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Forthcoming Books: 2012 edition

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Tanzanite
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Post by Tanzanite » Fri June 1st, 2012, 1:41 pm

Mary Rose by David Loades. Non-fiction. UK release May 10, 2012; US release July 2012.


'A paradise... tall, slender, grey-eyed, possessing an extreme pallor'. The contemporary view of Henry VIII's younger sister, Princess Mary Rose as one of the most beautiful princesses in Europe, was an arresting one. Glorious to behold, this Tudor Princess with her red hair flowing loose to her waist, was also impossible for Henry to control.


She first married the king of France, a match of great importance to Henry's diplomatic plans. He was dead within three months. The talk of the European courts was that the teenage bride had killed the 51-year old Louis XII with her exertions of the king in his bedchamber. She then ran off with her new lover, the great rake of the Tudors era, Charles Brandon. After some uncomfortable arguments with Henry VIII, she was officially sanctioned to marry the Duke of Suffolk in 1515 at Greenwich Palace. Yet Henry remained deeply fond of his sister, he named his greatest warship after her and continued to support Mary despite her ignoring his every request.


David Loades' biography, the first for almost 50 years brings the princess alive once more. Of all Tudor women, this queen of France and later Duchess of Suffolk remains an elusive, enigmatic figure.
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Post by Tanzanite » Fri June 1st, 2012, 1:42 pm

Anne Boleyn by Norah Lofts. Non-fiction. UK reissue May 10, 2012; US release July 1, 2012.


Ever since she first appeared in the Tudor court, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second queen, has been a mystery and a source of controversy. Even her birth is shrouded in obscurity; both year and place are the subject of debate. Was she beautiful, as those who fell under her spell believed, or was she a rather plain girl blessed with striking eyes and a wealth of black hair?


More mysterious still is the nature of her role in one of the most turbulent times in British history. Henry, who wrote her impassioned love letters and composed songs in her praise, honoured her as no woman was ever honoured before, and finally defied the Pope in order to marry her. Her enemies at the time believed she owed her success to witchcraft, and indeed she bore two ‘devil’s marks’. But was she, in fact, only a hapless pawn, subject to the passions of a notoriously mercurial autocrat? Why was her fall from favour so sudden and complete? Henry’s love changed to a hatred so vicious that he conspired with his chief minister to have her accused of adultery with five men – one her own brother. Four of them went to the block protesting her innocence – and their own.
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Post by Tanzanite » Fri June 1st, 2012, 1:44 pm

[quote=""annis""]Someone a while ago was asking about the second book in Robyn Young's Insurrection trilogy. I've just noticed from RY's website that Bk 2, titled Renegade, is due out in the UK August this year.[/quote]

Finally a summary and a cover...

BORN TO A LINE OF KINGS HE WILL NOT BOW TO A CONQUEROR


King Edward of England marches on Scotland like an avenging tide. One man alone can thwart his ambition to rule all of Britain. Robert Bruce's veins run with the blood of kings, and he burns to fulfil his family's claim to the throne of Scotland.


But on the run through the wilds of Ireland, hunted by a relentless assassin, Robert seems a long way from achieving his destiny. And there are other eyes on Scotland's crown, and old enemies gather against him.


This is a game of conquest, power and treachery, and Robert finds that to survive he must first abandon everything he holds dear. He was always prepared to die on the battlefield - but what else must he sacrifice to keep his hopes alive?
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Post by Tanzanite » Fri June 1st, 2012, 1:46 pm

The Kings and Queens of England by David Loades. UK release August 28, 2012.

This is the history of the men and women who have occupied the highest position in English, and later British society. For about a thousand years they were superior lords, the leaders of a nobility which ruled; and for about three hundred years thereafter they were sovereigns, whose servants ruled in their name. Now, with the rise of democracy, they no longer rule. The Queen is a symbol and a social leader, vastly experienced in the ways of the world, and the head of a family which strives to be useful in a modern community. The records of the monarchy vary from one period to another, and many of them are political in nature. However, it is always necessary to remember the human being behind the constitutional facade. This is an attempt to recover their identities. Includes 200 illustrations (150 in colour).

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Post by Berengaria » Sat June 2nd, 2012, 11:35 pm

[quote=""Vanessa""]Abdication by Juliet Nicholson (published on 7 June in the UK)

England, 1936. After the recent death of George V, the nation has a new king, Edward VIII. But for all the confident pomp and ceremony of the accession, it is a turbulent time. Terrible poverty and unemployment affect many, but trouble few among the ruling elite; for others, Oswald Mosley's New Party, which offers a version of the fascism on the rise in Germany, seems to offer the vision of the future. Nineteen-year-old May Thomas has just disembarked at Liverpool Docks after making the long journey by steamer from Barbados to escape the constraints of her sugar-plantation childhood. Her first job as a secretary and chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt, Chief Whip in Baldwin's Conservative government, will open her eyes to the upper echelons of British society...The unlikely friendship she forms with Evangeline Nettlefold, American god-daughter of the Chief Whip's wife and an old school friend of Wallis Simpson, will see her through family upheavals including the shocking, sudden loss of her mother; but more significant for May, the Blunts' son Rupert has an Oxford University friend, Julian, a young man of conscience for whom, despite all barriers of class, she cannot help but fall. Secrets, hidden truths, undeclared loves, unspoken sympathies and covert complicities are everywhere - biggest and most dangerous of them all, the truth about the new King's relationship with a married woman, and the silent horror that few in Britain dare voice: the increasing inevitability of another world war...[/quote]
I cannot wait to read this one. It was supposed to come out on the 1st, and now it is out of stock in Canada, and can't get it on Kindle because I don't live in US :(
Last edited by Berengaria on Wed June 27th, 2012, 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: to correct availability in Canada

