Susan

Today I settled down for my lunchtime reading with Sweet Passion’s Pain by Karen Harper. Because it’s about Joan “the Fair Maid of Kent,” wife to the Black Prince and mother of Richard II, it interested me, despite the cheesy title. (Published in the 1980’s, the book’s being reissued this year with the title The […]

My mailbox has been full of historical fiction lately, putting me in the pleasant position of having too many books to choose from. One of the first I chose to read was Wendy J. Dunn’s Dear Heart, How Like You This?, a novel about Anne Boleyn told by poet and diplomat Thomas Wyatt. I’ve been

One of my fondest college memories is hearing William Styron speak about his then-recent historical novel, Sophie’s Choice, and having my copy autographed later that same night. Anyway, while Googling tonight I ran into this post by blogger Erika Dreifus on a talk by Geraldine Brooks, which in turn led me to an interesting 1992

Like my new blog colors? I thought the old ones were a bit hard on the eyes. Over the weekend, my daughter watched the movie Mean Girls, about high school cliques, and we adults were allowed to join in. It’s a funny movie. Anyway, one of the clique leaders had a habit of saying “Shut

This beauty will soon be in my hands, God and Amazon willing, but I thought I’d leave it with you for the Easter holiday to feast your eyes upon (better than an Easter ham). It’s called Ride East! Ride West! by Anne Powers and is set during the Hundred Years’ War, evidently a time when

I’m in the middle of The Queen’s Confession, a novel about Marie Antoinette that’s narrated in the first person by the queen, as the title indicates. It’s by Victoria Holt, who of course is also Jean Plaidy, who is also Philippa Carr. Most of the Holt and Carr books fall under the category of romantic

Not having gotten far enough in anything I’m reading to post about it, I thought I’d direct your attention to a very strange 1898 book, History of England in Words of One Syllable, which I saw in a flea market some time ago and had to buy for its sheer dottiness. It is by Mrs.