
Honorable Mentions
As mentioned, this was a hard list to narrow to just ten, so here are some honorable mentions:
- Emma Thompson as Catherine de Valois in Henry V
- Rebecca Ferguson as Elizabeth Woodville in The White Queen
- Megan Follows as Catherine de’ Medici in Reign
- Helen Mirren as Elizabeth II in The Queen
- Judi Dench as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love
- Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days
- Julie Andrews as Clarisse in The Princess Diaries
- Charlize Theron as Ravenna in Snow White and Huntsman and The Huntsman
Did I miss your favorite(s)? If so, please share yours in the comments!
#TBT: ‘Turnabout’s Fair Play’ Character Introductions
Originally posted October 7, 2011
I sent in the proposal for The Matchmakers Series in June 2009. The series was built with two strong story ideas I’d already been working on (in fact, I’d already written a complete, but somewhat different, version of Love Remains in 2003; and I came up with and spent some time developing the original idea for The Art of Romance in early 2007). But I needed a third story idea. I knew the heroine would be the third of the best friends. Because I was an editor who’d been laid off from my job less than a year before, I decided the heroine of this third book would be an editor who would get laid off her job and, in the end, have to choose between romance and a job offer in New York. Thus, I needed a hero who would also have to make that kind of decision—between romance and a high-profile job. So, since I worked in advertising/marketing for 13+ years before entering the publishing industry, I decided to make him an account executive at a large advertising firm.
Then, because the thread that ties these books together, besides the women’s friendship, was the matchmaking grandparents. So I decided that in this book, the younger couple would turn the tables on the grandparents—a grandmother and a grandfather—and set them up even as the grandparents are trying to get them together.
Character Names
With the names Zarah and Caylor for the heroines of the first two books in the series, I couldn’t name the heroine of TFP Jane or Mary. I wanted something that was at once unique but also familiar. So I decided to go with a specific origin—Irish. And it doesn’t get much more Irish than Flannery McNeill. It took me a few months to work out the synopses for Love Remains and The Art of Romance, so aside from her friendship with Zarah and Caylor, Flannery got put on the back-burner for a few months as I worked out those ideas and the series arc.
But I still needed that hero for Flannery’s story. I liked the name Jamie for a self-confident, outgoing sales guy. And the last name O’Connor just rolled off the fingertips as his last name without my even consciously thinking about it. And it wasn’t until I sold the series and I had to write the summary blurb for the book’s web page that I realized that if Flannery and Jamie got married and she took his name, she’d become Flannery O’Connor. Just like the author. I considered changing his last name at that point—but then I realized I could build this into her character and into her interactions with Jamie.
With their grandparents’ names, I tried to keep them age appropriate. Of course, for Jamie’s grandmother, the character template helped out a lot in coming up with the name Maureen. For Flannery’s grandfather, well, not only did the template help with coming up with the name, so did the familiarity I gained with that template’s roles when writing Menu for Romance—I actually pulled the name Kirby from the same film role I used for the backstory of Major O’Hara’s name in MFR. And their grandparent nicknames, Cookie and Big Daddy? Well, that’s a little closer to home. That’s what my niece and nephews call my parents.
Character Casting
With Zarah as a brunette and Caylor as a redhead, I knew Flannery needed to be a blonde. Before I knew that Barbour wanted to use stock photos for the front covers—and that they’d be featuring the females prominently—I did as I usually do using an actress: Rosamund Pike. Once again, because I didn’t know much at all about Jamie, I pulled a template simply based on the merit that he shares a name with a character in the book: Sean Patrick Flanery.
However, once I discovered that they wanted to use stock photos—which was about halfway through writing Love Remains, I did a complete re-cast of my heroines. And of Jamie—since he was the only hero I hadn’t already built around the template who inspired him in the first place. And as soon as I saw this stock photo, I knew it was Flannery. I could actually see this photo as the cover of the book.
It was harder to find Jamie—because at that point, I still didn’t know him very well. But since I knew he’d be in the background, it was more of an attitude and overall look rather than a specific face I was looking for. This guy seemed to fit.
