Archive for 'Tudor-England'
Dear Mrs. Riley,
 As I look back on the books of yours that I’ve read, two central themes stand out. 1) How helpless women were during most of history and 2) how it’s better for the little people to get out of the way of the powerful ones when those people are throwing their weight around. “The Serpent Garden” is no exception.
Susanna Dallet thinks she’s a happily - well, sort of happily, and she does try with The Good Wyfe’s Book of Manners - married woman. Her childhood nurse Nan knows differently. In fact, almost everyone in London knows that Master Dallet is a swine who’s dallying with a married lady and who only married Susanna for the painting secrets her father taught her. It takes his dead body delivered by his mistress’s husband’s men along with all his creditors descending on Susanna for her to learn the truth. And then what is she going to do? Women aren’t allowed to be master painters and she’s got bills to pay.
And this is where she begins to break the law, get in trouble by becoming involved with the High and Mighty men of the day …
Dear Ms McCabe,
 Happy days, it’s something different. Tudor England with a French heroine and Russian hero. Definitely not the same old Regency we get offered everyday. Thank you Harlequin Historical.
Sinful Alliance starts out wonderfully with a Venetian brothel scene showdown between two spies. One of them knows what’s up but the other hasn’t a clue until it’s almost too late. And then only his deep blue eyes save the day. Marguerite knows it’s a calculated risk to get so close to her enemy but it’s the only way to slip her emerald accented dagger into his heart. When she loses the initiative, it’s almost insulting to her to be trussed up and left alive.
Almost two years later, she’s wondering if her espionage talents ever be used again when finally! she gets the summons that frees her from her boring Court cover as the royal princess’s lady in waiting. Intrigue, danger and excitement await her at the court of the English King Henry VIII. Henry is potentially open to shifting English alliance from Spain, the homeland of his increasingly estranged Queen, to …
Dear Ms. Dunn,
 As I go back to write this letter, I find myself torn about this book. On the one hand, the back blurb does state that it will be about the last years of Katherine Parr, after she was widowed by Henry VIII and married a fourth husband, this time for love. And it is and we do see her quieter life in the countryside far from the intrigues of court. These are momentous times, filled with larger than life people about whom we still wish to read and about whom we still want to know. Yet, we learn little about what Katherine thought of these events. Yes, I know I’m not making much sense here. I want my cake and still want to be able to eat it too.
I like the use of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk as teller of tale. Some things must remain a mystery to readers until later in the book or, due to lack of historical records, might not be able to be guessed at all so she will act as a conduit for us so that these unknowns can remain so. She was a historical personage …
Dear Ms. Gregory,
 Once again we get to see the adroit tight-rope walking that it took to live in the Tudor court. While it’s more history than romance, the story of Anne Boleyn’s sister (the first Boleyn girl in Henry’s bed) is definitely fascinating. It could also be titled “Life in the Snake and Scorpion Pit.” Those courtiers would have sold their souls to advance at court. It makes me goggle at the amount of energy, creativeness and effort a whole group of people expended to keep one man amused.
You take the bare facts that are known about Mary’s life and use them to tell the family’s hard slog to the top of the food chain of Tudor England. And it’s equally sharp drop from favor when Anne couldn’t give the king what he craved most in life, a son to succeed him.
Mary comes across as a sometimes not too bright, sometimes selfish, sometimes devoted sister who was willing to do what her family told her in order to advance their power. I got frustrated with her for allowing herself to be kept from her children but then who knows what she really felt? She …
Dear Mrs. Gregory,
 Having read and loved “The Other Boleyn Girl,” I hurried out and bought “The Queen’s Fool” when it was first released three years ago. Then….life happened and despite the fact that it sat on a table right in front of me for that long, it’s taken me until now to pick it up and start reading it. And despite the fact that I had to take my cat to the vet and then my car died on me today and I had to spend a few hours getting towed, borrowing another car, then driving out to pick mine up when (thank God) it only turned out to be a minor problem, I managed to get all 500 pages of it read in only two days. I was glued to it. I devoured it. I once again wondered why I have only read two of your many books. I must remedy that.
A young woman caught in the rivalry between Queen Mary and her half sister, Elizabeth, must find her true destiny amid treason, poisonous rivalries, loss of faith, and unrequited love.
It is winter, 1553. Pursued by the Inquisition, Hannah …
Dear Readers,
 This was a nice little book. It’s set in 1540 England during the dissolution of the last monastery by Henry VIII. Now, when’s the last time you read a book with that background? The heroine’s father has been the bailey of the monastery of Woodham which is to be surrendered to the King. I got the impression that a bailey was the man responsible for managing the monastery grounds, record keeping and such. Anyway, the hero is with the Court of Augmentations, the group of men who traveled around the country seeing to the take over of these church lands and property and guess who’s house he’s come to inventory? Not an auspicious beginning for our love story.
Kate is in love with a showy courtier who’s come in the company of the King to Woodham (the fictional town and Abbey which is based on the real Waltham Abbey) to go hawking and enjoy rural life away from London for a few days. She’s upset about the closing of the monastery both for religious reasons and because her father is about to lose his job. Master Matthew Hartwell seems to her to just …
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