Publication Date:  March 5, 2013
Touchstone Publishing
Hardcover; 512p
ISBN-10: 1476708657

In the next novel from Nancy Bilyeau after her acclaimed debut The Crown,  novice Joanna Stafford plunges into an even more dangerous conspiracy as she comes up against some of the most powerful men of her era.

In 1538, England is in the midst of bloody power struggles between  crown and cross that threaten to tear the country apart. Joanna Stafford has seen what lies inside the king’s torture rooms and risks  imprisonment again, when she is caught up in a shadowy international  plot targeting the King. As the power plays turn vicious, Joanna  understands she may have to assume her role in a prophecy foretold by  three different seers, each more omniscient than the last.

Joanna realizes the life of Henry VIII as well as the future of  Christendom are in her hands—hands that must someday hold the chalice  that lays at the center of these deadly prophecies…

Layered Pages Comments and Review:

When I was asked to participate in the historical fiction virtual book tours for, The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau, I was so delighted! I have been anxiously awaiting for this novel! The Chalice is the sequel to Nancy’s debut novel, The Crown. To give you a little back ground to the story. I would like to share a little to you about, The Crown.

The protagonist, Joanna Stafford, a Dominican nun in the sixteenth century discovers her cousin is sentenced to burn at the stake at the orders of King Henry VIII. She leaves the priory to go to her cousin to show her support and she is arrested along with her father and they are sent to the Tower of London. Joanna is forced by Stephen Gardiner to spy for him and to find a relic. He believes this relic, a crown is at the Dartford Priory where Joanna is a nun. She is sent back to Dartford along with two monks.

Joanna starts to unravel the history of the crown and as she discovers the mystery little by little things become very dangerous for her and the Priory. Who can she trust? Who can she turn to for help? Will she be able to save the Priory and the people she cares about including her father’s life?

Joanna is also member of the aristocratic Stafford family. She is loyal to her family, her faith and she is courageous and strong-willed. She tends to put in her trust in the wrong people at times, but that is because she has been a bit sheltered I think. It’s truly amazing how she gets herself into these situations and yet she comes out so strong.

The Chalice

The Chalice has all the elements for a thriller a reader would want! Intrigue, murder, betrayal, conspiracy, romance, suspense, well-developed characters who will captivate you! Bilyeau also gives you a wonderful blend of history throughout the story. One can tell she has done her research and knows quite a bit about Tudor history.

As the story unfolds, Joanna is caught up in a plot that targets King Henry VIII and she finds herself in a web of lies and betrayal. In this daunting position she has been forced in making a decision that could change her life, those around her and England, forever. There were many times throughout the story I wasn’t sure how she was going to get out of the mess she was caught up in. This is a story that is so well written and evenly paced that one must really read for themselves to discover how enthralling it really is. It’s not too often I’m left almost speechless to describe my feelings for a story. I highly recommend this brilliant series and want the readers to come away with as much enjoyment as I did.

The beginning of the story really sets the tone for this powerful and compelling tale. In chapter one of The Chalice the story begins ten years earlier. Joanna is seventeen years old and making a journey to Canterbury from her home, Stafford Castle with her mother. They are going to Canterbury in the guise of her mother wanting Joanna to use the healing waters to cure her melancholia. But her mother has other plans for her that are unknown to Joanna and others in their household.

When Joanna assumed they would be heading back to London, her mother made arrangements to see a nun instead. She thought nothing of it because in Spain, her mother’s family spent time with nuns and monks. As they were getting ready to go, her mother was telling her about a nun, Elizabeth Barton that she wanted Joanna to see. When she meets Elizabeth, she realizes that she is no ordinary nun. I believe Joanna’s whole life changes from that moment on…

I rated this story five stars!

About the Author:

Nancy Bilyeau,  author of The Crown, is a writer and magazine editor who has worked on  the staffs of InStyle, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good  Housekeeping. Her latest position is features editor of Du Jour  magazine. A native of the Midwest, she graduated from the University of  Michigan. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Monday 4th-Author Thea Atkinson

Friday 8th-Author David Pilling

Monday 11th-Author Jill Carroll

Wednesday 13th-Author & Poet Alan Cooke

Monday 25th-Author Christopher Dack

Friday 29th-Author Nancy Byleau-As part of the,  Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours.

This coming week of February  I have two interviews with Author Karen Mueller Bryson on the 25th and Author Martin Crosbie on the 28th.

