How to Woo a Wallflower
Romancing the Rules
by Christy Carlyle
Print List Price: $6.99
Digital Sale Price: $1.99
Series: Romancing the Rules (Book 3)
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Avon Impulse (December 26, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062572407
ISBN-13: 978-0062572400
File Size: 783 KB
Print Length: 336 pages
Publisher: Avon Impulse (November 14, 2017)
Publication Date: November 14, 2017
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ASIN: B01NGZK68N
Print List Price: $6.99
$1.99 For a Limited Time at:
About the Book:
An Unconventional Wallflower…
Clarissa Ruthven was born to be a proper lady, but she’s never wanted to live up to the expectations her late father set. Determined to use her inheritance to help the less fortunate women of London, she’s devastated to learn that she won’t be inheriting anything until she marries, a fate she has no interest in. Unwilling to let go of her plans, Clary works at Ruthven Publishing for Gabriel Adamson, a man who’s always hated her. She’s always returned the feeling, but as she begins to turn her family’s publishing company upside down, she finds herself unable to forget her handsome boss.
Never Follows the Rules…
Gabriel Adamson believes in order. He certainly doesn’t believe Clary should be sticking her nose in the publishing company, and she definitely has no business invading his every thought. But Gabe soon finds he can’t resist Clary’s sense of freedom or her passionate kisses and he starts to crave everything she’s willing to give him.
Especially When It Comes to Love…
When Gabe’s dark past comes back to haunt him, he’ll do anything to make sure that Clary isn’t hurt…even if it means giving up the only woman he’s ever loved.
My Thoughts:
This is the first book I have read in this series, although I have read other books by Christy Carlyle. I have recently purchased the other two books in the series and intend to read them soon. Although it is the third book in this series, I feel it reads well as a standalone title.
Gabriel Adamson has made his previously hectic life one of order. He has taken a new name and left behind the young boy who grew up in the slums of Whitechapel.
Revisiting his past is something he wants no part of but he has found it necessary.
Imagine his shock when he runs into one of the last people he would imagine to find there.
Clarissa Ruthven is determined to use her inheritance to help the unfortunate women of Whitechapel. She spends her time supporting a school there for girls who may otherwise become lost in this slum.
Gabriel is drawn to Clary and she to him, but this is a relationship that can not be.
Will their mutual attraction lead to their own happily ever after or will Gabriel’s past be their undoing?
I gave this book 4.5 of 5.0 stars for storyline and characterization and a sensual rating of 3.5 of 5.0 flames.
Sparks fly when these two give in to their attraction.
I received a complimentary digital ARC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss to read and review. This in no way affected my opinion of this book which I read and reviewed voluntarily.
The Keep
Giving Hope to Those Who Had None
by Sherry Bult & Silver Lady
File Size: 3185 KB
Print Length: 357 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publication Date: April 10, 2017
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B06Y5Y1VRG
Digital List Price: $0.99
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or Read FREE With KindleUnlimited
Publisher’s Description:
It’s 1862, during the reign of Queen Victoria in England. Lady Patricia Spencer of London inherits the family fortune–which includes a Keep in Scotland, a mysterious medallion that can bring hope of a better life to so many if put into the right hands. Lady Patricia is thrown into a world of secrets, greed, cruelty, danger,travel and love–though finding love was not part of the plan. The force that drew them together was seen by everyone but them. Will she honor her grandmother’s legacy to make her wealth count? Will she give hope to those who have none–at her own great expense?
The Last Tudor
The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels
by Philippa Gregory
File Size: 17012 KB
Print Length: 529 pages
Publisher: Touchstone (August 8, 2017)
Publication Date: August 8, 2017
Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
Language: English
ASIN: B01MQSQ3NT
Suggested Print List Price: $27.99
E-Book Currently $1.99 at:
Publisher’s Description:
New York Times Bestseller
The latest novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory features one of the most famous girls in history, Lady Jane Grey, and her two sisters, each of whom dared to defy her queen.
‘How long do you have?’ I force a laugh.
‘Not long,’ he says very quietly. ‘They have confirmed your sentence of death. I am so sorry. You are to be beheaded tomorrow. We don’t have long at all.’
Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. Using her position as cousin to the deceased king, her father and his conspirators put her on the throne ahead of the king’s half-sister Mary, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her crown and locked Jane in the Tower. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block. There Jane turned her father’s greedy, failed grab for power into her own brave and tragic martyrdom.
‘Learn you to die’ is the advice that Jane gives in a letter to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying. She intends to enjoy her beauty and her youth and find love. But her lineage makes her a threat to the insecure and infertile Queen Mary and, when Mary dies, to her sister Queen Elizabeth, who will never allow Katherine to marry and produce a potential royal heir before she does. So when Katherine’s secret marriage is revealed by her pregnancy, she too must go to the Tower.
‘Farewell, my sister,’ writes Katherine to the youngest Grey sister, Mary. A beautiful dwarf, disregarded by the court, Mary finds it easy to keep secrets, especially her own, while avoiding Elizabeth’s suspicious glare. After watching her sisters defy the queen, Mary is aware of her own perilous position as a possible heir to the throne. But she is determined to command her own destiny and be the last Tudor to risk her life in matching wits with her ruthless and unforgiving cousin Elizabeth.
