Hot HF~July

July  2011Releases

7.1.2011 Bath Tangle, Georgette Heyer

"Lady Serena Carlow is an acknowledged beauty, but she's got a temper as fiery as her head of red hair. When her father dies unexpectedly, Serena discovers to her horror that she has been left a ward of Ivo Barrasford, marquis of Rotherham, a man whom Serena once jilted and who now has the power to give or withhold his consent to any marriage she might contemplate. With her father's heir eager to take over his inheritance--and Serena's lifelong home--she and her lovely young stepmother, Fanny, decide to move to Bath, where Serena makes an odd new friend and discovers an old love, Major Hector Kirkby. Before long, Serena, Fanny, Kirkby, and Rotherham are entangled in a welter of misunderstood emotions, mistaken engagements, and misdirected love".

7.5.2011 Incognito, Gregory Murphy

"An elegant literary mystery set during the Gilded Age.
New York City, 1911. Representing the widow of a Wall Street financier, lawyer William Dysart travels to a small Long Island town with a generous offer for Miss Sybil Curtis's cottage and five acres of land. But when Sybil refuses to sell, the widow threatens to use her influence with the state to seize the property.

Intrigued by Sybil's defiance and afflicted by a growing affection for her, William develops a desire to help her that becomes an obsession he cannot define, one that tears away the facade of his life, and presents him with truths he's unprepared to face". 

7.5.2011 For The King, Catherine Delors~Paperback

"After First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte survives an assassination attempt, Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, a young man with a bright future and a beautiful mistress, must arrest the assassins before they strike again. But in a city with royalists and revolutionaries alike conspiring to overthrow Bonaparte, Roch's task is near impossible. And when his own father faces the guillotine, Roch has no choice but to trust those most likely to betray him".

7.5.2011 The Borgias: Two Novels in One Volume, Jean Plaidy

"For the first time in one volume, Jean Plaidy’s duet of Borgia novels brings to life the infamous, reckless, and passionate family in an unforgettable historical saga.

Madonna of the Seven Hills:
Fifteenth-century Rome: the Borgia family is on the rise. Lucrezia’s father is named Pope Alexander VI, and he places his daughter and her brothers Cesare, Giovanni, and Goffredo in the jeweled splendor—and scandal—of his court. From the Pope’s affairs with adolescent girls, to Cesare’s dangerous jealousy of anyone who inspires Lucrezia’s affections, to the ominous birth of a child conceived in secret, no Borgia can elude infamy.

Light on Lucrezia:
Some said she was an elegant seductress. Others swore she was an incestuous murderess. She was the most dangerous and sought after woman in all of Rome. Lucrezia Borgia’s young life has been colored by violence and betrayal. Now, married for the second time at just eighteen she hopes for happiness with her handsome husband Alfonso. But faced with brutal murder, she's soon torn between her love for her husband and her devotion to her brother Cesare… And in the days when the Borgias ruled Italy, no one was safe from the long arm of their power. Not even Lucrezia".

7.5.2011 Courting Her Highness: The Story of Queen Anne, Jean Plaidy

"A private battle rages at court for the affections of a childless queen, who must soon name her successor--and thus determine the future of the British Empire.

It is the beginning of the eighteenth century and William of Orange is dying. Soon Anne is crowned queen, but to court insiders, the name of the imminent sovereign is Sarah Churchill. Beautiful, outspoken Sarah has bewitched Anne and believes she is invincible--until she installs her poor cousin Abigail Hill into court as royal chambermaid.

Plain Abigail seems the least likely challenger to Sarah’s place in her highness’s affections, but challenge it she does, in stealthy yet formidable ways. While Anne engages in her private tug-of-war, the nation is obsessed with another, more public battle: succession. Anne is sickly and childless, the last of the Stuart line.

This final novel of the Stuarts from Jean Plaidy weaves larger-than-life characters through a dark maze of intrigue, love, and destruction, with nothing less than the future of the British Empire at stake".

 7.7.2011 The King's Witch, Cecelia Holland

"Of the women in King Richard's life, she is the least known-and the most powerful.

During the Third Crusade, deaths from fever and starvation are common, but King Richard the Lion-Hearted has a secret ally against these impassable enemies-a mysterious healer by the name of Edythe.

She was sent to him by his mother Eleanor, and Richard first assumes that Edythe is a spy. But when her medical knowledge saves his life, she becomes an indispensable member of his camp-even as his loyal soldiers, suspicious of her talent for warding off death, call her a witch".

7.12.2011 Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, John Julius Norwich Non-Fiction

"A SWEEPING CHRONICLE OF ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT—AND CONTROVERSIAL—INSTITUTIONS IN HISTORY

With the papacy embattled in recent years, it is essential to have the perspective of one of the world’s most accomplished historians. In Absolute Monarchs, John Julius Norwich captures nearly two thousand years of inspiration and devotion, intrigue and scandal. The men (and maybe one woman) who have held this position of infallible power over millions have ranged from heroes to rogues, admirably wise to utterly decadent. Norwich, who knew two popes and had private audiences with two others, recounts in riveting detail the histories of the most significant popes and what they meant politically, culturally, and socially to Rome and to the world.

