Mailbox Monday



Another Monday, Another Mailbox!! This is a feature where we all share with each other the yummy books that showed up at our doors! WARNING: Mailbox Mondays can lead to extreme envy and GINORMOUS wishlists!!

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page.

I had another good mailbox this past week I am happy to report!  I received a few books from Amazon, one for review and two I picked up at Barnes & Noble because they were on sale.

For review I received The Countess & The King from the mah-va-lous Susan Holloway Scott.  This will be the September feature book on the Historical Fiction Bloggers Round Table and I am SUPER geeked out to read it!  I always love losing myself in one of her books :)

by Susan Holloway Scott

Release Date:  September 7, 2010

SYNOPSIS:  Katherine Sedley lived by her own rules and loved who she pleased- until she became the infamous mistress of King James II...

London, 1675: Born to wealth and privilege, Katherine is introduced to the decadent court of King Charles II, and quickly becomes a favorite from the palace to the bawdy playhouses. She gleefully snubs respectable marriage to become the Duke of York's mistress.

But Katherine's life of carefree pleasure ends when Charles II dies, and her lover becomes King James II. Suddenly she is cast into a tangle of political intrigue, religious dissent, and ever-shifting alliances, where a wrong step can mean treason, exile, or death at the executioner's block. As the risks rise, Katherine is forced to make the most perilous of choices: to remain loyal to the king, or to England.

From Amazon I got the following:

by James Chambers

The tragic story of the doomed romance between Charlotte, heir to the English throne, and Leopold, uncle of Queen Victoria and first King of the Belgians. A story that Jane Austen famously declined to tell, declaring: “I could no more write a romance than an epic poem.”

Charlotte was the only legitimate royal child of her generation, and her death in childbirth resulted in a public outpouring of grief the like of which was not to be seen again until the death of Diana, over 150 years later. Charlotte’s death was followed by an unseemly scramble to produce a substitute heir. Queen Victoria was the product.

James Chambers masterfully demonstrates how the personal and the political inevitably collide in scheming post-Napoleonic Europe, offering a vivid and sympathetic portrait of a couple whose lives are in many ways not their own. From the day she was born, Charlotte won the hearts of her subjects and yet, behind the scenes, she was used, abused, and victimized by rivalries—between her parents; between her father (the Prince Regent, later King George IV) and (Mad) King George III; between her tutors, governesses, and other members of her discordant household; and ultimately between the Whig opposition and the Tory government.

Set in one of the most glamorous eras of British history, against the background of a famously dysfunctional royal family, Charlotte & Leopold: The True Story of The Original People’s Princess is an accessible, moving, funny, and entertaining royal biography with alluring contemporary resonance.

by Jude Morgan

SYNOPSIS:  This beautifully crafted novel brings to life an era famous for its dramatic events—the Plague, the Great fire of London, the Dutch Wars—and notorious for its sexual license and scandal. It was an era in which the King of England became a byword for sensual indulgence—enjoying ardent affairs and nurturing an addiction to witty company, horse racing, and high living, all the while maintaining an iron hold on his throne amid intrigue and violence. The King's Touch tells the story of Charles II from a uniquely enlightening perspective—that of the first–born son he loved above all others, but who would never become his heir.

 
by Desmond Seward
SYNOPSIS:  From 1853 to 1870 Eugenie de Montijo was the world's most powerful woman. Empress of the French, she shared the Second Empire with her husband, Napoleon III, so impressing the Prussian Chancellor Bismarck that he called her 'the only man in Paris'. In the first biography of her for many years, Desmond Seward recreates the nerve-racking politics and glittering social world of her empire, and gives an often startling reassessment of an extraordinary life that began in a tent at Granada during an earthquake. 

This biography charts the dramatic rise and fall of the Second Empire and of the fascinating woman at its heart. It will be a captivating read for anyone interested in the history of France or in women's history.

by Edith Pargeter

SYNOPSIS:  A trilogy of novels set in twelfth-century England and Wales--The Heaven Tree, The Green Branch, and The Scarlet Seed--chronicles the adventures of master stone carver Harry Talvace; Ralf Isambard, Lord of Parfois; and their two sons. 








And these final two I picked up today at Barnes & Noble.  They are both hardcover and on sale for $6 each!  Sweet!

by Frank Delaney

SYNOPSIS:  “My wooing began in passion, was defined by violence and circumscribed by land; all these elements molded my soul.” So writes Charles O’Brien, the unforgettable hero of bestselling author Frank Delaney’s extraordinary new novel–a sweeping epic of obsession, profound devotion, and compelling history involving a turbulent era that would shape modern Ireland.

