Menaced by Vikings and enemies at court, Queen Emma defends her children and her crown in a riveting medieval adventure…

Readers first met Emma of Normandy in Patricia Bracewell’s gripping debut novel, Shadow on the Crown. Unwillingly thrust into marriage to England’s King Æthelred, Emma has given the king a son and heir, but theirs has never been a happy marriage. In The Price of Blood, Bracewell returns to 1006 when a beleaguered Æthelred, still haunted by his brother’s ghost, governs with an iron fist and a royal policy that embraces murder. As tensions escalate and enmities solidify, Emma forges alliances to protect her young son from ambitious men—even from the man she loves. In the north there is treachery brewing, and when Viking armies ravage England, loyalties are shattered and no one is safe from the sword. Rich with intrigue, compelling personalities, and fascinating detail about a little-known period in history, The Price of Blood will captivate fans of both historical fiction and fantasy novels such as George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.

***********

That story you read when it’s so absorbing you find yourself carrying the book around with you even when you’re not reading it at that very moment. Or when you set the book down on a table or beside you and find yourself eyeing the cover, thinking about the story. Yep. This book is just that. Perfect.

Looking forward to writing my review for this book!

Stephanie M. Hopkins

What a fantastic premise! I’m intrigue with stories that involve code breaking and to blend in a time slip theme gives a story more depth and compelling insight of the people in the story who break codes. Their process in doing so-if you will. The way their mind works is truly extraordinary and the author shows that in this story. Sara Thomas a women who was hired by an historian once famous is asked to cipher a journal from a women who lived in the past…300 hundred years ago in fact. She is encouraged by her cousin to take the job. There is one thing, Sara has Asperger but this perhaps heightens her intelligence for ciphering codes. She decides to take the job and travels to Paris where the job is at. The journal is in a home of a women who is a photographer-a bit eccentric- but does not play a major role in the story. There she starts to decipher the journal and the tale takes a different direction than expected…

I enjoyed how the author weaved the modern day story with the historical one and I found myself not wanting to put the book down because I had to find out what came next. There is also a bit of romance that develops in the story I did not mention above and I felt it was nicely done. This is the second book I have read by this author and I feel this story is a vast improvement from the first one I read. I really enjoyed the writing style in this one. However, I felt there could have been stronger character development. I am rating this book four stars.

*ARC received from NetGalley/publisher for an honest review

Stephanie M. Hopkins

Publication Date: March 3, 2015

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Formats:

Hardcover, Ebook Pages: 256

Genre: Historical Fiction

A best-selling novelist enlists her own sister to bring us the story of two Southern sisters, disguised as men, who join the Confederate Army—one seeking vengeance on the battlefield, the other finding love.

In a war that pitted brother against brother, two sisters choose their own battle. Joseph and Thomas are fresh recruits for the Confederate Army, daring to join the wild fray that has become the seemingly endless Civil War, sharing everything with their fellow soldiers—except the secret that would mean their undoing: they are sisters.

Before the war, Joseph and Thomas were Josephine and Libby. But that bloodiest battle, Antietam, leaves Libby to find her husband, Arden, dead. She vows vengeance, dons Arden’s clothes, and sneaks off to enlist with the Stonewall Brigade, swearing to kill one Yankee for every year of his too-short life. Desperate to protect her grief-crazed sister, Josephine insists on joining her. Surrounded by flying bullets, deprivation, and illness, the sisters are found by other dangers: Libby is hurtling toward madness, haunted and urged on by her husband’s ghost; Josephine is falling in love with a fellow soldier. She lives in fear both of revealing their disguise and of losing her first love before she can make her heart known to him.

In her trademark “vibrant” (Washington Post Book World) and “luscious” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) prose, Kathy Hepinstall joins with her sister Becky to show us the hopes of love and war, the impossible-to-sever bonds of sisterhood, and how what matters most can both hurt us and heal us.