Norwich presents such brave popes as Innocent I, who in the fifth century successfully negotiated with Alaric the Goth, an invader civil authorities could not defeat, and Leo I, who two decades later tamed (and perhaps paid off) Attila the Hun. Here, too, are the scandalous figures: Pope Joan, the mythic woman said (without any substantiation) to have been elected in 855, and the infamous “pornocracy,” the five libertines who were descendants or lovers of Marozia, debauched daughter of one of Rome’s most powerful families.

Absolute Monarchs brilliantly portrays reformers such as Pope Paul III, “the greatest pontiff of the sixteenth century,” who reinterpreted the Church’s teaching and discipline, and John XXIII, who in five short years starting in 1958 “opened up the church to the twentieth century,” instituting reforms that led to Vatican II. Norwich brings the story to the present day with Benedict XVI, who is coping with a global priest sex scandal.

Epic and compelling, Absolute Monarchs is the astonishing story of some of history’s most revered and reviled figures, men who still cast light and shadows on the Vatican and the world today".

7.14.2011  Silence in the Mist, Leah Marie Brown

"After bloodthirsty revolutionaries murder her family, Françoise Despres vows to avenge their deaths and fight the violent mob destroying her beloved France. Becoming a spy for the counter-revolutionary cause, she knows great success, silently slipping between the shadows to carry secret messages that thwart her foes. But she never expected to come up against Sebastien de Brézé, a daring, clever cavalry officer in the revolutionary army and master spy hunter".

7.26.2011 Madame Bovary's Daughter: A Novel, Linda Urbach

"Picking up after the shattering end of Gustave Flaubert’s classic, Madame Bovary, this beguiling novel imagines an answer to the question Whatever happened to Emma Bovary’s orphaned daughter?

One year after her mother’s suicide and just one day after her father’s brokenhearted demise, twelve-year-old Berthe Bovary is sent to live on her grandmother’s impoverished farm. Amid the beauty of the French countryside, Berthe models for the painter Jean-François Millet, but fate has more in store for her than a quiet life of simple pleasures. Berthe’s determination to rise above her mother’s scandalous past will take her from the dangerous cotton mills of Lille to a convent in Rouen to the wealth and glamour of nineteenth-century Paris. There, as an apprentice to famed fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth, Berthe is ushered into the high society of which she once only dreamed. But even as the praise for her couture gowns steadily rises, she still yearns for the one thing her mother never had: the love of someone she loves in return.

Brilliantly integrating one of classic literature’s fictional creations with real historical figures, Madame Bovary’s Daughter is an uncommon coming-of-age tale, a splendid excursionn through the rags and the riches of French fashion, and a sweeping novel of poverty and wealth, passion and revenge".

7.26.2011 The Angel of Blythe Hall: A Historical Novel, Darci Hannah 

"In a tumultuous battle, a beautiful and determined noblewoman claims her birthright while awakening great danger, exquisite passion, and the mystical realm in this enchanting novel of suspense and adventure.

Prepared to lay claim to her family’s magnificent ancestral fortress in the Scottish border country, Lady Isabeau Blythe is determined to restore her noble family’s good name and reclaim these stunning, strife-torn lands. But even the headstrong Isabeau’s firm sense of reality is shaken by the inexplicable allure of Blythe Hall, an entrancing castle haunted by dark secrets—and otherworldly creatures of light and desire.

Isabeau’s arrival sets in motion an epic power struggle: a ferocious fight for Scotland, her family, and her heart. Taunted and tempted by a sinister rogue knight, Sir George, who covets her land and her love, and trapped in the madness of her charismatic brother, Julius, who seeks power of unearthly origin, Isabeau can only surrender to the wild visions of the remarkable man she inexplicably longs for. With a bloodthirsty army amassing outside her gates, Isabeau summons help from Gabriel, the elusive man of her dreams. But does this alluring man possess the secrets of the castle and her destiny"? 
June 2011 Releases
The Lady of Bolton Hill, Elizabeth Camden
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer
Queen of the Summer Stars: Book Two of the Guinevere Trilogy,, Persia Woolley
The Fallen Kings (Morland Dynasty), Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Britain's Royal Heritage: An A to Z of the Monarchy, Mark Alexander Non-Fiction
The Borgia Betrayal: A Novel (Poisoner Mysteries), Sara Poole
The Red Queen: A Novel, Philippa Gregory Paperback
Fire on Dark Water, Wendy K. Perriman
Napoleon and the Rebel: A Story of Brotherhood, Passion, and Power, Marcello Simonetta and Noga Arikha Non-fiction
The Cecils: Privilege and power behind the throne, David Loades Non-Fiction
Revenger: A Novel of Tudor Intrigue,, Rory Clements
The Dark Enquiry (A Lady Julia Grey Novel), Deanna Raybourn
Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais, Suzanne Fagence Cooper
Aristocrats: Power, Grace, and Decadence: Britain's Great Ruling Classes from 1066 to the Present, Lawrence James Non-Fiction
The Ring and the Crown: A History of Royal Weddings 1066-2011, Alison Weir, Kate Williams, Sarah Gristwood and Tracy Borman Non-fiction
Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV, Karleen Koen
The Tudor Throne, Brandy Purdy
George II: King and Elector (The English Monarchs Series) by Andrew C. Thompson Non-Fiction
Katherine Parr: Complete Works and Correspondence by Katherine Parr and Janel