The Last Tudor was first released on 8th August, 2017. It is out in paperback in the UK and Ireland on 8th February 2018, in the USA and Canada on 20th February 2018, and in Australia and New Zealand in April 2018.
Behind the Book:
A Note From The Author:
Released in 2017:
This has been a journey of discovery for me into the lives and characters of the Grey girls. I knew of Jane before I started research but I knew next to nothing about her sisters and it was a lucky guess that there was more behind the sentimental portrait of Jane that took me to the stories of the three of them. I struggled for a title until I had finished the book and then I chose this ambiguous one. Mary is the last Tudor of the Brandon branch – a fascinating and unknown character to end such a famous line – but Elizabeth is the last ruling Tudor, the throne inherited by a Stuart. She could have named Katherine as an heir and put a Tudor/Seymour boy on the throne of England and broken the jinx on Tudor male heirs. But her rivalry and paranoia was too much for her. The stories of the Grey girls show the enterprise and courage of young Elizabethan women who defied two queens, to make their own lives. Jane chose death rather than deny her faith, and her sisters conspired against the throne, pursuing their own loves and ambitions and risking their sister’s fate: execution for treason. This is the darkest portrait I have ever seen of Elizabeth – I have responded only to the facts of her treatment of her cousins, who as kinswomen and heirs should have been under her protection but found themselves at the centre of her fears.
The book opens in 1550:
England’s king, Edward VI, the Protestant son of Jane Seymour and Henry VIII, is not yet 18 years old. The country is ruled by a council of men who jostled for control of the young king. Edward has no male heir, and does not favour his two half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. When Edward’s health starts to deteriorate the race is on to secure an heir and the council looks to Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Mary Tudor Queen of France.
About The Author:
Born in Kenya in 1954, Philippa Gregory moved to England with her family and was educated in Bristol and at the National Council for the Training of Journalists course in Cardiff. She worked as a senior reporter on the Portsmouth News, and as a journalist and producer for BBC Radio.
Philippa obtained a BA degree in History at the University of Sussex in Brighton and a PhD at Edinburgh University in 18th-century literature. Her first novel, Wideacre, was written as she completed her PhD and became an instant worldwide bestseller. On its publication, she became a full-time writer.
Wideacre was followed by a haunting sequel, The Favoured Child, and the delightful happy ending of the trilogy: Meridon. This novel was listed in Feminist Book Fortnight and for the Romantic Novel of the Year at the same time.
Her next book was The Wise Woman, a dazzling, disturbing novel of dark powers and desires set against the rich tapestry of the Reformation. Then came Fallen Skies, an evocative realistic story set after the First World War. Her novel A Respectable Trade took her back to the 18th century where her knowledge of the slave trade and her home town of Bristol explored the human cost of slavery. Gregory adapted her book for a highly acclaimed BBC television production which won the prize for drama from the Commission for Racial Equality and was shortlisted for a BAFTA for the screenplay.
Next came Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth, based on the true-life story of father and son both named John Tradescant working in the upheaval of the English Civil War. In these works Gregory pioneered the genre which has become her own: fictional biography, the true story of a real person brought to life with research and verve.
The jewel in the crown of this new style was undoubtedly The Other Boleyn Girl, a runaway bestseller which stormed the US market and then went worldwide telling the story of the little-known sister to Anne Boleyn. Now published globally, this classic historical novel won the Parker Pen Novel of the Year award 2002 and the Romantic Times fictional biography award. The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted for the BBC as a single television drama and by Sony as a major motion picture starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn and Eric Bana as Henry VIII.
After adding five more novels to her Tudor Court series including The Constant Princess and The Queen’s Fool, two of her best-loved works, Philippa moved back in time to write about the family that preceded the Tudors, the Plantagenets. Her bestselling six-book Cousins’ War series tells the story of the bloody struggle for the throne in the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of the women behind the scenes. The White Queen, The Red Queen and The Kingmaker’s Daughter were adapted by the BBC and Starz in 2013 as the hugely popular TV miniseries The White Queen.
Having completed The Cousins’ War series with The King’s Curse, Philippa has come full circle back to the Tudor court. Her latest novel is about Margaret Tudor, the older sister of Henry VIII: Three Sisters, Three Queens. Her other work in progress is the young adult series The Order of Darkness, set in medieval Italy after the fall of Constantinople, feared at the time to be a sign of the end of the world.
A regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, with short stories, features and reviews, Philippa is also a frequent broadcaster, a regular contestant on Round Britain Quiz for BBC Radio 4 and the Tudor expert for Channel 4’s Time Team. As well as her extensive array of historical novels she has written modern novels, children’s books, a collection of short stories, and a non-fiction book with David Baldwin and Michael Jones: The Women of the Cousins’ War.
She lives in the North of England with her family and in addition to interests that include riding, walking, skiing and gardening (an interest born from research into the Tradescant family for her novel Virgin Earth) she also runs a small charity building wells in school gardens in The Gambia.
On this day in history – February 8th, 1587
©Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1587, color plate from ‘Pictures of English History’ published by George Routledge & Sons, 1850 (© The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Once the ruler of Scotland, Mary Stuart was forcibly removed from power, lost a battle to regain it, and after being convicted of a plot to assassinate England’s Queen Elizabeth I, is beheaded at age 44.
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