I wanted to mention several things that I’m excited about. First and foremost, here’s the cover design for my forthcoming nonfiction book about the Woodville family. Love it! The book will be released by the History Press in October of this year and is available for pre-order at Amazon UK. Second, the Historical Novel Society …
As long-term readers of this blog know, each year I volunteer at the county’s annual library sale. There, I unpack books and arrange them on tables. Until this year, the perk was first pick from over 450,000 books, but the country library gods got rid of that privilege this year, so we have to shop …
Happy New Year! I wanted to end the year by listing (in no particular order) some of my favorite reads of 2011. Most of these weren’t books that appeared in 2011, just books I read in 2011. Nonfiction: My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Nora …
My Favorite Reads of 2011, and Books to Look For in 2012 Read More »
Where would the history of Lady Jane Grey and her family be without the intrepid Victorians? I came across this gem today while looking up a reference for Adrian Stokes. It’s from a piece in the 1885-86 Proceedings of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society called “A Noble Family of the Middle Ages” by one …
The Horsey Master Stokes and the Gullible Mr. Marples Read More »
I’ve been meaning to post for some time about the nonfiction books dealing with the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors that have caught my eye lately. Many of them have just recently been published. Here they are, more or less in historical order: Susan Curran, The English Friend: A Life of William de …
Last week, I picked up this 1986 biography of Lady Jane Grey by Mary Luke, a historical novelist who also dabbled in nonfiction. While I had been warned that this book was a heavily fictionalized account of Jane’s life, I had no idea just how fictionalized it was. In fact, it’s essentially a novel, and should …
A Book to Avoid: The Nine Days Queen by Mary Luke Read More »
OK, everyone else is doing this today, so why shouldn’t I? 2010 wasn’t a great reading year for me in terms of quantity, but in quality there were some high points. (Most, but not all, of these books were published in 2010.) My Favorite Novels of 2010: Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler (contemporary fiction). Like …
While buying a gift card at Barnes and Noble today, I overheard the following exchange: Clueless customer: “Do you sell Kindle gift cards?” Clerk: “No, we have Nooks here.” Clueless customer: “I need a gift card for my friend.” Clerk: “Well, the Nook gift cards are right here.” Clueless customer: “But where are the Kindle …
I am in the very pleasant position of having too much to read, for over the past few days, I’ve added several new nonfiction books to my collection. So, taking a cue from Kathryn’s post, I thought I would mention some of them. First and foremost is Michael Hicks’ The Wars of the Roses. I …
As some of my Facebook friends know, there’s a group called The History Police where like-minded individuals congregate in order to decry books and movies that distort history. Because a lot of us in that particular group are interested in medieval and Tudor history, books dealing with those periods get a good going-over there. One …