Teresa Neumann brings you a captivating story based on real events leading up to and that takes place during World War II. This story is about a families strength and bond to each other and their struggles to survive a turbulent time in our History.  Egisto Bertozzi, a sculptor must marry and travel to America to support his family in Italy. He marries a women named Armida Sigali who becomes troubled and abandons her family and moves back to Italy and all is not well for her…Egisto loves his children and works hard to provide for them and his family, never giving up that Armida will come back to them. However, Armida becomes a nanny for a family who supports Mussolini. Not everything is what it seems and she soon discovers they are very dangerous. Her fate becomes sealed.

Bianca’s Vineyard is beautifully written and is rich in culture and complex characters. Neumann gives you a realistic picture of what people went through during the war and how they survived a terrible force bent on destroying everything they have worked hard for and loved. I highly recommend this story! You will fall in love with it the moment you start the first page.  

Rated Five Stars!

Stephanie
Layered Pages

Paula Lofting brings the reader an enthralling story! Sons of The Wolf, the first to a series of novels that leads up to the Norman Conquest. Of a man named Wulfhere who lived during the rule of Edward the Confessor. The lands that he holds come from the king. Wulfhere also serves my favorite male heroines in history, Harold Godwinson. Harold is the Earl of Wessex and extremely powerful and has great influence in the realm. Wulfhere is a warrior who loves his family and has a soft spot for his daughters. When Harold tells him must give his daughter, Freyda to his sworn enemy-horrid Lord Helghi- son to marry. He becomes angry but nonetheless he must agree to Harold’s wishes. For Harold grows tired of the never ending hatred between his two lords. But all is not well and Wulfhere must do all he can to save his daughter from the dangers he knows will happen if she falls in the grasps of Lord Helghi and there is a even bigger threat that could change his family forever.

As this brilliant story unfolds I found myself so engrossed with the characters plight and emotions I felt like these events were happening to my own family. Saying this story has well developed characters does not do it justice. It goes beyond that…Lofting really gets to the core of the human condition and pulls you into a world of the past that leaves you wanting to explore more of these fascinating people in history.

The first few pages grabbed me and didn’t let go and now I’m anxiously awaiting for the sequel to this remarkable story. Sons of the Wolf is definitely a novel of what the highest quality of Historical Fiction should be and I highly recommend!

I rated this story five stars!!

Stephanie
Layered Page

Patricia, congrats on your debut novel, Shadow on the Crown and thank you the pleasure of an interview. I was so delighted to receive an ARC of your book and I absolutely loved your story! You wrote about one of my favorite female heroines and time period in history. Could you please tell your audience about your story?

Thank you, Stephanie. I’m honored to be interviewed and thrilled that you liked my book. Shadow on the Crown is about a remarkable historical figure, Emma of Normandy, who was sent to England in 1002 as the peaceweaving bride of the king, Æthelred II. Thrust into a hostile court filled with intrigue, suspicion and the constant fear of attack by Viking raiders, Emma must negotiate the moods of a haunted king and the schemes of powerful men in order to secure for herself a position as something more than just a royal hostage. The choices that she makes shape not only her own future, but the future of England as well.

Emma falls in love with someone other than the King. Without giving who it was away, could you please tell me if their relationship was real or fictional?

The relationship in my book is purely fictional, although it wouldn’t have been impossible. Who can say? It is an echo, though, of a real event that occurred in the 9^th century when a Frankish princess wed an Anglo-Saxon king and then…well, interesting things happened.

Were there any research challenges you faced?

There were several challenges, and one of the biggest was discovering the facts of Emma’s life. Her birth date, her land holdings, her role in Æthelred’s court and household, her relationships with her husband’s children by his first wife – none of that was of interest to the historians of the time. What we know of it is all conjecture drawn from wills, charters, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and, frankly, hearsay that’s been passed off as fact. It’s like trying to draw someone’s face when all you can see is their shadow.

What led you to write about Emma?

I first read about Emma in an on-line bulletin board about a dozen years ago. I considered myself fairly knowledgeable about English royalty, yet I found myself reading about a queen I’d never heard of who married two different kings of England and who had also been mother to two kings of England. I began to research, and the more I learned about Emma the more fascinated I became, and the more astonished I was that she had been relegated to little more than a footnote in history. I wanted to write a book that would make her name just as familiar as those of the Tudor queens.

