Book Review: The Morals of May Fair by Annie Edwards

By Images of Money via Flickr

It was the title of this 1858 novel which attracted me. In the mid-nineteenth century Mayfair was an aristocratic residential district of London. The most expensive section on the British Monopoly board, it today contains some of the world’s most expensive real estate. The Morals of May Fair promises to lift the lid on the sins of Victorian high society.

And fortunately the book lives up to its promise. Although it begins in Brittany, where disillusioned young writer Philip Earnscliffe unexpectedly finds love with the beautiful Marguerite St John, most of the novel is set in London, where husband-hunting young women try to blag seats in boxes at the theatre, French counts declare love on moonlit balconies, and actresses entertain their lovers in mirror-lined boudoirs. The writing is excellent, atmospheric with Gothic touches for the scenes in Brittany, and later cynically observant of London society.

…Miss Georgy came down unexpectedly one fine day, to see “dear Marguerite;” – prepared, as she said, to forgive and forget everything, and have a long, friendly morning together.

The standing commencement of these “mornings” of female affection being for one friend to say something mortifying to the other, Miss de Burgh had opened proceedings by commenting very plainly upon her young relative’s ill looks.

Tags: annie edwards, the morals of mayfair, victorian london

Royal Mistress Challenge Book Review: The September Queen by Gillian Bagwell

Was Jane Lane really Charles II’s mistress? No one knows for sure, but what is known is that in the troubled years following the English Civil War, she risked her life to help Charles II, defeated at the Battle of Worcester, flee the country. Gillian Bagwell reimagines their relationship with insight and conviction: like Jason and Marie in The Bourne Identity, Jane and Charles find passion in the most dangerous of situations, where their only safety lies in trusting each other.  Once they separate, the tension increases, as Jane, waiting to hear if Charles has reached safety, realises she has been implicated in his escape and may have to flee herself. Despite the pace of the first half of the book, it feels solidly researched, with a rich sense of place and atmosphere. The horselore in particular seemed very authentic – everything you might want to know about riding pillion is here!

The sky was pearly gray, and a light blanket of mist lay over the fields that stretched away on either side of the road. The calls of sparrows and wrens echoed in the crisp morning air and a breeze stirred the drifts of brown and golden leaves. The horses’ hooves sounded dully on the muddy road, but Jane was grateful that no more clouds threatened overhead, and it appeared they would have a fine day for their travels.

…As the horses quickened their pace, Jane realized that she had never ridden pillion behind anyone but her father or one of her brothers. She was grasping the little padded handhold of the pillion, but to be really securely seated, she needed to hold onto the king in front of her. What to do? Surely she could simply slip her arms around the royal person, uninvited? The king seemed to sense her quandary, and turned his head over his shoulder to speak low in Jane’s ear.

“Hold tight to me, Mistress Lane.”

The sudden pressure of his back agianst her shoulder, the warmth of his breath, and the low rumble of his voice sent a tremor through Jane.

“Yes, Your – yes, I will, thank you.”

She reached around him with both arms and held fast. Her lower body was facing sideways, but of necessity her right breast was pressed against the king. Dear God, she had never been so close to a man before, she thought.

Unfortunately, once past the halfway mark, the narrative drive which has built up rapidly dissipates as Jane moves from the centre to the fringes of the action. The topography of her continental exile is much less vividly portrayed and her life as a lady in waiting – about which not much is known – doesn’t offer the requisite material for compelling fiction. I would have been quite happy to skip this part of her life and continue the story on the eve of the Restoration.

The final section has some of the most powerful and emotive scenes in the book as Jane has to come to terms with what she has given up for her king -  and the realisation that she is only one of many women in his life. She tries to help Lucy Walter, one of Charles’s early mistresses, now on a downward trajectory, while Barbara Palmer is glimpsed at a ball, triumphant in ice blue, at the beginning of her volatile liaison with Charles. Another of Jane’s close friends is the ambitious Anne Hyde, a commoner royal mistress (of the future James II) who sets her sights on marriage. Jane’s fate is different to all of them, and she herself has to determine the end of her story.

I can recommend The September Queen as a fast-paced, sensual chase and a tribute to a courageous woman who made her mark on England’s history.

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Thanks to Gillian Bagwell and Caitlin at Berkley for providing me with a review copy of The September Queen.

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Lots of September Queen giveaways are on now or coming up soon – check out the blog tour details here.

