Hi Folks.
Joanna here with a round up of the great reads that got us through a blustery cold February.
My own wonderful read was Deborah Harkness' A Discovery of Witches, Book One in the All Soul's Trilogy. The elements of this story -- withces and vampires living among us, ancient manuscripts, conspiracies, ancient secrets -- are familiar. They seem almost hackneyed. What lifts this book above the ordinary is Harkness' beautiful writing.
And ... well ... the first book of the trilogy is set mostly in Oxford. I'm a sucker for Oxford.
I've already acquired Book Two in the trilogy, Shadow of Night, and look forward to settling down in a comfy chair with it. Maybe when we get this next wave of snow that's coming in.
Cara/Andrea saying:
I’m very interested in the Edwardian era, so when I read the great reviews for The Heir Apparent, Jane Ridley’s new biography of “Bertie,” King Edward VII, I immediately grabbed it.
It’s an absolutely fascinating read. Ridley had access to extensive Royal archives and private family correspondence—and the picture painted of Queen Victoria, Albert and their extensive brood and relatives is . . .well, I’m not quite sure of the adjective to use. Chilling might be one of them. Talk about a dysfunctional family! It’s a wonder poor Bertie wasn’t committed to Bedlam. He actually comes off as a very sympathetic character, far brighter and more interested in the welfare of his country than he is given credit for.
On the other hand, the Queen and her consort come across as cold, manipulative people who had absolutely no emotional interest in their children. It also gives a wonderful look at the social whirl of the Victorian age, with descriptions of the house parties, the foreign travel, the royalty of Europe. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the time period.
On a lighter note, I’m reading an ARC of our own Anne Gracie’s upcoming book, The Winter Bride.
Damaris m
ust overcome a dark secret from her past to find any way of finding happiness with the rakish Freddy Monkton-Coombes . . . where I live we’ve been hit with freezing cold and heavy snowstorms, so I’ll simply say that reading their story brought a spark of warmth and light to my winter.
Pat Rice:
I’m bogged down in edits and revisions and haven’t had time to do much reading. But I’ve been fortunate to acquire ARCs from the wenches and elsewhere, so in my few spare minutes, I’ve eagerly read Anne Gracie’s The Winter Bride, started on Cara Elliott’s Passionately Yours, and finished Leah Cutter’s Popcorn Thief. 
The Winter Bride a lovable laughing rake hiding a broken heart and a very proper minister’s daughter as the tortured heroine.
(Cara Elliott chimes in to say, "No surprise that I’m loving it! Anne crafts such interestingly original and complex characters, and with this second story about the Chance “sisters”, she’s woven yet another lovely tale that shows family is a bond made not just of blood, but of love. And love is always at the heart of Anne’s stories.)
Back to Pat -- Passionately Yours is another of Cara’s delightful Regencies based on the eccentric Sloane sisters, or the Hellions of High Street.
And Leah’s Popcorn Thief is a wonderful rural Southern magic story with a hero who loves popcorn better than anything.
There’s a sweet romance threading through the magical suspense as a complete change of pace.
Susan says:
Let's see what's piled up here beside my reading chair . . . fiction, non-fiction, Pottery Barn catalogs, pens and notebooks . . . I'm reading/browsing/researching medieval history again, so I'm currently immersed in a stack of excellent academic tomes on the Norman Conquest and medieval France and taking notes like mad.
Fiction-wise, I've been reading some mysteries. I just finished The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, Alan Bradley's sixth mystery featuring the intrepid, impish, wonderful Flavia de Luce. This sixth book not only solves a murder, but wraps up some earlier family mysteries in the series while opening the door to new sleuthing possibilities for Flavia. While this is the planned series end,
I hope the author decides to continue this great series. Flavia is part Pippi Longstocking, part Sherlock--and I love Jayne Entwistle's perfect narrations of the books on audio CD too (Jayne was 
a guest here at Wenches last year). Good news -- Bradley's superb mysteries are now in development for a TV series. Yaroo, as Flavia would say!