Yes. This novel is the first of a trilogy about Emma of Normandy, and I am working on the sequel now. I’m taking my time, because the next two books will cover the final, turbulent years of the reign of Æthelred II, and there are huge opportunities for dramatic tension and conflict.

The jacket designer was Kristen Haff. She has a website that displays many of the book covers that she’s done for Penguin. I hope she posts mine there because I think she did a marvelous job. The photographer was Richard Jenkins, who is based in the U.K.

Take a deep breath and throw yourself into the research, but when it comes time to write your book, remember that you are a storyteller, not a historian.  Be true to the history, but always remember that a good story is about people and their emotions, their relationships and their conflicts; it’s not about historical minutiae, however accurate it may be. Don’t get lost in it.

I must have been about twelve when I decided that I wanted to write novels, but it seemed like nothing more than a girl’s impossible dream. In college my Creative Writing professor was not terribly encouraging, and I realized that being able to write well did not necessarily make one a novelist or even a writer. I put that dream aside and focused on earning a living as a teacher, but the desire to write never went away. When I finally decided to scratch that itch, I focused first on essays, then short stories, and finally I turned to my first love – the novel. I produced two manuscripts that are now sitting in a box on the top shelf of my closet, and then I began work on Shadow.

That’s a really hard question to answer, as I’m sure you know. Today’s favorite, out of the thousands of books I’ve read in my life, would be Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue. It’s a re-spinning of thirteen familiar fairy tales in a way that is surprising and a little subversive. Donoghue’s writing is radiant.


What are you currently reading?

I’m reading an ARC of A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by fellow Penguin author Dina Nayeri. Her book debuts the same day as mine. It’s about a young woman who has to find a way to survive in a harsh, repressive world – not unlike Emma. But Dina’s book is set in 1980’s Iran. I’m also listening to an audio book: Nancy Bilyeau’s Tudor mystery The Crown. Just now we’re wandering the maze of corridors in the Tower of London.

My “To Read” stack is taller than I am! Up next, Parlor Games, Maryka Biaggio’s historical novel set at the turn of the last century. But please don’t think I only read female authors! I’ve just finished reading books by Bernard Cornwell, Robert Low and Oscar Wilde, all of which I enjoyed very much.

Patricia Bracewell grew up in Los Angeles where her love of stories led to college degrees in Literature, a career as a high school English teacher, and a yearning to write. She has travelled extensively in Europe, Asia and South America, both for research and for pleasure. She enjoys gardening, tennis, and, of course, reading, and she is a passable guitarist and folksinger, although her writing leaves her little time these days for practice. She lives in Northern California where she met and married her Canadian husband and where they raised their two sons.

Links:

http: //www.patriciabracewell.com

http://www.medievalists.net/2010/11/28/why-medieval-with-patricia-bracewell/

https://www.facebook.com/PatriciaBracewellAuthor

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670026395,00.html?Shadow_on_the_Crown_Patricia_Bracewell

https://twitter.com/patbracewell


Thanks you!
Stephanie

A deeply moving and masterfully written story of human resilience and enduring love, The Plum Tree follows a young German woman through the chaos of World War II and its aftermath.

“Bloom where you’re planted,” is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.

Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out.

Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake.

Ellen, as I read your book I was so touched and brought to tears by your story. What was the foundation for your story?

The Plum Tree is loosely based on my family’s experiences during WWII. My mother grew up in Nazi Germany, the eldest of five children in a poor, working-class family. When WWII broke out, my grandfather was drafted into the Wehrmacht and sent to the Russian front, where he was captured and sent to a POW camp in Siberia. Eventually he escaped, but for two years, my mother and her family had no idea if he was dead or alive until he showed up on their doorstep one day. During the four years my grandfather was off fighting, my grandmother repaired damaged military uniforms to bring in a small income. She stood in ration lines for hours on end, made sugar out sugar beets, and bartered beechnuts for cooking oil. She cooked on a wood stove, made clothes out of cotton sheets, and raised chickens and vegetables to keep her children fed. Under the cover of night, she put food out for passing Jewish prisoners and listened to illegal foreign radio broadcasts—both crimes punishable by death. She put blackout paper over the house windows so the enemy wouldn’t see their light and when the air raid sirens went off night after night, she ran down the street to hide with her terrified children inside a bomb shelter.