But then I started writing the book. And this model wasn’t giving me anything useful. I couldn’t hear his voice. I couldn’t visualize the way he moved, the way he interacted with people. So I knew that even though that stock model would be on the cover, I needed to recast Jamie once more.
Well, by this point, it’s 2011 and I have a new obsession—the reboot of the TV series Hawaii Five-0. And as I started trying to write TFP, all of a sudden, Jamie started taking on some of the physical characteristics and mannerisms of a certain Alex O’Loughlin/Steve McGarrett. It took me a couple of months to write the first 20k words of the book. Then, once I started focusing on Alex and gaining inspiration from watching him (though, I do have to say that watching The Backup Plan and the first few episodes of Moonlight set me back a bit, but Three Rivers and more episodes of Hawaii Five-0 got me back on track), I was finally able to get a handle on Jamie—on the fact that he may seem suave and collected on the outside, but that delicious exterior barely hides his inner dork.
Flannery’s grandfather and Jamie’s grandmother were among the first characters cast in this series. Once I knew that there would be a romance between the two of them, there were only two templates who would work—the templates who inspired their characters’ names, Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne:
Secondary Characters
Of course, we have Zarah and Bobby, from Love Remains, and Caylor and Dylan, from The Art of Romance, making repeat appearances in this book.
We also have Kiki, Mamm, Sassy, and Perty backing up Cookie in TFP, too.
And here are some other important secondary characters you’ll get to meet—one of whom you met Monday in the sneak peek:
John Barrowman as Jack Colby, Flannery’s boss
Lynda Carter as Jamie’s mom, Jackie Murphy; with Lynda Carter’s real-life family serving as the template for Jamie’s stepfather, Don, and his younger half-brother and half-sister, Ryan and Chelsea.
And just as Flannery has best friends, Jamie needed to have a best friend, too. I wanted Danny (his name was always Danny—even though I eventually tried to fight against it) to be someone of a different ethnicity, as I feel I don’t have a very large diversity of ethnicities in my books. I toyed with a few different templates, but no one clicked for me until I recast Jamie as Alex O’Loughlin. And then it was quite clear who Danny was:
Daniel Dae Kim as Danny Seung
At this point, I tried changing Danny’s name to something else—because it was just too weird to me that not only is the template’s real name Daniel, but the “best friend” character opposite Alex O’Loughlin’s Steve McGarrett on H50 is also named Danny. But as hard as I tried, the character stubbornly insisted his name was Danny. So Danny he remained.
Danny is married—and with Daniel Dae Kim as the template, there was only one template I could pick for his wife.
Yunjin Kim as Chae Koh Seung
And the last important character I’ll introduce to you today has very little “face time” on the pages of the book, but he plays a very important role, Flannery’s cat Liam:
Three Weird Items on Your Desk | Talk About It!
Let’s talk!
What are three non-work-related or weird items on your desk?
Want to share a photo? Paste the link to your Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter post (make sure the visibility is set to public on that site) in the comments below!
- A jar of Kroger’s house-brand Whole Kosher Dill Cocktails (pickles) for snacking.
- Star Wars artwork I’m prepping in order to start decorating my office (from the Etsy store Odder than Antiquity).
- A Noodle.
Books Read in 2018: ‘The Duchess Deal’ by Tessa Dare (3.5 stars) | #amreading #bookreview
The Duchess Deal (Girl Meets Duke #1)
by Tessa Dare
Genre: Historical Romance (Regency)
My rating: 3.5 stars
Book Summary:
Since his return from war, the Duke of Ashbury’s to-do list has been short and anything but sweet: brooding, glowering, menacing London ne’er-do-wells by night. Now there’s a new item on the list. He needs an heir—which means he needs a wife. When Emma Gladstone, a vicar’s daughter turned seamstress, appears in his library wearing a wedding gown, he decides on the spot that she’ll do.His terms are simple:
– They will be husband and wife by night only.
– No lights, no kissing.