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Post by rebecca » Sun June 3rd, 2012, 3:03 am

Originally Posted by annis
Someone a while ago was asking about the second book in Robyn Young's Insurrection trilogy. I've just noticed from RY's website that Bk 2, titled Renegade, is due out in the UK August this year.

That someone was me :D and I shall be buying the book once it has been released.

Bec :) I wonder when the third will be released as I waited ages for the 2nd one in the Bruce trilogy.

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Vanessa
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Favourite HF book: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell!
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Post by Vanessa » Sun June 3rd, 2012, 9:59 am

Elijah's Mermaid by Essie Fox (to be published in the UK in November)
Since she was found as a baby, floating in the Thames one foggy night, the web-toed Pearl has been brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Cosseted and pampered there, it is only when her fourteenth birthday approaches that Pearl realises she is to be sold to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile, the orphaned twins, Lily and Elijah, have shared an idyllic childhood, raised in a secluded country house with their grandfather, Augustus Lamb. But when Lily and Elijah go on a visit London, a chance meeting with the ethereal Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, binding their fates together in a dark and dangerous way...

In this bewitching, sensual novel, Essie Fox has written another tale of obsessive love and betrayal, moving from the respectable worlds of Victorian art and literature, and into the shadowy demi-monde of brothels, asylums and freak show tents - a world in which nothing and no-one is quite what they seem to be.
currently reading: My Books on Goodreads

Books are mirrors, you only see in them what you already have inside you ~ The Shadow of the Wind

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Post by emr » Tue June 19th, 2012, 12:49 pm

Sorry if it's been mentioned before.

The Last Caesar by Henry Venmore-Rowland June 21st 2012

Image AD 68. The tyrant emperor Nero has no son and no heir.

Suddenly there's the very real possibility that Rome might become a republic once more. But the ambitions of a few are about to bring corruption, chaos and untold bloodshed to the many.

Among them is a hero of the campaign against Boudicca, Aulus Caecina Severus. Caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow Caesar's dynasty, he commits treason, raises a rebellion, faces torture and intrigue - all supposedly for the good of Rome. The boundary between the good of Rome and self preservation is far from clear, and keeping to the dangerous path he's chosen requires all Severus' skills as a cunning soldier and increasingly deft politician.

And so Severus looks back on the dark and dangerous time history knows as the Year of the Four Emperors, and the part he played - for good or ill - in plunging the mighty Roman empire into anarchy and civil war..


Author is 21. Is it me or authors are younger and younger every year?
"So many books, so little time."
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Post by Tanzanite » Wed June 20th, 2012, 11:34 pm

The Splintered Kingdom by James Aitcheson. UK release September 13, 2012.


This brilliant second novel, featuring the hero of Sworn Sword, begins in June 1069 on the war-torn Welsh Marches and ends with William the Conqueror’s brutal campaign known as the Harrying of the North.
The story begins on the Welsh Marches, where Tancred has been given land by his new lord, Robert Malet, in return for his services in the battle for York. Now a lord in his own right, he has knights of his own to command and a manor to call home. But all is far from peaceful. The Welsh are joining forces with the English against the Normans and when skirmishes turn into a full scale battle at Shrewsbury, Tancred is betrayed by a rival border lord and taken prisoner by the Welsh. Meanwhile the woman he loves is taken hostage by enemy English forces and the Vikings invade the east coast. Never has Tancred faced a more impossible situation.
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Post by Tanzanite » Wed June 20th, 2012, 11:37 pm

The Heresy of Dr. Dee by Phil Rickman. UK release November 1, 2012.

All talk is of the End-time...and the dead are rising. At the end of the sunless summer of 1560, black rumour shrouds the death of the one woman who stands between Lord Robert Dudley and marriage to the young Queen Elizabeth. Did Dudley's wife, Amy, die from an accidental fall in a deserted house, or was it a calculated murder? Even Dr John Dee, astrologer royal, adviser on the Hidden and one of Dudley's oldest friends, is uncertain. Then a rash promise to the Queen sends him to his family's old home on the Welsh Border in pursuit of the Wigmore Shewstone, a crystal credited supernatural properties.

With Dee goes Robert Dudley, considered the most hated man in England. They travel with the entourage of a London judge sent to try a sinister Welsh brigand with a legacy dating back to the Battle of Brynglas, in which close to a thousand Englishmen died at the hands of the Welsh. After the battle, many of the bodies were, according to legend, obscenely mutilated. Now, on the same haunted hill, another dead man has been found, similarly slashed. Devious politics, small-town corruption, twisted religion and a brooding superstition leave John Dee isolated in the land of his father...
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