These stories and more were the inspiration behind The Plum Tree.

Your character Christine has inspired me to be a better person and to stand more firmly in my faith and my walk of life. Is there a person in your life/family that inspired you to write about her in your story?

I guess I would have to say my mother. She always inspires me to be strong. She lived through WWII in Germany, came to America alone at the age of 21 to marry an American soldier, and survived and escaped an abusive marriage. Then, after my sister suffered a severe head-injury in a car accident that left her unable to communicate in any way, my mother took care of her at home—for twenty-three years. Through it all, my mother was, and still is, the first person to take food to a sick neighbor, the best mother and grandmother anyone could ask for, and the strongest woman I know. Even while her heart was breaking, she gave me a rock to stand on.

There is clearly several messages in your story that readers will grasp. Is there a main message that you want readers to come away with that might change their lives?

One of my main intentions in writing The Plum Tree was to get people to realize that retrospective condemnation is easy, that collective guilt as opposed to individual guilt is senseless, that being German doesn’t mean you were a Nazi. Few people know that at its peak, the Nazi party consisted of only 10% of the German population. My hope in writing my novel was that people would begin to look at the Germans of that time on a case-by-case basis, instead of painting them all with the same brush. I think that lesson might be even more important today as our world is getting smaller and more diverse. Everyone should stop and realize they don’t know what other people have been through before they pass judgement.

There are many deeply and emotional scenes in your story. Which scene did you find most difficult to write?

I would have to say the most difficult scenes to write were in the concentration camp, specifically when Isaac and Christine first get to Dachau and families are being separated by the guards. I can’t imagine how utterly devastating it must have been to have your child ripped from your arms. I’m not sure I would have survived it.

Where there any research challenges?

No challenges really, but it was a little bit of a trick to get the timeline of the war and the Holocaust right, due to the story covering nearly seven years. I guess the only real challenge was trying to keep myself from getting lost in the research because I was fascinated by the subject matter. I had to make myself stop reading and get back to writing!

What book project do you have coming up next or are currently working on?

Right now I’m working on my second novel. It’s about a young woman who discovers a former insane asylum attic filled with suitcases left behind by patients who checked into the institution but never checked out.

What are you currently reading?

The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith.

What do you plan on reading next?

The Unfinished Garden by Barbara Claypole White

E-book or Paperback?

Paperback!

Coffee or tea?

Tea. Black

Author Bio & Links:

Ellen Marie Wiseman was born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in Northern New York, A first generation American, Ellen has traveled frequently to visit her family in Germany, where she fell in love with the country’s history and culture. She lives peacefully on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and three dogs.

Thank you Ellen!

Stephanie

Here are just a few of the Novels I want to read this year! Of course there are so much more titles I want to read, too many to list! But I will be adding to this list throughout the year. I have listed them in no particular order. Some of these I’m reading for review. If your a Historical Novel Author and would like me to consider reviewing your novel, you can contact me at layeredpages@yahoo.com

4. Bianca’s Vineyard byTeresa Neumann (for review)
5. The Sister Queen by Sophie Perinot (for review)
6. Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth
7. The Violets of March by Sarah Jio
8. The Shoemaker’s Wife by Adriana Trigiani
9. Saint Maggie by Janet R. Stafford (for review)
10.The King’s Grace by Anne Easter Smith
11.Queen by Right by Anne Easter Smith
12. Ripples in the Sand by Helen Hollick (for review)
13. The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones
14. Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall
15. Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara
16. Accidents of Providence by Stacia Brown
17. The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
18. Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini
19. The Nine Day Queen by Ella March Chase
20. The twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer
21. Lady of Ashes by Christine Trent
22. The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson (UK Release)
23. Illumination by Matthew Plampin
24. The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
25. 1356: A Novel by Bernard Cornwell
26. The Midwife’s Tale by Sam Thomas
27. Mistress of My Fate by Hallie Rubenhol
28. The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin
29. Parlor Games by Maryka Biaggio
30. Summerset Abbey by TJ Brown
31. The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan
32. The Ambassador’s Daughter by Pam Jenoff
33. The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau (for review)
34. A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick
35. To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick
36. Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick
37. Exiles by David Pilling
38. Roses Have Thorns by Sandra Byrd (for review)
39. The Queen’s Vow by C.W Gortner
40. Seduction by M.J Rose (for review)


Stephanie
Layered Pages