– No questions about his battle scars.
– Last, and most importantly . . . once she’s pregnant with his heir, they need never share a bed again.But Emma is no pushover. She has a few rules of her own:
– They will have dinner together every evening.
– With conversation.
– And unlimited teasing.
– Last, and most importantly . . . once she’s seen the man beneath the scars, he can’t stop her from falling in love.
My GR Status Update(s):
01/02. . .Finished Reading
- January 30, 2018 – Started Reading
- February 7, 2018 – 53.0% “”She was warned. Given every explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted…” Somehow, seeing a quote from the 21st Century in a book set 200 years ago doesn’t bother me.”
- February 9, 2018 – 100% – “Wait . . . what happened to Davina?”
- February 9, 2018 – Finished Reading
My Review:
3.5 stars
This was my second Tessa Dare book. I’d read A Night to Surrender a few years back because I’d been told that I’d really like her books since I loved Julia Quinn’s historical romances. I was underwhelmed.
And while I didn’t go into reading The Duchess Deal with expectations as high as they were for Surrender, I expected for there to at least be some relationship building and attention to historical accuracy. But both were just given the most cursory drive-by in favor of snarky (“witty”) dialogue and narrative that was trying far too hard to be clever without actually being so. (The modern-day quote I mentioned in my status updates came in what, to me, was one of the only truly laugh-out-loud scenes of the novel, and it actually fit with what was going on in that scene; plus, by that point, I’d given up on all hope for non-anachronistic dialogue.)
Why did I pick up this book after being so underwhelmed by the first book of hers I read? Because I’m a sucker for a marriage of convenience plot in romance. The blurb of this one totally sucked me in; so when it came available at the library, I went for it.
It didn’t take me too long to read (considering I had two other books going at the same time), so it’s not like it was one of those books that was a chore to pick up every night at bedtime. But it also wasn’t one of those books that I couldn’t put down in the middle of a chapter or that kept me up until the wee hours because I just had to know what happened next.
The biggest conflicts in this book all center around self-image/self-esteem and communication problems. The hero, Ash’s, biggest problem wasn’t the fact he was scarred from an explosion at war (more on this in a moment), but that he was a jerk before that happened and the scars just gave him an excuse to be an even bigger AlphaHole to everyone around him. This book is set a few years after the Napoleonic War ended at Waterloo; but the way this was written, it seemed as if there were no other men walking around England with visible battle scars or disfigurements. His former fiancee, whose dress Emma wears to his house to demand payment in the beginning of the book, is a caricature of the typical ex-fiancee in a scarred-hero trope—she doesn’t want to be with him anymore because he’s scarred and she’s beautiful, but then she turns jealous and catty toward the heroine because he now wants the heroine and not the ex. (And if he’s a duke and the ex is also an aristocrat, why would they not have paid the seamstress’s bill after two letters asking for payment? Also, Emma didn’t own the shop where she worked—she just worked there. Why wouldn’t the owner of the shop be the one demanding payment rather than Emma? But I digress.)
Regarding a Duke at War
Ash was an only child—we know this because until/unless he has children of his own, the current heir to his dukedom is a distant cousin (whom he doesn’t like, so that’s why he’s looking for a “broodmare” to give him a son—the book’s term, not mine)—and his father died and passed on the title of duke when Ash was young (before he was a teenager).
First of all, let’s get over the notion that there are dozens, scores, hundreds of non-royal dukes (i.e., not in the direct like of inheritance for the throne/part of the royal family) running around England at any given time in history, but especially during the English Regency period (technically 1811–1820, but for historical romance it’s 1800–1820s). According to this article, there were only 28 non-royal dukedoms in Great Britain in 1818 (and only 11 in England), around the time this book takes place. Dukes were rare and part of the peerage (ruling class) in England and, therefore, would not have been allowed to actively put their lives at risk. After all, the plot of this novel hinges on how very important it is that he have an heir, just to put a full-stop to the point.
But . . . but . . . but . . . what about the Duke of Wellington? He not only fought, he was one of the leading commanders of the British Army at Waterloo!
