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Review: The India Fan by Victoria Holt
Blackmail. Murder. Scandal. Lies. Deceit. Romance. Adventure. This book has it all! Growing up, I loved Victoria Holt but sadly I haven’t read her in a number of years…..nor have I read many of her novels. But she is the queen of a genre that calls to me–the gothic romance genre. When I saw The India Fan on Amazon, I knew it was time to it up this talented authoress again and see if she could still seduce me with her tales of suspense. Drusilla Delany is the rectors daughter and has always grown up in the shadow of Framling House and the Framling family. Fabian Framling has always been…
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Review: Dark Angel: A Gothic Fairy Tale by T.J. Bennett
Strong winds and storm surges batter the hull of a ship carrying the young widow Catherine Briton home to England. Catherine spots land and tells the captain that they should abandon ship and try to make it to the island. To her dismay the captain refuses and denies that he even saw the land. The ship eventually sinks and Catherine is left floating in the ocean waiting for death to overtake her. Instead of dying, she wakes up on the beach of the island she saw from the ship. A stranger rescues her and takes her back to his castle. When she awakes she finds that the man, Gerard, not…
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Review: Bellman and Black: A Ghost Story by Diane Setterfield
As a child, William Bellman makes one tragic mistake that will haunt him all his life. Though it doesn’t seem like a big deal, William soon finds out what a big deal it was. William is showing off for a few of his friends. He has perfected his slingshot and to impress his friends he claims he can hit a rook (of the raven family) with absolute precision. When he kills the bird with that fateful shot, he has no idea it will be the mistake that alters his life and the lives of those present that day forever and those that William cares for most. The Bellman family has…
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Review: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Reading this book was like peeling the petals off of a flower, each petal a little more beautiful than the one before. This novel is a complex family saga surrounded by the beauty of the budding botanical world. We begin with the base born Henry Whittaker who dares to dream and make something of himself. After stealing his way into some wealth, his father’s employer discovers that poor Henry has been robbing him blind. Instead of turning him over to the authorities, he sends Henry on a voyage with the famous explorer Captain Cook. On that voyage Henry learns a great deal about botany and life, and when he returns to…
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Review: Mrs Poe by Lynn Cullen
The greatest love affairs are between two souls that speak to each other in a language that no one else but them can understand. On a fateful night in 1845, Frances Osgood meets the most famous writer in all of New York society, the dark and mysterious Edgar Poe. From the moment they are introduced, Frances can’t help but feel a strange and unexplainable connection to Poe. A writer herself, they run in the same circles of New York society. At the time, Frances’s philandering husband has taken up with a rich divorcee and basically abandoned Frances and their children. Frances and the girls are staying at the home of…
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Giveaway: The Secret Daughter of the Tsar by Jennifer Laam
Surround yourself with the opulence and mystery of the Romanov dynasty with this intriguing historic novel! Thanks to the publisher, I am ecstatic to be able to offer a copy of The Secret Daughter of the Tsar by Jennifer Laam for your enjoyment! Giveaway runs 10/15/13 to 10/22/13 Winners will be announced 10/23/13. (how to enter) On this blog you must leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. Your comment MUST include your email so I can contact you….if you do not enter an email in the comments your entry will be void. Winners will be notified by email the day after the giveaway closes and have five days…
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Review: The Secret Daughter of the Tsar by Jennifer Laam
In 1917, Imperial Russia was coming to an end. The Bolsheviks came to power and the powerful Romanov family was sent into exile. After being held captive, they were all supposedly executed by firing squad in 1918. Tsar Nicholas, his wife The Empress and Grand Duchess Olga, and their four children were all executed on that fateful day ending the Romanov dynasty. But what if there was a fifth child? That’s what author Jennifer Laam does in her novel The Secret Daughter of the Tsar. Veronica is finishing up her post graduate research and if she’s being honest…it’s not going well. Her supervisors aren’t impressed with the direction her research is going, not to mention…
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Review: Havisham by Ronald Frame
What is it about Catherine Havisham that you remember the most from the classic Great Expectations? Is it all the clocks stuck on a specific time? The old decaying wedding dress? Whatever it is about Miss Havisham, she haunts not only the novel but our memory long after reading Great Expectations. Do you find yourself wondering what her life might have been like prior to being jilted at the alter? What might her back story have been? I know I thought about this the entire time I was reading Great Expectations. In Ronald Frame’s novel, Havisham, we get a chance to see what Catherine Havisham’s life was like before she…
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Review: Marking Time (The Immortal Descendants #1) by April White
Seventeen year old Saira Elian’s life is a lonely one. Her mom tends to disappear randomly for weeks at a time and when she returns they often pack up and move to a new location. She hasn’t met her father nor does she really know anything about him and she basically has never known anyone she could call a friend. Saira spends her free time tagging the underground around Venice Beach until one night she over hears a conversation she shouldn’t. The next thing she knows she is being chased by a group of men when the police pick her up and arrest her. With her mother gone again she…
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Review: The Age of Desire by Jennie Fields
As the Victorian era transition into the ‘modern’ era, women were finally discovering that sex and sexuality could be for their enjoyment, not just a wifely duty performed for the pleasure of their husbands. We see evidence of this shift with the rise of female authorship. Many women started writing real books for women about women and things women cared about or longed for. One of the best known authors of this time was Edith Wharton. Wharton wrote popular and influential novels such a The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocents that addressed issues of class (notably the upper class), manners, and of course love and sexual desire. Like…