It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This weekly meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Of the four books I read last week, Kit by Marina Fiorato was my favourite, with Beau Brocade by Emmuska Orczy coming a close second. I followed these with two quick reads: a light-hearted Regency romance by Carola Dunn entitled Captain Ingram's Inheritance and The Vicar's Wife by Katharine Swartz, a dual time frame novel set in the present and in the 1930s/40s.

The Tide Watchers by Lisa Chaplin is my main read this week, though I have started Lady of the Butterflies by Fiona Mountain and I'm still enjoying a short story now and then from Mrs. Gaskell's Curious, If True.

My visit to the library last week added some interesting novels to my reading pile. Rachel Hore is a favourite author of mine and I'm looking forward to reading The Silent Tide  and  Place of Secrets in anticipation of reading her current novel,  A Week in Paris, which was released in October last year.  This one was out on loan, so I'll have to wait a while longer.

Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase, Louise Walter's debut novel, first published in 2014, was released in the USA in August. I'd not heard of this author or her book until  I read about it being re-released. The new cover drew my attention as it is much nicer than the original, but the synopsis convinced me to add this book to my checkouts. 

Melanie Gifford is an author I've not read before.  From the fly leaf The Gallows Girl is described as "a dark, compelling story of obsession and revenge that will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue." I've not ready any books by Sarah Waters or Emma Donoghue, but I was hooked by the rest of the description. 

Elizabeth Fremantle is another author I've not read before and I'm looking forward to reading Watch the Lady. Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth I's favourite, appears in many novels, but little is known about his sister, Penelope, who sounds very intriguing. I'm also excited by the fact that I'm the first to borrow this new book from the library.

What I Read Last Week

Kit by Marina Fiorato

Dublin 1702...and Irish beauty Kit Kavanagh has everything she could want in life. Newly married, she runs a successful alehouse with her beloved husband Richard. The wars that rage in Europe over the Spanish throne seem a world away. But everything changes on the night that Richard simply disappears. Finding the Queen's shilling at the bottom of Richard's tankard, Kit realizes that her husband has been taken for a soldier. Kit follows Richard's trail across the battlefields of Italy in the Duke of Marlborough's regiment. Living as a man, risking her life in battle, she forms a close bond with her wry and handsome commanding officer Captain Ross. When she is forced to flee the regiment following a duel, she evades capture by dressing once more as a woman. But the war is not over for Kit. Her beauty catches the eye of the scheming Duke of Ormonde, who recruits her to spy upon the French. In her finery she meets Captain Ross once again, who seems just as drawn to the woman as he was to the soldier. Torn between Captain Ross and her loyalty to her husband, and under the orders of the English Crown, Kit finds that her life is in more danger now than on the battlefield. Of all the dangers that she faced, the greatest was discovery...

Beau Brocade by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Philip Gascoyne, Earl of Stretton, is falsly accused of being a rebel and siding with Bonnie Prince Charlie. He is condemned to death under a bill of attainder. However, letters in his possession will prove that he is innocent, but he needs his sister, Patricia, to take them to London and present them to the King.

Captain Ingram's Inheritance by Carola Dunn

When love takes command...hearts must obey! Lady Constantia Roworth has no fortune and doesn't give a fig about rank. But her father, the Earl of Westwood, expects his offspring to make matches that benefit their station - or enrich the family coffers. Alas, Captain Frank Ingram has neither blue blood or money - only dashing good looks. The wounded soldier has accepted a kind invitation to recover at the Westwood estate...and it takes only the meeting of eyes, the touch of hands and the mingling of sighs before the handsome war hero and Lady Connie begin to lose their hearts!

The Vicar's Wife by Katharine Swartz

Jane Hatton and her British husband Andrew relocate from New York City to a small village on the Cumbrian coast. Jane has been city-based and career-driven but when her fourteen year old daughter Natalie falls in with the wrong crowd at school in Manhattan, she and Andrew decide to try country living. However Jane has trouble getting used to the silence and solitude of a remote village. Natalie hates her new school, and eleven-year-old Ben struggles academically. Only seven-year-old Merrie enjoys country life. Has Jane made a horrible mistake? The Hattons have bought the old vicarage in the village. When Jane finds a scrap of shopping list, she grows curious about Alice, the vicar's wife who lived there years before. As we follow the twin narratives of Jane, in the present, and Alice in the 1930s we discover that both are on a journey to discover their true selves, and to address their deepest fears.

What I'm Reading Today

The Tide Watchers by Lisa Chaplin

In the winter of 1803, one woman stands between Napoleon and the fall of Great Britain. The free-spirited daughter of an English baronet, Lisbeth defies convention by eloping to France. When her husband abandons her, she must find a way to survive and be reunited with her young son, who is in the care of her mother-in-law. A seasoned spy known as Tidewatcher, Duncan apprenticed under Lisbeth's father and pledged to keep his mentor's pretty daughter safe—a promise complicated by the wily Napoleon Bonaparte. The British believe he is planning an attack, and Duncan is sent to search for signs of invasion on the French coast—where he draws dangerously close to adventurous and unpredictable Lisbeth. A sensational new invention may shift the tide of a French victory. A brilliant and eccentric American inventor named Robert Fulton has devised a deadly weapon that can decimate an enemy's fleet. To protect English ships, Tidewatcher must gain control of Fulton's invention and cross enemy lines . . . but he cannot do it alone. Left with no other options, he enlists Lisbeth's help in outwitting the American inventor and uncovering Bonaparte's secret plans. Going undercover for the handsome and duty-bound spy, Lisbeth risks her freedom and her life as she navigates double agents and submarine warfare to outwit the greatest military tactician in history. The only question is . . . who can she trust?