Praise for Sisters of Shiloh

“The Hepinstall sisters provide a fascinating glimpse into Civil War life from an unconventional perspective.” –Kirkus

“The very best historical fiction delivers us into another time and place. In Sisters of Shiloh, Kathy and Becky Hepinstall plunge us so deeply into a complete and vividly rendered world of Civil War battlefields and Confederate campsites, we can smell the gun powder and taste the metallic tinge of fear along with their remarkable heroines.” –Janis Cooke Newman, author of Mary

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About the Authors

Kathy Hepinstall grew up outside of Houston, Texas. Kathy is the best-selling author of The House of Gentle Men, The Absence of Nectar and Blue Asylum She is an award-winning creative director and advertising writer. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California with her husband. Visit Kathy’s Blog.

Becky Hepinstall grew up outside of Houston, Texas. She holds a degree in History from the University of Texas in Austin, and currently resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia with her husband, a Navy pilot, and their four children.

Sisters of Shiloh Blog Tour Schedule

Tuesday, March 3

Review & Giveaway at Let Them Read Books

Review & Giveaway at The Book Binder’s Daughter

Wednesday, March 4

Review at Flashlight Commentary

Thursday, March 5

Interview at Flashlight Commentary

Review & Giveaway at With Her Nose Stuck in a Book

Friday, March 6

Review & Giveaway at Unshelfish

Saturday, March 7

Review & Giveaway at The Maiden’s Court

Monday, March 9

Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past

Tuesday, March 10

Guest Post at A Literary Vacation

Review & Interview at Books and Benches

Spotlight at Layered Pages

Wednesday, March 11

Review at Beth’s Book Nook

Thursday, March 12

Review & Giveaway at A Literary Vacation

Interview & Giveaway at Forever Ashley

Friday, March 13

Review at 100 Pages a Day

Monday, March 16

Guest Post & Giveaway at Mina’s Bookshelf

IN THE WINTER OF 1535, fourteen-year-old Kate Carey wants to escape her family home. She thinks her life will be so much better with Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife and the aunt she idolises. Little does Kate know that by going to attend Anne Boleyn she will discover love and a secret that will shake the very foundations of her identity. An attendant to Anne Boleyn, Kate is also swept up in events that see her witness her aunt’s darkest days. By the time winter ends, Kate will be changed forever.

Excerpt:

A raven cawed and wheeled in the sky above Kate. Now almost at the end of her journey, she followed the raven’s flight to the towering gateway of London Bridge. Along its ugly, overhanging spikes, more ravens returned to roost. Their wings fluttered and flapped in short bursts of flight, and opened the morning to horror. Black wings beat amongst white human skulls. Amongst death.

Silence fell, heavy like a shroud, before knifed open by a new disharmony. One raven shrieked, its beak gaping wide apart. Bluish-black wings fluttered and opened wide, and thrashed the air with power.

The bird cawed again, its spread wings catching the wind in the dull sky, before swooping down to claim the fresh dead upon the long spikes. Trembling, Kate found herself unable to take her eyes away as the bird pecked and tugged, tearing at bloody flesh. Dark clots of blood oozed thick and worm- like from ripped skin.

Other scavengers alighted near the feasting bird. Crouched upon the bloody head, the raven screamed in warning, in possession. Its sharp beak scraped against bone and delved into grisly eyeholes. The bitter, cold wind brought down to Kate the smell of decaying flesh, fecund on this graveyard wall.

Kate swallowed down bile, tasting vomit in her mouth. Wherever Kate looked, right or left, black, empty eye sockets stared back at her. Eye sockets of the dead.

Kate shut her eyes briefly and prayed: God in Heaven, forgive them the sins that brought them here. Keep safe their souls.

She looked up again at the cast-off shells of these poor souls while, at the same time, the living eyes of the ravens glinted down to her with coldness, aggression, arrogance. Robins, doves and pigeons flocked beside the meat-eating birds. Their coos and chirps punctuated the harsh, punctuating caws of the ravens. But that didn’t blunt the nightmare.