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The September Queen will be released in the UK in July 2012 under the title A Royal Exile.

Tags: a royal exile, charles ii, english civil war, gillian bagwell, jane lane, the royal miracle, the september queen

Giveaway Winner: Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick

Congratulations to S.M.B., who has won a copy of Lady of the English.

Thanks to Beth at Sourcebooks for making the giveaway possible, and thanks to everyone who took the time to enter or publicise the draw.

Tags: elizabeth chadwick, lady of the english

Giveaway: Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick (US and Canada)

I’ve been wanting to offer my North American readers a giveaway for some time, and here it is! Sourcebooks have kindly offered one copy of the US edition of Elizabeth Chadwick’s Lady of the English (reviewed here).

Giveaway Guidelines

1. Open to the US and Canada only (apologies to everyone else – become a follower to keep track of future giveaways covering your area).

2. To enter, fill out the form below.

3. One extra entry if you tweet the giveaway or mention it online!

4. You have until midnight (British Summer Time) on Sunday 23rd October 2011 to enter. The winner will be drawn at random and asked for a mailing/postal address during the following week. If the winner has not responded within seven days of notification, a new winner will be drawn.

5. No P.O. Boxes (couriers won’t deliver to them!)

Good luck!

Many thanks to Beth at Sourcebooks for making this giveaway possible.

The draw is now closed! Announcement of the winner to come later on this week.

Tags: elizabeth chadwick, empress matilda, giveaway, lady of the english, queen adeliza, sourcebooks

Book Review: Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick

Elizabeth Chadwick’s latest release tells the story of two women who at one point in their lives held the title of Lady of the English: Adeliza, queen of Henry I, and her stepdaughter, Matilda, Henry’s heir.

Adeliza and Matilda are very different women. Adeliza plays the role of a consort to perfection, with one exception – she fails to provide an heir. This means that Matilda has to take on an impossible role – that of reigning queen at a time when women were considered unfit to rule. While Matilda struggles to wrest control of England from her usurping cousin Stephen, Adeliza, a widowed queen, has to find a way to rebuild her life.

As a contrast to the two queens, there is a wonderful gallery of royal men: the ruthless and calculating Henry I; Geoffrey of Anjou, Matilda’s brilliant but volatile consort, and their son, the future Henry II, intelligent, restless and warlike, a golden prince who becomes the focus of Matilda’s fight for the crown.

The book is rich in the texture of medieval life, pervaded with twelfth century imagery. Elizabeth Chadwick’s writing is vividly descriptive. You will feel the chill of the snow, smell the venision stew, see castle walls rise out of the mist and hear the chanting of monks and the clash of swords.

The conflict between characters caught between their religious beliefs and the bloody civil war they have to wage is conveyed with understanding and conviction. These are people of their time. Matilda correctly predicts that her son will be one of England’s greatest kings, and that his line will endure long into the future, but she can’t see ahead to a time when women would be able both to reign and to rule.

My only complaint is that I would have loved the book to be twice as long, but that might have diminished the focus on Matilda and Adeliza which gives it its strength. As with Sharon Kay Penman’s When Christ and His Saints Slept, which covers the same period, my favourite scene was Matilda’s amazing escape from a besieged and snowbound Oxford castle. Matilda might not have been able to command an army in the field, but she would have coped fine with a wilderness survival course!

Lady of the English is recommended for anyone who wants to open a window to the horrors and glories of England’s royal past.

Tags: elizabeth chadwick, empress matilda, geoffrey of anjou, henry i, henry ii, lady of the english, queen adeliza

Giveaway Winners: The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell

Congratulations to Meneldur, Freda and Jemidar, who have each won a copy of The Darling Strumpet.

Winners have been notified by email. Thanks to everyone who entered!

Tags: gillian bagwell, the darling strumpet

Book Review: Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran

This novel could equally well have been titled Becoming Madame Tussaud. In 1789 Marie Grosholtz is in her late twenties, an accomplished sculptress helping to run the family business, a waxworks show on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. It’s her business to give the public what they want to see, and she’s very good at it. But as the revolution sweeps through France, and events begin to move at a faster and faster pace, what the public wants to see changes almost every day. Can Marie and her family keep up with the whirlwind without getting caught up in it?

