Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Kindle Deals

Click the cover to view and buy the book in the Kindle store. While I only post links to the Kindle store, often times you can find the same titles on sale at other stores.

Disclaimer: Ebook prices are subject to change anytime. I can only promise they are under a certain price at the time I post them.

US Kindle Deals, fiction under $5, non-fiction under $6:

More books in the Amelia Peabody series are on sale, I have only listed one below.

               


UK Kindle Deals, fiction under £3, non-fiction under £4:

           

Saturday, October 25, 2014

2015 Upcoming History Books

King John: England, Magna Carta and the Making of a Tyrant by Stephen Church
UK Release Date: March 12, 2015
US Release Date: April 7, 2015

No English king has suffered a worse press than King John: but how to disentangle legend and reality?

The youngest of the five sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, the empire builders of the Angevin dynasty, John had small hope of securing any significant inheritance. Then, in 1199, on the death of his older brother Richard, John took possession of the vast Angevin lands in England and on the continent. But by his death in 1216, he had lost almost all that he inherited, and had come perilously close to losing his English kingdom, too.

Drawing on thousands of contemporary sources, Stephen Church tells John's story - from boyhood and the succession crises of his early adulthood, to accession, rebellion and civil war. In doing so, he reveals exactly why John's reign went so disastrously wrong and how John's failure led to the great cornerstone of Britain's constitution: Magna Carta. Vivid and authoritative, this is history at its visceral best.


The King's Bed: Sex, Power and the Court of Charles II by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh
UK Release Date: January 8, 2015
US Release Date: TBA

To refer to the private life of Charles II is to abuse the adjective. His personal life was anything but private. His amorous liaisons were largely conducted in royal palaces surrounded by friends, courtiers and literally hundreds of servants and soldiers. Gossip radiated throughout the kingdom.

Charles spent most of his wealth and his intellect on gaining and keeping the company of women, from the lowest sections of society such as the actress Nell Gwyn to the aristocratic Louise de Kérouaille. Some of Charles' women played their part in the affairs of state, colouring the way the nation was run.

Don Jordan and Michael Walsh take us inside Charles' palace, where we will meet court favourites, amusing confidants, advisors jockeying for political power, mistresses past and present as well as key figures in his inner circle such as his 'pimpmasters' and his personal pox doctor.

The astonishing private life of Charles II reveals much about the man he was and why he lived and ruled as he did. The King's Bed tells the compelling story of a king ruled by his passion.


Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Stalina by Rosemary Sullivan
UK Release Date: March 30, 2015
US Release Date: March 31, 2015

Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy – the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.

As she gradually learned about the extent of her father’s brutality after his death, Svetlana could no longer keep quiet and in 1967 shocked the world by defecting to the United States – leaving her two children behind. But although she was never a part of her father’s regime, she could not escape his legacy. Her life in America was fractured; she moved frequently, married disastrously, shunned other Russian exiles, and ultimately died in poverty in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

With access to KGB, CIA, and Soviet government archives, as well as the close cooperation of Svetlana’s daughter, Rosemary Sullivan pieces together Svetlana’s incredible life in a masterful account of unprecedented intimacy. Epic in scope, it’s a revolutionary biography of a woman doomed to be a political prisoner of her father’s name. Sullivan explores a complicated character in her broader context without ever losing sight of her powerfully human story, in the process opening a closed, brutal world that continues to fascinate us.


The Anatomist, the Barber-Surgeon, and the King: How the Accidental Death of Henry II of France Changed the World by Seymour I. Schwartz
Release Date: April 14, 2015

This unique study examines a critical juncture in the history of the Renaissance brought about by a freak accident. Combining both a history of sixteenth-century medicine and European politics, the author describes the far-reaching effects of the death of King Henry II of France (1519-1559). Grievously wounded by an accidental blow to the head suffered during a mock jousting competition, the king lingered for weeks before expiring. Even the ministrations of Europe’s two most renowned physicians—Andreas Vesalius and Ambroise Paré—could not prevent his demise. As the author shows, the death of Henry II created a power vacuum, and the subsequent chain of events had significant effects on the balance of power in Europe.

A noted surgeon, the author also provides many insights into the state of medicine in this era—a time when the practice of surgery and knowledge of human anatomy were being transformed. Readers learn how Vesalius’s ingenious studies of anatomy advanced the understanding of human body functions. And Paré’s experience with battlefield wounds led to more humane and effective treatments of the injured.

This colorful, lively narrative combines engrossing details about politics, history, and medicine during an important period at the end of the Renaissance.


Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year by Michael Farquhar
Release Date: April 21, 2015

National Geographic and author Michael Farquhar uncover an instance of bad luck, epic misfortune, and unadulterated mayhem tied to every day of the year. From Caligula's blood-soaked end to hotelier Steve Wynn's unfortunate run-in with a priceless Picasso, these 365 tales of misery include lost fortunes (like the would-be Apple investor who pulled out in 1977 and missed out on a $30 billion-dollar windfall), romance gone wrong (like the 16th-century Shah who experimented with an early form of Viagra with empire-changing results), and truly bizarre moments (like the Great Molasses Flood of 1919).

Think you’re having a bad day? Trust us, it gets worse.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Kindle Deals

Click the cover to view and buy the book in the Kindle store. While I only post links to the Kindle store, often times you can find the same titles on sale at other stores.

Disclaimer: Ebook prices are subject to change anytime. I can only promise they are under a certain price at the time I post them.

US Kindle Deals, fiction under $5, non-fiction under $6:

               


UK Kindle Deals, fiction under £3, non-fiction under £4:

Other Harry Sidebottom books are on sale too.