Born into a respected Irish-Anglo family in 1860, Charles loves his native land and its long-suffering but irrepressible people. As a healer, he travels the countryside dispensing traditional cures while soaking up stories and legends of bygone times–and witnessing the painful, often violent birth of land-reform measures destined to lead to Irish independence.

At the age of forty, summoned to Paris to treat his dying countryman–the infamous Oscar Wilde–Charles experiences the fateful moment of his life. In a chance encounter with a beautiful and determined young Englishwoman, eighteen-year-old April Burke, he is instantly and passionately smitten–but callously rejected. Vowing to improve himself, Charles returns to Ireland, where he undertakes the preservation of the great and abandoned estate of Tipperary, in whose shadow he has lived his whole life–and which, he discovers, may belong to April and her father.

As Charles pursues his obsession, he writes the “History” of his own life and country. While doing so, he meets the great figures of the day, including Charles Parnell, William Butler Yeats, and George Bernard Shaw. And he also falls victim to less well-known characters–who prove far more dangerous. Tipperary also features a second “historian:” a present-day commentator, a retired and obscure history teacher who suddenly discovers that he has much at stake in the telling of Charles’s story.

In this gloriously absorbing and utterly satisfying novel, a man’s passion for the woman he loves is twinned with his country’s emergence as a nation. With storytelling as sweeping and dramatic as the land itself, myth, fact, and fiction are all woven together with the power of the great nineteenth-century novelists. Tipperary once again proves Frank Delaney’s unrivaled mastery at bringing Irish history to life. 

by Tracy Chevalier

SYNOPSIS:  The wonderful new novel from the much loved author of 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' and 'Falling Angels'. Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbors and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier's new novel 'Burning Bright' sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a completely new life may soften. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbor, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey inspires one of Blake's most entrancing works. Georgian London is recreated as vividly in Burning Bright as 17th-century Delft was in Tracy Chevalier's bestselling masterpiece, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

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17 comments:

  1. I LOVE Susan Holloway Scott! Come on, September!

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  2. What a wonderful selection of books. We have been on vacation, so I will have a bunch waiting for me when I get home. I have also been buying books on this trip and have way too many. They are just too hard to pass up.

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  3. Every one of those books sound so good. There is so much great historical fiction getting pumped out. I look forward to your reviews!

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  4. All of these sound wonderful! And congratulations on scoring the Delaney and the Chevalier at such a good price!! I am loving historical fiction a lot right now and think it's fast becoming one of my favorite genres!!

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  5. Well it looks like you will be busy for quite a while! Enjoy your new books.

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  6. I picked up 'Between Two Queens' by Kate Emerson (new author for me) and 'The Tudor Queens of England' by David Loades. Super excited! I am going to look for a few that you posted this week, they seem right up my alley.

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  7. Ooh, your mailbox looks good, as always. I really can NOT wait for Susan Holloway Scott's novel...I love her work.

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  8. A great assortment of royal books! I haven't read anything by SHS yet, though she is on the list!
    The one by Jude Morgan looks great!
    Enjoy your books.
    My mailbox is up as well.

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  9. A great assortment of royal books! I haven't read anything by SHS yet, though she is on the list!
    The one by Jude Morgan looks great!
    Enjoy your books.
    My mailbox is up as well.

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  10. Wow, what a great group of books! "Burning Bright" is on my wishlist, but I'm thinking of adding "Tipperary", too!

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  11. As always you have an enviable mailbox. I want to read the Chevalier book.

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  12. These all look great! I will be adding Eugenie and The King's Touch to my WL :)

    I've had Burning Bright on my shelf awhile but haven't read it yet.

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  13. They all look so yummy. I know the Chevalier would be top on my to read pile. I love her writing. Enjoy all your treats!

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  14. Amy, many thanks again for including "The Countess and the King" in your Monday mailbox! You must get the best mail in your neighborhood (though your poor mail carrier may not agree as he/she staggers up to your door with yet another padded envelope from NYC.)

    I'm delighted to see "The King's Touch" by Jude Morgan among the other goodies. This book is a few years old, but it never was widely released in this country. I hope this means it will finally get the audience it deserves. It's a beautifully written book, unbelievably poignant even if you already know the ending that history wrote for the Duke of Monmouth.

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  15. I am so jealous that you have the Susan Holloway Scott book already! I am hanging out to read that one!

    I am kind of surprising myself to say that I hope to get the Heaven Tree trilogy too. I didn't think I would say that after the first part of The Brothers Gwynedd but after the second part I am beginning to see what the fuss is about.

    I was disappointed with Burning Bright when I read it.

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  16. Whoo, what a great mailbox! For some reason, I'm really attracted to the cover of The Heaven Tree Trilogy. Enjoy your books!

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  17. The Frank Delaney book sounds really good. I just loved Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show. Happy reading!

    --Anna

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