Marie is a woman who lives in two worlds. For part of the week she lives with Louis XVI’s sister, Madame Elisabeth, at her chateau of Montreuil near Versailles, tutoring her in the art of sculpting wax figures. Then she returns to Paris, where the family salon is filled with the men who will bring about the Revolution: the Duc d’Orleans, Camille Desmoulins, Lafayette, Robespierre. Over the years they will all take their places in her exhibition, while the wax figures of the royal family are exiled from it. The book is written in the present tense, which helps the reader to imagine themselves in a moment when counter-revolution seemed like a real possibility, when no-one could be sure whether royalism or revolution would prevail.

Tags: French Revolution, madame elisabeth, madame tussaud, marie antoinette, marie grosholtz, michelle moran, rose bertin

Royal Mistress Triple Giveaway: The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell

I’m delighted to come back from hiatus with a generous giveaway from Avon, who have just released the UK edition of Gillian Bagwell’s The Darling Strumpet, a novel of Nell Gwyn, mistress to Charles II. I reviewed and enjoyed The Darling Strumpet when the US edition was released in January, and I’m now very pleased to be able to give away three copies of the UK edition. Thanks to Gillian and to Charlotte Allen at Avon for making this possible.

From her beginnings as a humble oyster seller, Nell Gwynn’s dazzling rise to fame has gone down in history. Step into the tumultuous world of Restoration England, and join Nell on her journey from courtesan, to famed actress to King’s mistress in a novel that is as captivating as Nelly herself.

This is the UK cover and I love it. Avon have kept the orange theme evoking Nell’s job as an orange girl, but combined it with an ecru damask background in an ice-creamy way appropriate to its August release. I really appreciate the trouble they have taken to get Nell’s costume right – so often historical fiction is published with lovely gowns on the cover which unfortunately bear no relation to anything the characters might have been wearing. Here Nell’s dress has the low neckline and puffed, slashed sleeves of the 1660s. Her hairstyle is a bit later but it’s a good approximation of the hurluberlu style fashionable in the early 1670s. I do like the way she’s sprawled on the floor – it suggests the carefree attitude to riches and luxury which is highly typical of Gillian Bagwell’s Nell!

Giveaway Guidelines

1. Avon have kindly provided three copies of the UK edition of The Darling Strumpet. One copy per winner.

2. Open worldwide excluding the US (apologies to my many US readers and followers – I will try to bring you a giveaway later in the year).

3. To enter, simply fill out the form below.

4. One extra entry if you tweet the giveaway or mention it online!

5. You have until midnight (British Summer Time) on Friday 19th August 2011 to enter. Winners will be contacted and asked for a mailing/postal address over the following weekend. If any of the winners have not responded by Wednesday 24 August (British Summer Time) I will draw a new winner.

Good luck!

The giveaway is now closed to new entries. Winners will be drawn over the weekend of 20th/21st August.

Tags: avon, charles ii, gillian bagwell, giveaway, nell gwyn, restoration london, the darling strumpet

Madame Guillotine on her Kindle publishing adventure

Just dropping in to tell you quickly about this fascinating post from Melanie Clegg (Madame Guillotine) on her experience of publishing through the Kindle. Melanie has found that it’s difficult to price a book appropriately for both the UK and US markets. While the UK expects books to be cheap or actually free, it seems US bookbuyers can be suspicious of low-priced books, even ebooks, in case the price reflects the quality.

What do you think? I completely agree that UK buyers expect books to be ridiculously cheap, and when the nation’s bestsellers are regularly piled high in supermarkets across the land for a fraction of their recommended retail price, it’s not hard to see why. Books are also given away in 3 for 2 offers or even attached as a giveaway to magazines. The result: you pay little or nothing for the most commercial and popular titles. Is it the same in other countries or is this discounting of books a very British trend?

Earlier this year, I wrote a rather well received post about the process of publishing a book with Kindle and thought that as some time has passed since then, it might be a good idea to update it now with a few thoughts about how I feel about the Kindle process now that I’m a few months into the whole thing. Do I still think it is amazing? Have I learned anything? How about some tips on What Not To Do? Well, it’s probably of no surprise to learn … Read More

via

Tags: blogging, ebooks, kindle, melanie clegg, publishing, secret diary of a princess, writing

July Hiatus and August Releases

A Rose In The Rain by men'thedogs via Flickr. Taken June 5, 2011 in Highbridge, England.

So far the English summer has been what forecasters call “cool and unsettled” and I call “wet.” Today it’s more “hot and unsettled” – it’s been very sultry and still all day, and I’m waiting impatiently for the thundery showers that are supposed to arrive – if they don’t, tonight will be very muggy indeed!