           

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Upcoming Releases in 2015

At the Water's Edge: A Novel by Sara Gruen
Release Date: June 2, 2015

In this new novel from the author of Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen again demonstrates her talent for creating spellbinding period pieces. In At the Water’s Edge, she tells the gripping and poignant story of a privileged young woman’s moral and sexual awakening as she experiences the devastations of World War II in a Scottish Highland village.

Madeline Hyde, a young socialite from Philadelphia, reluctantly follows her husband and their best friend to the tiny village of Drumnadrochit in search of the Loch Ness monster—at the same time that a very real monster, Hitler, wages war against the Allied Forces. Despite German warplanes flying overhead and scarce food rations (and even scarcer stockings), what Maddie discovers—about the larger world and about herself—through the unlikely friendships she develops with the villagers, opens her eyes not only to the dark forces that exist around her but to the beauty and surprising possibilities as well.


Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule by Jennifer Chiaverini
Release Date: March 3, 2015

In 1844, Missouri belle Julia Dent met dazzling horseman Lieutenant Ulysses S Grant. Four years passed before their parents permitted them to wed, and the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend the ceremony.

Since childhood, Julia owned as a slave another Julia, known as Jule. Jule guarded her mistress’s closely held twin secrets: She had perilously poor vision but was gifted with prophetic sight. So it was that Jule became Julia’s eyes to the world.

And what a world it was, marked by gathering clouds of war. The Grants vowed never to be separated, but as Ulysses rose through the ranks—becoming general in chief of the Union Army—so did the stakes of their pact. During the war, Julia would travel, often in the company of Jule and the four Grant children, facing unreliable transportation and certain danger to be at her husband’s side.

Yet Julia and Jule saw two different wars. While Julia spoke out for women—Union and Confederate—she continued to hold Jule as a slave behind Union lines. Upon the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jule claimed her freedom and rose to prominence as a businesswoman in her own right, taking the honorary title Madame. The two women’s paths continued to cross throughout the Grants’ White House years in Washington, DC, and later in New York City, the site of Grant’s Tomb.


The Anchoress: A Novel by Robyn Cadwallader
Release Date: May 12, 2015

A startling and strange debut novel about a young girl’s desperate choice to isolate herself from the world

England, 1255: Sarah is only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman much like Saint Hildegard of Bingen, shut away in a small cell, measuring seven by nine paces, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires, and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer. But it soon becomes clear that even the thick, unforgiving walls of her cell cannot keep the outside world away, and Sarah’s body and soul are still in great danger.

Robyn Cadwallader’s powerful debut novel tells an absorbing, entirely human, and compulsively readable story of faith, desire, shame, fear, and the very human need for connection and touch. Compelling, evocative, and haunting, The Anchoress is both quietly heartbreaking and thrillingly unpredictable.


Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral by Mary Doria Russell
Release Date: March 3, 2015

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands. . . .

That was America in 1881.

All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.


The Pretender’s Lady: A Novel by Alan Gold
Release Date: July 7, 2015

In the page-turning popular genre trail-blazed by Antonia Fraser and Phillippa Gregory, The Pretender’s Lady, Alan Gold’s meticulously researched novel, accurately opens history’s pages on a peerless woman who helped change the course of history and whose legend lives on in Scotland today—Flora MacDonald.

She was the most famous Scotswoman of her day, single handedly saving Bonnie Prince Charlie. This is her fictionalized life story—her relations with the Prince, her flight to America, Ben Franklin’s influence, and her return to Britain to lobby for peace

But what’s hidden from history, revealed now for the first time in Gold’s dazzling new work of fiction, is the result of Flora’s and Charlie’s love: a beautiful and talented boy raised on an American farm. But only she knows his true heritage and his claim to the world’s greatest throne. And only the genius of Ben Franklin understands how to use this naïve boy to change the history of America.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Review: The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty

Royal murder, Bohemian politics, and 17th century medicine come together to form this novel based on a true story. In 1607, the mentally ill natural son of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Julius D'Austria, is banished to a castle in the Bohemian town of Český Krumlov. Meanwhile, plucky yet shy bathmaid Markéta Pichlerová wants nothing more than to escape her fate as a prostitute by following in her father's footsteps to become a barber-surgeon or "bloodletter", a profession she is barred from due to her gender. Their paths come together with disastrous results.

Rich with historical detail, the narrative of this flows beautifully, yet the dialogue was occasionally a little stiff. But the characters are well developed in spite of this and there's so many historical elements that are pulled together to form this story, like the inclusion of the Voynich Manuscript, details about 17th century medicine, and the town of Český Krumlov itself. All of which make it well worth reading.

The first half is a little slow paced so it may not appeal to everyone, but it really picks up in the second half and it's not too long which means it never drags. It is told in third person from multiple points of view, including the bloodletter's daughter but also the bloodletter himself, Rudolf II, his son Julius, a court physician, and other brief, minor roles like Rudolf's brother Matthias. This makes it a more multidimensional and interesting story, giving you an understanding of Bohemia at the time, politically, medically, culturally, etc. It really explores how people at the time approached medicine and mental illness.

Even if you already know the historical events this is based on, it is a thrilling and interesting read. I was a little worried that since I knew what it was based on, it might make the novel a little boring but it definitely wasn't.




Thursday, October 16, 2014

Kindle Deals

Click the cover to view and buy the book in the Kindle store. While I only post links to the Kindle store, often times you can find the same deals at other stores.

Disclaimer: Ebook prices are subject to change anytime. I can only promise they are under a certain price at the time I post them.

US Kindle Deals, fiction under $5, non-fiction under $6:

               


UK Kindle Deals, fiction under £3, non-fiction under £4:

Note: Though only one is listed below, several other Georgette Heyer books are on sale.

               
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