She tugged at the reins of Rachel, her mother’s elderly palfrey, kneeing the horse’s sides until she quickened into a trot. The entire journey from home, even when they broke for the night at Barking Abbey, Kate ensured she stayed a clear and careful distance away from her stepfather. Now her failing courage edged her closer to him. Reins held tight in leather-gloved hands, she steered Rachel beside his black stallion. Her stepfather grinned. “Keeping me company now, are you, lass?”

“I want to see Harry,” Kate blustered and looked away from him. More mighty wings thrashed above her head, drawing her eyes back again to the ravens. Beside her, Kate’s stepfather laughed grimly. “Aye, come to London and be greeted by the welcome of death. I hated it as a lad, and I hate it as much now.”

Kate jerked around in her surprise. Resisting her stepfather’s attempts at friendliness, his attempts to be her father, she had never heard him speak of his boyhood. And Kate had never cared or wanted to ask him. He cocked his head and smiled at her. “Do not be afraid. The dead cannot harm us—only the living.”

Kate lifted her chin, tightened her mouth and stared ahead. Why does he continue to smile and speak so gently to me? She desired none of his friendship. Very soon, Kate would have no more need of him. Once he brought her to the court, she would bid him farewell and thank God for it. She hoped the farewell would be for good.

Beginning the journey over the bridge, Kate bent to soothe nervous Rachel, her thighs feeling the quiver of the horse’s muscles. The horse snorted and neighed, her walk a jittery dance that tried to shy away from the press of women, men and children. Most of them made their way across the bridge by foot, but a few also rode like her and her stepfather.

With Rachel at last reassured and no longer threatening to balk at the crossing, London again captured Kate’s attention. Over two years ago, she had come with her grandmother to London from Rochford inland by water for her aunt’s summertime coronation. During the two weeks she stayed with her kin, she continued to travel by water in the Boleyn’s stately barge, going up and down the river with her grandparents, from one destination to another.

This time her mother took it in mind to show that she, too, had the Boleyn pride, insisting that Kate journey to London through the only means that she and Stafford could afford: riding the horses they owned.

Now the city of London seemed to reveal itself to her for the first time. Their way to London Bridge had taken them through streets both wide and narrow, the narrower streets outnumbering the wide.

Travelling down the narrow streets, Kate had looked up to houses that jutted out and cast them into dark shadow and made the streets seem narrower still. Their occupants yelled to one another from their homes, tossing slops and the contents of their privy pots upon people rushing by.

Heady smells overcame and confused her senses, one moment vile, making her grab the pomander hanging on her girdle and bring it to her nose, the next appetising. The cries and songs of men and women selling their wares. So many people, young, old, rich, poor.

Kate’s eyes darted everywhere as she rode across the bridge to the other side, passing under arched gateway after arched gateway. Tall shops of all descriptions mingled with four-storey houses that declared the wealth and status of those who lived within, preventing sight of the river. The outdoor, open privies occupied by poor men and women alike. Startled into staring, Kate’s cheeks heated even more when a man caught her watching. Wiggling his bare backside in her direction, he gestured rudely, yelling, “Want to look, m’lady? Perchance you’d like to eye m’other side while you’re at it?”

Her embarrassment was complete when her stepfather gazed over his shoulder and laughed at her.

The way at last open before her, Kate dug her heels into Rachel’s sides, quickening her to a canter. I must be close to reaching Greenwich Palace and the end of my journey. So close to reaching an aunt who never laughed at her, or treated her like a foolish child.

Wendy Dunn is an Australian writer who has been obsessed by Anne Boleyn and Tudor History since she was ten-years-old. She is the author of two Tudor novels: Dear Heart, How Like You This?, the winner of the 2003 Glyph Fiction Award and 2004 runner up in the Eric Hoffer Award for Commercial Fiction, and The Light in the Labyrinth, her first young adult novel.