I also read the first in the Rex Graves mysteries, Christmas Is Murder, by C. S. Challinor -- a sort of locked-room set up with a group of people stranded by a snowstorm in an English bed and breakfast. The book was excellent, quick-witted and consistently interesting, featuring a Scottish lawyer who finds himself dealing with one mysterious murder after another in a group that's seemingly innocent. I've got the next two books in the series waiting in the reading stack. And since I was stuck in the house looking at two feet of snow when I finished this last week, it was just the thing!
Anne here.
Mostly I've been reading books for the RWA RITA competition, which of course I can't discuss, and in between I've done a bit of rereading of old favorites, like Jayne Ann Krentz's Arcane Society stories.
I've also been training myself to read on my new e-reader. It's the first one I've owned and I'm cautiously deciding to like it. I've downloaded a few freebie reads by authors I know or have heard of, but also have bought a few out of print titles of old favorites, or books I never read but meant to.
One of those was Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Lady be Good, which I enjoyed 
enormously.
In another writers' discussion, Mary Jo was talking about the clever plotting/writing in Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree. Mary Stewart is an old favorite of mine, but it had been years since I'd read The Ivy Tree, and long before I became a writer, so I bought it on my e-reader and was soon deep in Mary Stewart world. Wonderful story and very clever plotting, as Mary Jo had said. I suspect it's going to start me on another Mary Stewart rereading glom.
Mary Jo says:
I'm a fan of science fiction romance, where believable science, worldbuilding, adventure, and romance are all balanced together. Catherine Asaro and Linnea Sinclair are both terrific at this, and now I've found a new author: Jael Wye. I just read her first book, Ice Red, and not only does it have the science fiction, the adventure, and the romance, but it cleverly incorporates the Snow White myth--complete with toxic apple. <G> The blurb tag line reads:
Mirror, mirror, full of stars,
Who will claim the throne of Mars?
The story is set in a future Mars, with good guys and bad guys and a great lead couple. According to her website, this is the first in her Once Upon a Red Planet series, with more to come in the not too distant future. If science fiction romance is your cuppa, you might enjoy Jael Wye as much as I did.
Nicola:
There's been something of a contrast in my reading this month. I've just started researching my new book so I've been delving deeply into the 17th century. I'm reading the letters of Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen, covering the period 1632 - 1642.
Elizabeth, the daughter of King James I, was an energetic letter writer and her letters shed so much light on the politics and culture of the time, but more importantly to me, they give little details of her life, her family, her clothes, her entertainments; everything that illuminates what life was really like and gives it substance and colour. In addition, there's nothing like reading people's letters to "hear" their voice and Elizabeth's personality comes over loud and clear. At one point she writes: "This pen is so awful it's driving me mad!" I guess we can all relate to that!
In contrast I also read Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell. It's a dual time period story set in London in the early 1990s and also in the 1920s. The more modern era was very familiar to me and it felt quite nostalgic to read about the days before the internet and mobile phones. The 1920s part was utterly fascinating. it's not an era I was very familiar with and she portrayed the daring social innovations and hectic partying of bohemian London beautifully. All this wrapped up in a story of a family mystery that was completely engaging. A lovely book.
And we're going to end up with Jo Beverley and Dorothy Dunnett.
(I love Dunnett.)
Jo says:
Like some other Wenches I've been reading RITA books since I got back from
Spain as well as bits and pieces of research. However, in Spain I enjoyed the
audio book of one of my favourite novels, Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings.
I've had this for a while, but couldn't get into it because of the accent the
reader gave Lymond, the central character; I never hear him with a Scottish
accent when I'm reading. But I persisted in small bites and eventually the
story gripped me as it always does and I enjoyed it tremendously.
I have to give the reader credit for coming up with mostly distinctive voices
for a huge range of characters from very young to old, but the choices for
Lymond and his brother were odd. Richard is the solid, conventional one, well
rooted in Scotland, and yet he got the more English, and therefore in context
more cosmopolitan voice, whilst Lymond, the sophisticated polyglot wanderer got
the Scots. Ah well.
So, what have you been reading this month that amused you, excited you, surprised you, delighted you ...?