Lady of the Butterflies by Fiona Mountain

Born into a world seething with treachery and suspicion, Eleanor Goodricke grows up on the Somerset Levels just after the English Civil Wars, heiress to her late mother's estates and daughter of a Puritan soldier who fears for his brilliant daughter with her dangerous passion for natural history - and for butterflies in particular. Her reckless courage will take her to places where no woman of her day ever dared to go. Her fearless ambition will give her a place in history for all time. But it is her passionate heart which will lead her into a consuming love - and mortal peril.

Curious, If True by Elizabeth Gaskell

A collection of Victorian tales of suspense, horror, mood and mystery by Elizabeth Gaskell, published variously between 1852 and 1861. Includes "The Old Nurse's Story," "The Poor Clare," "Lois The Witch," "The Grey Woman," and "Curious, If True."

What I Hope to Read Next

A Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore

The night before it all begins, Jude has the dream again ...Can dreams be passed down through families? As a child Jude suffered a recurrent nightmare: running through a dark forest, crying for her mother. Now her six-year-old niece, Summer, is having the same dream, and Jude is frightened for her. A successful auctioneer, Jude is struggling to come to terms with the death of her husband. When she's asked to value a collection of scientific instruments and manuscripts belonging to Anthony Wickham, a lonely 18th century astronomer, she leaps at the chance to escape London for the untamed beauty of Norfolk, where she grew up. As Jude untangles Wickham's tragic story, she discovers threatening links to the present. What have Summer's nightmares to do with Starbrough folly, the eerie crumbling tower in the forest from which Wickham and his adopted daughter Esther once viewed the night sky? With the help of Euan, a local naturalist, Jude searches for answers in the wild, haunting splendour of the Norfolk woods. Dare she leave behind the sadness in her own life, and learn to love again?

The Silent Tide by Rachel Hore

When Emily Gordon, editor at a London publishing house, commissions an account of great English novelist Hugh Morton, she finds herself steering a tricky path between Morton's formidable widow, Jacqueline, who's determined to protect his secrets, and the biographer, charming and ambitious Joel Richards. But someone is sending Emily mysterious missives about Hugh Morton's past and she discovers a buried story that simply has to be told… One winter's day in 1948, nineteen year old Isabel Barber arrives at her Aunt Penelope's house in Earl's Court having run away from home to follow her star. A chance meeting with an East European refugee poet leads to a job with his publisher, McKinnon & Holt, and a fascinating career beckons. But when she develops a close editorial relationship with charismatic young debut novelist Hugh Morton and the professional becomes passionately personal, not only are all her plans put to flight, but she finds herself in a struggle for her very survival.

Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

UK/AUS Edition

US Edition

Forgive me, Dorothea, for I cannot forgive you. What you do, to this child, to this child's mother, it is wrong...Roberta likes to collect the letters and postcards she finds in second-hand books. When her father gives her some of her grandmother's belongings, she finds a baffling letter from the grandfather she never knew - dated after he supposedly died in the war. Dorothy is unhappily married to Albert, who is away at war. When an aeroplane crashes in the field behind her house she meets Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, and as their bond deepens she dares to hope she might find happiness. But fate has other plans for them both, and soon she is hiding a secret so momentous that its shockwaves will touch her granddaughter many years later...

The Gallows Girl by Melanie Gifford

Isaac and Harriet Curtis are in trouble. Their Hampshire coaching inn, Green Gallows, is threatened by the rumours of a new turnpike stretching from London to Portsmouth. The new road will leech all the important trade away from the inn and ruin Isaac's plans for expansion. All will not be lost if they can still succeed in landing a titled - and wealthy - husband for their eldest daughter, Lucy. No expense is spared in grooming her for a better life; while their youngest daughter, Rachel, is little more than a servant. Rachel cannot help but envy her sister her pretty dresses and the easy admiration she wins from stable hands and gentlemen alike. But while Rachel's world seldom stretches beyond the stable yard or taproom, she little dreams that Lucy would give anything to trade places with her. For when their father's business plans crumble he does not hesitate in trading Lucy's virtue to pay his debts. But neither sister will submit to her fate without protest, even if it will be left to Rachel to pay the price for her sister's final act of defiance. And it will be Rachel too who seeks the ultimate revenge...

Watch the Lady by Elizabeth Fremantle

Penelope Devereux is a legendary beauty in the court of Elizabeth but it's not just her looks which mark her apart. With her canny instinct for being in the right place at the right time, and her skilled political manipulation, she has become a formidable adversary to anyone who stands in her path. And now, Penelope must secure the future of the Devereux dynasty at whatever cost. Even treason. For the Queen is just one more pawn in a deadly game.