Fourteen Years Overseas for Stealing Two Sheep

Victorian era punishment for crime quite baffles us today. What might be a misdemeanor in our court systems now could have meant a devastating change in a person's life then if not death, and often for merely trying to keep from starvation. Read the post HERE (on my other blog) by Prue Batten which is found in the book Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors.

HistFic Cover Reveals 11/20

Twelfth Night at Longbourn
Given Good Principles Vol. IV
Maria Grace

Her youngest sister’s outrageous behavior has left Kitty Bennet a social outcast. Abandoned by her friends and the man who she thought cared for her, Kitty has all but given up hope when an unexpected Christmastide invitation promises the chance to start a new. Can the wonder of Twelfth Night bring life to her dreams?

To be released December 16, 2013

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The Lost Duchess
Jenny Barden

An epic Elizabethan adventure with a thriller pace and a high tension love story that moves from the palaces of England to the savage wilderness of the New World. The Lost Duchess explores what might have happened to the ill-starred 'Lost Colony of Roanoke'.

Amazon UK

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The Disinherited
Helena Page Schrader

Mercenary Sir Gerard receives an unexpected summons from a dying monk, his father. The encounter sets him on a journey to the castle of his birth and a confrontation with the man who has stolen his family’s lands and titles.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Perfiditas
Alison Morton

Falsely accused of conspiracy, 21st century Praetorian Carina Mitela is forced to flee into the criminal underworld. As she struggles to overcome the desperate odds and save her beloved Roma Nova and her own life, she faces the ultimate betrayal…

Amazon

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God's Daughter
Heather Day Gilbert

Almost five centuries before Columbus, Viking women sailed to North America with their husbands. God's Daughter, Book One in the Vikings of the New World Saga, offers an expansive yet intimate look into the world of Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Please let us know what you like about these covers!

Americanisms and British Equivalents

This project is now to be found here: http://www.book2read.eu/randw.htm

HistFic Cover Reveals 11/13

The Spider and the Stone: A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas
Glen Craney

Brutal Edward Longshanks schemes to steal Scotland. But a boy, James Douglas, defies three kings for his friend, Robert the Bruce, to lead armies to the bloody field of Bannockburn. A thrilling saga of love and sacrifice during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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A Newfound Land – book 4 in The Graham Saga 
Anna Belfrage

Tired of strife, Alex and Matthew Graham have left Scotland and hope for a new start in 17th century Maryland. Unfortunately, the past has a nasty tendency to resurface – and their new life comes with dangers & adventures.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Shattered Moments
Irina Shapiro

Murder, blackmail, long buried secrets, and a tender new romance take center stage in Shattered Moments, the final installment of The Hands of Time Series as the Whitfields and Sheridans face their toughest challenges yet.

Shattered Moments will be available the first week of January.

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What She Left Behind
Ellen Marie Wiseman

Merging the past and present, this haunting story follows a young museum worker as she discovers a decades old journal inside a shuttered state asylum and is compelled to piece together the journal owner's fate—with shocking and unexpected results.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Gang Petition
Peter St. John

The Women’s Land Army is taking over the Widdlington allotments, stirring up trouble in the village, particularly for the children. But who committed the midnight act of wartime sabotage? Everything turns on a secret visit to bomb-menaced London.

Gang Petition will be released November 15, 2013. It is available for preorder:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Please let us know what you like about these covers!

Cover Reveals for New Historical Fiction

I am going to be doing cover reveals here. I am a lover of good art, and many of the covers are really well done. I hope you enjoy looking them over as I do!

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The Kiss of the Concubine
Judith Arnopp

Henry VIII lies on his deathbed. A little boy snivels into his sleeve; he is about to become King. Candles flicker shadows in the room. Someone has come to tell her husband it is time to pay his dues.

A Novel of Anne Boleyn

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Staymaker - The Downfall of Thomas Kingsmill and the Hawkhurst Gang
Andy Millen

Gritty and violent from the start, this novel follows the Hawkhurst and Chichester Smuggling gangs and the attempts to bring them to justice in the final years of the 1740’s.

Amazon US
Amazon UK

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The Girl Who Came Home - A Novel of the Titanic
Hazel Gaynor

A retelling of the Titanic disaster through the experiences of a young Irish woman, travelling in steerage. Blending fact and fiction, the novel explores the tragedy’s impact on survivors and their families.

April 1, 2014 by William Morrow Books (HarperCollins)
Preorder US
Preorder UK


What do you like about these covers?

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New Release

Moonless
Crystal Collier

Moonless is Jane Eyre meets Supernatural

Alexia’s nightmares become reality: a dead baron, red-eyed wraiths, and forbidden love with a man hunted by these creatures. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protect her family she must either be sold into a loveless marriage, or escape with her beloved and risk becoming one of the Soulless.

Purchase

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Historical Fiction Enticements 10/02

The Patterer
Larry Brill

In 1765 London, Leeds Merriweather is scratching out a living as a common street performer, a patterer, using his wit and storytelling skills to draw crowds and sell newspapers. Although he aspires to be a respected journalist and start his own publishing house, he is relegated to pattering by a handsome face, strong voice and straight teeth.