Arthur Wellesley was the fourth-born (third surviving) son of an Irish earl. As a non-inheriting son, he was expected to have a career—sons below the second (the “spare”) were destined to go into the church, the army, or the navy in the late 18th century. Wellesley enlisted in the British Army as a young man, long before he held any titles himself. It was many years later that he was, first, elevated to Viscount in 1809 (due to his battlefield victory at Talavera in the Peninsular Campaign), then to the rank of Earl of Wellington in 2012 after liberating Madrid, and finally was made 1st Duke of Wellington in 1813 after Napoleon’s abdication. And Wellington himself was not in the vanguard of the troops when they went into battle; rather, he was more likely to be found at the Army’s headquarters, making the plans and decisions.
TL;dr: A DUKE WOULD NOT HAVE GONE TO WAR!
Anyway . . .
Ash went off to war, ordinance blew up in his face, and now the left side of his face/body is covered in burn scars. His fiancee not only left him, but vomited in reaction to seeing just the scars on his face when she declared she couldn’t sleep with that for the rest of her life. Frankly, she dodged a bullet, because the exterior package wasn’t nearly as bad as the interior with this “hero.”
And the heroine . . . well, she doesn’t have much personality, other than loving to sew dresses from curtains and having daddy and ex-boyfriend issues. As a seamstress, she has befriended a client named Davina who, Emma discovers, is in a delicate way, which is bad, given Davina is not married. The idea that she could help Davina by accepting Ash’s outlandish marriage proposal—a plan which would also entail Emma’s immediately getting pregnant herself and being sent out to live at the duke’s country house—is built up as one of the driving motivations to get the marriage-of-convenience plot rolling. Yet when it comes down to it—instead of spoilers, I’ll just leave that thread with my final status update: Wait . . . what happened to Davina?
Was the book horrible? No. (That’s why I reserve one-star ratings for DNF/did not finish, because I’m not at all shy about quitting books I don’t enjoy.)
Will I be rushing out to try another Tessa Dare book? Not any time soon.
_______
My rating matrix:
5 STARS = one of the best I’ve ever read
4 STARS = a great read, highly recommended
3 STARS = it was okay
2 STARS = I didn’t enjoy it all that much, not recommended
1 STAR = DNF (did not finish)
Get Motivated: Make Yourself WORK!
Procrastination is that little horned devil who sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear, telling you about all the other things you need to do before you sit down and write. You need to do more research. You need to create a better outline from which to work. You should update your computer or printer. You need a new dictionary and/or thesaurus. You slept late this morning and are two hours off schedule, so maybe it would be better to start the book tomorrow.
Thankfully, there is an angel sitting on your other shoulder who is shouting, “Get to work. Now!” Listen to your angel. If writing is the way you make your living, you’ll make yourself work. If you don’t, you won’t get paid.
~Beverly Barton
The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Novelists
(Andrew McAleer, Ed.)
p. 115
Fun Friday Favorites: Screen Kings | #EyeCandy
It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these posts, so I thought I should start with something really eye catching. 😉
I had the idea for this a while back, and it began with #2 on this list . . . but the rest of it took a while to come up with—because there are shockingly very few of them in the films/shows I watch.
Favorite Kings (real or fictional) Portrayed on Screen
10. Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III (The Hollow Crown)
9. Tom Hiddleston as Henry V (The Hollow Crown)
8. Colin Firth as George VI (The King’s Speech)
7. Damian Lewis as Henry VIII (Wolf Hall)
6. Sean Connery as Arthur (First Knight)
5. Alan Rickman as Louis XIV (A Little Chaos)
4. Yun-Fat Chow as Mongkut (Anna and the King)
3. Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa (Black Panther)
2. Rufus Sewell as Marke (Tristan + Isolde)
1. Kenneth Branagh as Henry V (Henry V)
Did I miss your favorite(s)? If so, please share yours in the comments!
Talk About It Tuesday: Your Favorite #ValentinesDay Memory
Let’s talk!