While she continues to have a very close and spooky relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, serendipity of life now leaves her no longer wondering if she has been channeling Anne Boleyn and Sir Tom for years in her writing, but considering the possibility of ancestral memory. Her own family tree reveals the intriguing fact that her ancestors – possibly over three generations – had purchased land from both the Boleyn and Wyatt families to build up their own holdings. It seems very likely Wendy’s ancestors knew the Wyatts and Boleyns personally.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Wendy is married and the mother of three sons and one daughter—named after a certain Tudor queen, surprisingly, not Anne.

Wendy tutors at Swinburne University in their Master of Arts (Writing) program. She also works as a literature support teacher at a primary school.

Author Website

I am in intrigued with many of the books I have reviewed this year and this book is probably at the top of my favorites thus far. Many of us readers find the past so interesting to explore. Not only that but to get a glimpse of what might have been. In this story a young girl name Jesse discovers she is adopted and while she lives in Australia, she is not from there at all. So she takes a life changing and astonishing journey to Europe to find out who her birth family is. Her journey takes her to the borders between England and Scotland to a vast castle and ancient land. But by chance really or is it by chance? Fate maybe. She too looks into the past and she is tied to long ago events she discovers in more ways than one…

But let me take you back a little…Before her journey to the borders she is in England and has an accident. The doctor who treats her is a neurologist discovers Jessie has certain abilities through hypnosis …was it caused by her accident? While in the hospital Jessie draws these pictures of a castle-the castle I mentioned above- and the doctor knows this place all too well. He convinces her to go with him to the castle. So off they go to the borders and their adventure is quite extraordinary.

Meanwhile, the owner of the castle, Alicia is doing everything she can to keep the castle-due to financial difficulties- must make tough decisions. But you don’t know for sure what decision she is going to make until later on… Another thing I like about this story is that this castle and land is deeply connected to all the main characters in this story. I really like Alicia and she is probably my favorite character in this book.

The story takes you back and forth between the 14^th century and the 20^th century. It is steeped in deeply buried secrets, loss, fairy tales-more like mystical to me-and so much more. I believe the author does a wonderful job writing about the past and the more modern times. I was truly captivated with the historical events in this story and I love the atmosphere, characters, and intrigue the author writes and I must say there are a few twist to the story that let me guessing a few things until almost right up to the end….and that is rare for me. I admire that greatly in this story and it certainly kept me up late at night reading on to find out more…I didn’t want the story to end.

This is the first book I have read by this author and I am so glad I discovered her. I will definitely be reading more books from this writer and I highly recommend this story. I’ve rated this book four and a half stars!

Stephanie M. Hopkins

Publication Date: January 14, 2015 iUniverse Formats: eBook, Paperback Pages: 208

Series: Book Two, The Puritan Chronicles Genre: Historical Fiction

It is 1693 in Hereford, Connecticut, when Mary Case, the spinster daughter of a Puritan minister, finds herself hopelessly smitten by the roguish thief, Daniel Eames. Betrothed to a man she does not like or love, she is soon compelled to help Daniel escape from jail. Suddenly, she finds herself on the run, not only accused of being Daniel’s accomplice, but also of murder.

The fugitive pair soon finds solace-and a mutual attraction-among the escapee’s Algonquin friends until two men from Daniel’s dark past hunt them down. After Mary is captured and returned home to await trial, a tragedy takes the life of her younger sister, revealing a dark secret Mary’s father has kept for months. But just as Mary learns she is pregnant, she makes a horrifying discovery about Daniel that changes everything and prompts her to develop an unlikely bond with his mother, Rebecca, who soon saves Mary from a shocking fate. It is not until years later that her daughter, Kezia, finally learns the truth about her biological father and family.

Letters to Kezia shares a courageous woman’s journey through a Puritan life and beyond as she struggles with adversity and betrayal, and discovers that loyalty can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.