Inspired by a drunken chance encounter with Benjamin Franklin, Leeds assembles a zany cast of characters to become history’s first celebrity newscaster. But at the peak of his meteoric rise to fame and fortune, Leeds risks it all for the love of a conniving wench in this Dickensian comedy.

The Patterer is the first release in a trilogy.

Amazon US
Website

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Sisters of The Bruce
Jeanette Harvey

Sisters of The Bruce is a captivating work of fiction that weaves family history with a gripping narrative through the social and political landscape of medieval Scotland, Norway and Orkney.
Late 13th century Scotland is a wild and perilous place. Against a background of cataclysmic events, the adventurous lives of Robert the Bruce and his five sisters come to life through their own words in a series of letters. Courage and tenacity are often associated with Scotland’s great hero, but few appreciate the enormous challenges experienced by these remarkable sisters.

As a young girl, Isa leaves her home and family to sail to the land of the Vikings to become Queen of Norway whilst her sister, Kirsty, finds herself Countess of Mar: chatelaine of the great Kildrummy Castle in Scotland’s far northeast. Danger shifts and swirls about them. With assistance from Isa, younger sisters, Mathilda and Margaret, escape north.

As Scotland spirals into war, the Bruce kinfolk face the wrath of King Edward I of England, whose murderous vengeance wrought the brutal death of William Wallace some years earlier. Kirsty is incarcerated in solitary confinement in an English nunnery whilst Mary languishes within a cage on the walls of Roxburgh Castle. Only a Scottish victory at Bannockburn can save them.
Under Robert’s kingship, old wounds heal and his committed fighting force achieves a miracle. Eight years on, the fragile women return home to rebuild their shattered lives. Such an intimate account of love, loss and hope still resonates today.
Sisters of The Bruce is due out September/October in book and ebook form. Available through Amazon and Troubador Publishing UK or order through your local bookstore.

Blog: www.sistersofthebruce.wordpress.com
Websites: sistersofthebruce.com; robertthebruce.info

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Roan Rose
Juliet Waldron

More like a gangland war for turf and loot than chivalry, the War of Roses disrupted the life of commoners for hundreds of years. Roan Rose is the story of one of them, Rose Whitby, born on the Yorkshire dales. When the Countess of Warwick, decides to take the sturdy, gentle child to Middleham Castle to be companion and bed-time poppet for her youngest daughter, Rose’s fate is changed forever.

Rose bonds strongly with Anne Neville, her young mistress. She also meets a delicate royal boy enduring his knightly training—Richard of Gloucester, King Edward’s youngest brother. The noble children suffer illness and accidents as they grow, but Rose is a constant, always there to nurse and serve.

Rose bears intimate witness to betrayals, murders, battles and all the abrupt reversals of fortune which will shape Anne’s life--and her own. When Anne and Richard are at last free to marry, Rose is given a husband, too. From now on, she will live in the village at Middleham, work as a herbalist, raise her children and watch while her friends travel among their many castles. When King Edward unexpectedly drops dead, the hitherto loyal Richard surprises everyone by declaring his nephews illegitimate and seizing the throne. Rose’s beloved Anne will briefly become a Queen, while Richard’s name will become synonymous with evil. After he, the last Plantagenet King, is betrayed and slain on the field of battle, Rose returns to her humble existence on the Dales. She has one last service to perform.


Amazon US
Amazon UK

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Hellraiser - Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
Jerry Ash

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience." — George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics.

Hellraiser —Mother Jones: An Historical Novel brings Irish American Mother Jones back to renew the lessons of her history, to understand and compare the economic injustices of her time with the economic inequalities of contemporary life and to enable Mother Jones to once again call her people to action.

In history, Mary Harris Jones faces threats and jail terms, bullets and bombs to defend the American worker, the underclass — men, women and children — against the greed of robber barons like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan and Vanderbilt.

In the end, the spirit of Mother Jones returns to find an America where economic servitude has shifted from the coal mines and sweatshops of her day to the fast food chains, big box retailers and even the high tech industries of ours. Where capitalism has robbed the people of the promises of justice, equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in what was supposed to be a democratic society. Just as she warned 100 years ago.

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Hellraiser website
Barnes & Noble

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Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors
Edited by Debra Brown and M.M. Bennetts

Please see also this newly released nonfiction tome--a delicious anthology of British history posts from the first year of the English Historical Fiction Authors blog.

It is a large, beautiful book of 514 pages. Each article is just a few pages, making it a book that you can read on coffee breaks or in a waiting room, choosing a section that interests you at the moment. It is divided into various eras of history, and the table of contents enables you to quickly find what appeals.

The book also introduces readers to fifty-five authors of historical fiction and their titles. There really is something for everyone who enjoys British history and the stories that develop around it in the imagination of histfic authors.

Amazon US
Amazon UK
Kobo