Share in the comments your favorite Valentine’s Day memory.
Whether from childhood or something you did or experienced as an adult; whether romantic or funny, uplifting or even embarrassing (though how that could be a favorite memory, I don’t know!), please tell us about your favorite memory concerning Valentine’s Day. And if it’s something you’ve written about on your own blog before, please share the link!
#Library Haul for the Week of 12 February 2018 | #amreading
I don’t know about you, but when it’s time to check books out from the library, it’s kind of like a Lay’s potato chip thing—I can never “eat” just one. And since I never know for sure exactly what I’m going to feel like reading at any given moment, I always check out multiple options at a time.
These days, this entails hours spent on the part of my local library’s website where all of the digital items are cataloged, as I’m going to be checking out ebooks and/or audiobooks. Not only is it easier to carry around ten library books/audiobooks when they’re digital, but since they return themselves automatically when the due-date arrives, I never have to worry about overdue books anymore!
Since I just returned a bunch of books and checked out another group this weekend, I thought it might be fun to share my haul. And I’d love to see yours, too!
My Library Haul for the week of 12 February 2018
Ebooks
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Currently Reading)
I do still have my original paperback of this from childhood; however, it’s so fragile that I didn’t want to risk damaging it, so I checked the ebook out from the library instead.
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”
Meg’s father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?
The Secret Book of Kings by Yochi Brandes
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Stories are deadlier than swords. Swords kill only those who stand before them, stories decide who will live and die in generations to come.
Shlom’am, a young man from the tribe of Ephraim, has grown up in the shadow of several secrets. He wonders why his father is deathly afraid of the King’s soldiers, and why his mother has lied to him about the identities of those closest to him. Knowing his parents won’t divulge more than they have to, Shlom’am sets out on his own to unearth his mysterious past.
At the height of his journey, Shlom’am encounters the Crazed Princess. Princess Michal, daughter of the ill-fated King Saul and discarded wife of the illustrious, dangerous King David, seems doomed by the annals of history; hellbent on seizing the throne, David wiped out her father’s line and left her isolated…and plotting. Only Michal knows the shocking circumstances of Shlom’am’s birth. Only she can set into motion his destiny to become Jerobaam, the fourth king of Israel.
The Secret Book of Kings is a sweeping biblical epic filled with court intrigue, romance, and rebellion. It engages with the canonized stories of the Israel’s foundation and turns them on their heads. Brandes, known for her profound familiarity with Jewish sources, uncovers vibrant, adversarial men and woman buried deep in the scriptures and asks the loaded question: to what extent can we really know our past when history is written by the victors?
The Fifth Avenue Artists Society by Joy Callaway
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The Bronx, 1891. Virginia Loftin knows what she wants most: to become a celebrated novelist despite her gender, and to marry Charlie, her best friend, neighbor and first love. Yet when Charlie proposes to another woman, Ginny is devastated; shutting out her family, she holes up and obsessively rewrites how their story should have gone.
Though Ginny works with newfound intensity, success eludes her—until she attends a salon hosted in her brother’s handsome author friend John’s Fifth Avenue mansion. Amongst painters, musicians, actors, and writers, Ginny returns to herself, even blooming under John’s increasingly romantic attentions. Just as she has begun to forget Charlie, however, he throws himself back into her path, and Ginny finds herself torn between a lifetime’s worth of complicated feelings and a budding relationship with a man who seems almost too good to be true.
The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows, and as Ginny tentatively navigates the Society’s world, she begins to suspect all is not as it seems in New York’s dazzling “Gay Nineties” scene. When a close friend is found dead in John’s mansion, Ginny must delve into her beloved salon’s secrets to discover her true feelings about art, family, and love.
The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn
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England, 1815: Two travelers—Rachel Katzman and Liam Finucane—arrive in a field, disheveled and weighed down with hidden money. They are not what they seem, but colleagues from a technologically advanced future, posing as a doctor and his spinster sister. While Rachel and Liam aren’t the first team of time travelers, their mission is the most audacious yet: meet, befriend, and steal from Jane Austen.