Praise for Letters to Kezia

“In the tradition of author Peni Jo Renner’s gripping debut novel, Puritan Witch: The Redemption of Rebecca Eames, Letters to Kezia recounts the tale of courageous, compassionate, and relatable Mary, whose connection to Rebecca and her family is unforeseen and profound. The reader is captivated at the very first page, as Letters to Kezia is a story of forbidden love, deep family secrets, intrigue, murder, and atonement. Another beautifully written triumph for this author, whose immense gift for story-telling transports the reader into each scene so deftly, one can almost smell the wood smoke and hear the crackling of the fire in the hearth.” – Kelly Z. Conrad, award-winning author of Shaman

“Peni Jo Renner enthralled readers with Puritan Witch, the ordeal of Rebecca Eames, who was condemned to hang from Salem’s gallows as a witch. Now the Eames saga continues as Peni uses her special brand of witchery to bring Mary Case and Daniel Eames to vivid life, and shows us just how much a young woman will risk for love. Letters to Kezia is a poignant, true-life tale from colonial New England’s heartland which will captivate you, and keep you guessing until the end.” -JoAnn Butler, author of Rebel Puritan and The Reputed Wife

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About the Author

PENI JO RENNER is the author of the IPPY award-winning novel, Puritan Witch: the Redemption of Rebecca Eames. Originally from North Dakota, Peni now lives with her husband in Maryland where she is currently researching for the third book in the Puritan Chronicles series.

For more information please visit the Puritan Witch Website and Facebook Page. You can also follow Peni Jo Renner on Twitter.

Letters to Kezia Book Blast Schedule

Monday, February 23 Bibliophilia, Please

Tuesday, February 24 So Many Books, So Little Time

Wednesday, February 25 Broken Teepee With Her Nose Stuck In A Book

Thursday, February 26 Unshelfish Genre Queen Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Friday, February 27 Mythical Books Beth’s Book Nook Blog

Saturday, February 28 The Never-Ending Book

Monday, March 2 Layered Pages CelticLady’s Reviews History From a Woman’s Perspective

Tuesday, March 3 A Book Geek

Wednesday, March 4 Mel’s Shelves The Maiden’s Court

Thursday, March 5 100 Pages a Day

Friday, March 6 The Mad Reviewer Let them Read Books

HYSTERICAL LOVE… a novel by Lorraine Devon Wilke

Dan McDowell, a thirty-three-year-old portrait photographer happily set to marry his beloved Jane, is stunned when a slip of the tongue about an “ex-girlfriend overlap” of years earlier throws their pending marriage into doubt and him onto the street. Or at least into the second bedroom of their next-door neighbor, Bob, where Dan is sure it won’t be long. It’s long.

His sister, Lucy, further confuses matters with her “soul mate theory” and its suggestion that Jane might not be his… soul mate, that is. But the tipping point comes when his father is struck ill, sparking a chain of events in which Dan discovers a story written by this man he doesn’t readily understand, but who, it seems, has long harbored an unrequited love from decades earlier.

Incapable of fixing his own romantic dilemma, Dan becomes fixated on finding this woman of his father’s dreams and sets off for Oakland, California, on a mission fraught with detours and semi-hilarious peril. Along the way he meets the beautiful Fiona, herbalist and flower child, who assists in his quest while quietly and erotically shaking up his world. When, against all odds, he finds the elusive woman from the past, the ultimate discovery of how she truly fit into his father’s life leaves him staggered, as does the reality of what’s been stirred up with Fiona. But it’s when he returns home to yet another set of unexpected truths that he’s shaken to the core, ultimately forced to face who he is and just whom he might be able to love.

Excerpt:

I AM FLUMMOXED by relationships.

That is not a glib statement; it’s the frank admission of a man who can’t seem to get it right, even under what would seem to be the very best of circumstances. Relationships bewilder me. They knock me to my knees, and leave me baffled as to why something as essential as love is so damn fraught with confusion. At least for me. Which is disappointing. I don’t think I’m an anomaly, but I did think I’d have it figured out by now.

It’s not that I don’t fully appreciate the value of a good relationship. I do. I’m the guy who wasn’t a player in school, high school or college. I always had a girlfriend and I was always loyal and faithful to that girlfriend. Not because I’m so good, but because I’m not good at chaos. I hate the complication of it, the balancing of opposing forces (i.e., more than one girlfriend), and I’m a horrible liar, all requisites of a successful player.