June and July are very busy months for me because I’m teaching summer school, and for that reason I’m going on hiatus for a few weeks, as I did last year. I feel bad because I haven’t posted this year nearly as often as I planned to, but I will be back in August. What I’m hoping is that we’ll finally have some good weather and I can spend some time reading in the garden. Before summer school started, I was in the middle of Wolf Hall but I put it aside because I always find it harder to concentrate on new-to-me fiction when teaching an intensive course. At such times I prefer to re-read, and this year I’m re-reading Kate White’s Bailey Weggins mystery series, which starts with If Looks Could Kill. I adore the Bailey books and I enjoyed Kate White’s first thriller, Hush, so I’m eagerly looking forward to the release of her second, The Sixes, which comes out August 2.

Publisher Description:

From the New York Times bestselling author of Hush and the Bailey Weggins mystery series comes a thriller set in a college town where a student’s death sends one woman on a search for the truth and into the clutches of a frightening secret society.

Phoebe Hall’s Manhattan life has suddenly begun to unravel. Right after her long-term boyfriend breaks off their relationship, she’s falsely accused of plagiarizing her latest bestselling celebrity biography. Looking for a quiet place to put her life back together, Phoebe jumps at the offer to teach in a sleepy Pennsylvania town at a small private college run by her former boarding school roommate and close friend, Glenda Johns.

But behind the campus’s quiet cafés and leafy maple trees lie evil happenings. The body of a female student washes up on the banks of a nearby river, and disturbing revelations begin to surface: accusations from coeds about abuses wrought by a secret society of girls on campus known as The Sixes.. To help Glenda, Phoebe embarks on a search for clues—a quest that soon raises painful memories of her own boarding school days years ago.

As the investigation heats up, Phoebe unexpectedly finds herself falling for the school’s handsome psychology professor, Duncan Shaw. But when nasty pranks turn into deadly threats, Phoebe realizes she’s in the middle of a real-life nightmare, not knowing whom she can trust and if she will even survive.

Plunging deeper into danger with every step, Phoebe knows she’s close to unmasking a killer. But with truth comes a terrifying revelation: your darkest secrets can still be uncovered . . . and starting over may be a crime punishable by death.

Doesn’t it sound juicy? I can’t wait.

Becoming Marie Antoinette, the first in a trilogy about the doomed French queen by Juliet Grey, sounds pretty juicy, too.

Publisher Description:

This enthralling confection of a novel, the first in a new trilogy, follows the transformation of a coddled Austrian archduchess into the reckless, powerful, beautiful queen Marie Antoinette.

Why must it be me? I wondered. When I am so clearly inadequate to my destiny?

Raised alongside her numerous brothers and sisters by the formidable empress of Austria, ten-year-old Maria Antonia knew that her idyllic existence would one day be sacrificed to her mother’s political ambitions. What she never anticipated was that the day in question would come so soon.

Before she can journey from sunlit picnics with her sisters in Vienna to the glitter, glamour, and gossip of Versailles, Antonia must change everything about herself in order to be accepted as dauphine of France and the wife of the awkward teenage boy who will one day be Louis XVI. Yet nothing can prepare her for the ingenuity and influence it will take to become queen.

Filled with smart history, treacherous rivalries, lavish clothes, and sparkling jewels, Becoming Marie Antoinette will utterly captivate fiction and history lovers alike.

I’m totally prepared to be captivated, but I don’t quite understand why “nothing can prepare her for the ingenuity and influence it will take to become queen.” Marie Antoinette didn’t need ingenuity and influence to become queen. She was married to the heir to the throne. All she needed was enough patience to wait four years till his grandfather died. That aside, I’d really like to read this book. Marie Antoinette’s short life was so extraordinary that it merits a trilogy - the author apparently sums up the three books as Teen, Queen and Guillotine. The “Teen” instalment is released August 9.

In other news, the latest blog I’m following is Royalty Free Fiction, which promotes historical fiction about non-royal personages, hosting guest posts by authors who explain what inspired their royalty-free historical novel. If you’re looking for something set outside the wide realms of European court fiction, this would be one to subscribe to.

I will return in August – in the meantime, thank you to everyone who stops by to read and especially to commenters. I am not always able to reply immediately to comments, but I am interested by and appreciative of each and every one.