
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.