And, truth be told, I like being in a relationship: the comfort, the dependability, the shared meals and regular sex. These are all good things for a man who wants to avoid complication. So why, you may ask, am I flummoxed?

Because, despite my affinity for the state of being, relationships tend to explode on my watch. I’m not sure how or why, but it’s typically things like her deciding I’m not motivated enough, or me deciding she’s not fun enough (I had one who “hated the outdoors”… what do you do with that?), or both of us deciding the other is unexciting enough that moving on would be more exciting than staying put. But it’s always messy, it’s always painful, and it usually involves weeping, tossed closets, and new sets of keys. So as I’ve attempted to evolve in life, I’ve tried my best to choose better and do it right. More right. At least as right as I can.

Which I thought I’d done over these last three years. I thought I’d gotten it really right on both the choosing and the doing. But as I sit on the edge of a strange bed in a strange bedroom and reflect on the very strange night that has just ensued, it’s clear I miscalculated. Misjudged. Regardless of good intentions, I once again set the whole damn thing on fire. Or she did. I’m still not sure.

Even more disheartening, this relationship had gone much further than any previous. It lasted longer, had less drama, and we’d actually embarked upon those iconic discussions of the future, that gaping, wide-open, impossible to imagine place I’d been assured was both warm and welcoming. I thought, I think we both thought, we were out of the danger corridor, that weird zone after the early hot years where relationships wander to get battered by irritation and boredom. We were past that, we’d transcended, we were golden.

We were fucked. By love-smugness. It gets you every time.

In retrospect, I should have caught it. That smugness should have been fair warning. But while I was off reveling in our relationship excellence, our learned skills at the craft of compromise, our sense that we exemplified the very best of love in a modern world, I missed the fact that it had all been going too well. And we know what happens when that happens. You dare acknowledge the joy and happiness you’ve managed to gather around you like soft little bunnies of optimism and, somehow, despite amazingly good behavior on everyone’s parts, and often against the nature of all parties involved, someone in the room pulls the pin. I just didn’t figure it would be her (or was it me?), or on the night we finally set a date for our wedding.

Now, there’s a word with some weighty baggage… wedding. Just saying it stirs a reflexive response that settles somewhere near the pit of my stomach, though not for the reasons you might expect. Not the cliché of commitment phobia or the panic that I’d wake up one morning and realize I had no idea why she was in my bed and what particular reason I had to marry her. No, I can honestly say I’m wild about this woman who would strap on a white gown to publicly declare she’d love me forever. The problem?

Thirty-three. That’s the problem. I am now thirty-three. And I have a theory about that number:

Something bizarre happens to a man at thirty-three, some particular strain of dread and confusion. Not the whininess of, say, twenty-four, or the doom and gloom of forty, but something completely endemic to thirty plus three years. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because Belushi, Alexander the Great, a few rock stars, even Jesus Christ himself succumbed at the age. But thirty-three is a mile-marker for those of us with plans to make it through.

My mother calls it “tweeniedom,” a land, according to her, that’s populated by overgrown teens who, kicking and screaming, are about to be forced into their deeply dreaded adulthoods. I think that’s a bit harsh, even a little unfair, because, I’m telling you, this thing is real. And it’s strange. You hit the year and it rolls over you like no year of life you’ve lived so far. My friend, Bob, who has a propensity for titling things, calls it Fate Turmoil Syndrome. He’s also referred to it as Advancing Age Agitation. I think it’s the Kingdom of Hell, where one minute everything is right in your world, the next… hissing madness in the blink of an unwary eye.

Bio: Author, photographer, singer/songwriter, Lorraine Devon Wilke, started early as a creative hyphenate. First, there was music and theater, next came rock & roll, then a leap into film when a feature she co-wrote (To Cross the Rubicon) was produced by a Seattle film company, opening doors in a variety of creative directions.