Carefully selected and rigorously trained by The Royal Institute for Special Topics in Physics, disaster-relief doctor Rachel and actor-turned-scholar Liam have little in common excerpt their extraordinary circumstances. Circumstances that call for Rachel to stifle her independent nature and let Liam take the lead as they infiltrate Austen’s circle via her favorite brother, Henry.
But diagnosing Jane’s fatal illness and obtaining an unpublished novel hinted at in her letters pose enough of a challenge without the convolutions of living a lie. While her friendship with Jane deepens and her relationship with Liam grows complicated, Rachel fights to reconcile her true self with the constrictions of 19th century society. As their portal to the future prepares to close, Rachel and Liam struggle with their directive to leave history as they found it…however heartbreaking that proves.
What Angels Fear (Sebastian St. Cyr #1) by C. S. Harris
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It’s 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III’s England. Then a beautiful young woman is found raped and savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A dueling pistol discovered at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experience in the Napoleonic Wars.
Now a fugitive running for his life, Sebastian calls upon his skill as an agent during the war to catch the killer and prove his own innocence. In the process, he accumulates a band of unlikely allies, including the enigmatic beauty Kat Boleyn, who broke Sebastian’s heart years ago. In Sebastian’s world of intrigue and espionage, nothing is as it seems, yet the truth may hold the key to the future of the British monarchy, as well as to Sebastian’s own salvation.
Secrets of Sloane House (Chicago World’s Fair Mystery #1) by Shelley Gray
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One woman’s search for the truth of her sister’s disappearance leads her to deceit and danger in 1893 Chicago.
Rosalind Perry has left her family’s rural farm in Wisconsin to work as a housemaid at Sloane House, one of the most elegant mansions in Gilded Age Chicago. However, Rosalind is not there just to earn a living and support her family-she’s at Sloane House determined to discover the truth about her sister’s mysterious disappearance.
Reid Armstrong is the handsome heir to a silver fortune. However, his family is on the periphery of Chicago’s elite because their wealth comes from “new money” obtained from successful mining. Marriage to Veronica Sloane would secure his family’s position in society-the lifelong dream of his ailing father.
When Reid begins to realize that Rosalind’s life may be in danger, he stops thinking of marriage prospects and concentrates on helping Rosalind. Dark things are afoot in Chicago and, he fears, in Sloane House. If he’s not vigilant, Rosalind could pay the price.
Set against the backdrop of Chicago’s Gilded Age and the 1893 World’s Fair, Secrets of Sloane House takes us on a whirlwind journey of romance and mystery.
The Witch’s Daughter (Shadow Chronicles #1) by Paula Brackston
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My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. Each new settlement asks for a new journal, and so this Book of Shadows begins.
In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree, she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn’t know she had and making her immortal. She couldn’t have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.
In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers’ market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories—and demons—long thought forgotten.
Part historical romance, part modern fantasy, The Witch’s Daughter is a fresh, compelling take on the magical, yet dangerous world of Witches. Readers will long remember the fiercely independent heroine who survives plagues, wars, and the heartbreak that comes with immortality to remain true to herself, and protect the protégé she comes to love.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
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Days before his release from prison, Shadow’s wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.
Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You’ll be surprised by what – and who – it finds there.
The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
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Mackie Doyle is not one of us. Though he lives in the small town of Gentry, he comes from a world of tunnels and black murky water, a world of living dead girls ruled by a little tattooed princess. He is a Replacement, left in the crib of a human baby sixteen years ago. Now, because of fatal allergies to iron, blood, and consecrated ground, Mackie is fighting to survive in the human world.
Mackie would give anything to live among us, to practice on his bass or spend time with his crush, Tate. But when Tate’s baby sister goes missing, Mackie is drawn irrevocably into the underworld of Gentry, known as Mayhem. He must face the dark creatures of the Slag Heaps and find his rightful place, in our world, or theirs.
What do you have checked out from the library to try?
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