In the years following, she wrote for and performed on theater stages, developed her photography skills, and accrued a library of well-received feature screenplays (The Theory of Almost Everything was a top finalist in the 2012 Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest; A Minor Rebellion a Quarter Finalist in that same event in 2014). She kept her hand in music throughout – songwriting, recording, performing – leading to the fruition of a longtime goal to record an original album (Somewhere On the Way). Accomplished in collaboration with songwriting/producing partner, Rick M. Hirsch, the album garnered stellar reviews and can be found at CDBaby and iTunes (one tune from the collection is even featured in the epilogue of After the Sucker Punch). She continues with music whenever she can (which, she maintains, is never, ever, enough!).

Devon Wilke’s current life is split between Playa del Rey and Ferndale, California, and is shared with her husband, Pete Wilke, an entertainment and securities attorney, her son, engineer and web designer, Dillon Wilke, and stepdaughter, educational administrator Jennie Wilke Willens and family. She curates and manages both her fine art photography site and personal blog (Rock+Paper+Music), is a regular contributor at The Huffington Post and writes a column for the award-winning newspaper, The Ferndale Enterprise.

Her acclaimed debut novel (a B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree), After the Sucker Punch, as well as her dramatic short story, “She Tumbled Down,” can both be accessed at her author page @ Amazon; After The Sucker Punch is also available at Smashwords.

Her second novel, HYSTERICAL LOVE, has a publication date of April 7, 2015, and is available for pre-order at Amazon and Smashwords.

She invites you to enjoy her essays and journalistic pieces @ Contently, and follow her “Adventures in Independent Publishing” at her blog, AfterTheSuckerPunch.com, and visit her website, www.lorrainedevonwilke.com, for links, updates and information.

Contact: info@lorrainedevonwilke.com

For all publicity inquires contact: JKSCommunications

Book website: (this is titled “My Adventures in Independent Publishing”; a space to discuss all my books.

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Other Items referenced in bio: To Cross the Rubicon

Somewhere on the Way (CD):

@ CDBaby.com

@ iTunes

Fine Art Photography site

Column @ The Huffington Post

Amazon Author Page

Page at Contently.com

AFTER THE SUCKER PUNCH Amazon page

She Tumbled Down page

AFTER THE SUCKER PUNCH B.R.A.G. Medallion Page

A mystery trapped in time…

In 1921, infamous Italian poet Galeazzo D’Ascanio wrote his last and greatest play, inspired by his muse and mistress, actress Celia Sands. On the eve of opening night, Celia vanished, and the play was never performed.

Now, two generations later, Alessandro D’Ascanio plans to stage his grandfather’s masterpiece and has offered the lead to a promising young English actress, also named Celia Sands—at the whim of her actress mother, or so she has always thought. When Celia arrives at D’Ascanio’s magnificent, isolated Italian villa, she is drawn to the mystery of her namesake’s disappearance—and to the compelling, enigmatic Alessandro.

But the closer Celia gets to learn the first Celia’s fate, the more she is drawn into a web of murder, passion, and the obsession of genius. Though she knows she should let go of the past, in the dark, in her dreams, it comes back…

**********

This is the first book I have read by Kearsley and I hear so much about her stories… When I first saw this book I was captivated by the cover and when I read the description I was even more drawn in….so my expectations were rather high.

First, I must say what a great plot and setting for a story! An isolated villa, mysterious happenings, Italy, playwrights, murder, and a hunting past that stays in the present. Themes of an enthralling read. So why wasn’t I hooked in as thought I would be? I felt some scenes were slow or not important to the story and I felt that some things weren’t fully drawn out as they should have been. And the plot took too long to fall into place, the character development could have been stronger in the beginning and middle. Alas, It got better towards the end.

I will say it was atmospheric and I love the descriptions of the villa’s surroundings. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the premise but this was an okay read for me.

However, I’m not giving up on the author’s books and I look forward to reading more of her stories soon.

I have rated this book three stars.

Stephanie M. Hopkins