SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION: From Daisy Jones & The Six to Shepherd

It's the first Saturday of the month and time to play Six Degrees of Separation, the first for 2020. This meme is hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best. The aim is to link six books to each other from the starting point.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Read is this month's starting point. It is about a fictional 1970s rock and roll band.

Again, I haven't read the book we are starting with, which makes it that little bit harder to launch the chain. The book's blurb, however, contains the phrase coming of age. A classic coming of age story, and a

GUEST POST: Disability in the 18th Century: An interview with Lucy May Lennox, author of The Adventures of Tom Finch, Gentleman

Today I'm pleased to bring you news of a recently published novel, The Adventures of Tom Finch, Gentleman, and a guest post in the form of an interview with Lucy May Lennox. I hope you enjoy reading what inspired the author to create her hero as an 18th century blind man as much as I did.

Publication Date: November 12, 2019
Paperback & ebook
Genre: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

London, 1735. Covent Garden offers a world of pleasures and diversions, even for a blind man. Tom Finch, composer of broadsides and assistant conductor in the nearby opera houses, considers himself the luckiest of men, as he has both education and freedom to do as he pleases. Blindness is to him merely an inconvenience, and no impediment to his favored pastimes: playing music and lushing it in a public house in the

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: Beyond the Moon by Catherine Taylor

Publication Date: June 25, 2019
The Cameo Press Ltd
eBook & Paperback; 496 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction/Time Travel

Synopsis

Outlander meets Birdsong is this haunting debut timeslip novel, where a strange twist of fate connects a British soldier fighting in the First World War and a young woman living in modern-day England a century later.

In 1916 1st Lieutenant Robert Lovett is a patient at Coldbrook Hall military hospital in Sussex, England.

BOOK REVIEW: Shepherd by Catherine Jinks

Synopsis

My father trained me to silence the way he trained his dogs, with food and a cane. Speech, he said, was poison. It scared the game, alerted the gamekeepers and betrayed your friends and family.

Tom Clay was a poacher back in Suffolk. He was twelve when he was caught, tried and transported to New South Wales.

Now, assigned to a shepherds’ hut out west, he is a boy among violent men. He keeps his counsel and watches over his sheep; he steers clear of blowhards

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION: From Sanditon to Khaki Town

It's the first Saturday of the month and time to play Six Degrees of Separation, the final one for 2019. This meme is hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best. The aim is to link six books to each other from the starting point.

Today's starting point is Sanditon by Jane Austen. Again we're starting with a book I haven't read. It's not one I'm interested in reading at this stage, but I'm looking forward to the TV series. Jane Austen died before she could finish this book.

A number of authors have died leaving unfinished works, but the one that sprang to mind immediately

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR + INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY: Katherine - Tudor Duchess by Tony Riches

Publication Date: October 1, 2019
Preseli Press
eBook & Paperback; 328 pages
Series: The Brandon Trilogy, Book 3
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Attractive, wealthy and influential, Katherine Willoughby is one of the most unusual ladies of the Tudor court. A favourite of King Henry VIII, Katherine knows all his six wives, his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and his son Edward, as well as being related by marriage to Lady Jane Grey.

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: Entertaining Mr.Pepys by Deborah Swift

Publication Date: November 21, 2019
Headline
Paperback & ebook
Series: The Women of Pepys' Diary, Book #3
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

London 1666

Elizabeth ‘Bird’ Carpenter has a wonderful singing voice, and music is her chief passion. When her father persuades her to marry horse-dealer Christopher Knepp, she suspects she is marrying beneath her station, but nothing prepares her for the reality of life with Knepp. Her father has betrayed her

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR + INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY: Child of Love & Water by D. K. Marley

Publication Date: October 19, 2018
The White Rabbit Publishing
eBook; 291 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The year is 1722. A child is born on the isolated island of Ospo off the Georgia coast. In the midst of General Oglethorpe's vision for this new land, and the emerging townships of Frederica and Savannah, four lives entwine together on this island like the woven fronds in a sea-grass basket - the orphaned Irish girl born free of hate or prejudice, a war-ravaged British

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: The Name Beneath the Stone by Robert Newcome

Publication Date: September 23rd, 2019
Unicorn Publishing
eBook & Paperback
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Three generations, one family, connected by an historic secret.

1917. Private Daniel Dawkins fights at Messines Ridge and Passchendaele. He writes home to his true-love Joyce, but reveals little of his extreme bravery, his kindness, his loyalty to his comrades and the horrors

BOOK REVIEW/BLOG TOUR: Bittersweet Tapestry by Kevin O'Connell

Publication Date: November 1, 2019
Gortcullinane Press
eBook & Paperback
Series: The Derrynane Saga, Book Three
Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

A dramatic decade has passed since sixteen-year-old Eileen O’Connell first departed her family’s sanctuary at remote Derrynane on the Kerry coast to become the wife of one of the wealthiest men in Ireland and the mistress of John O’Connor’s Ballyhar – only to have her elderly husband die within months of the

CAN'T-WAIT WEDNESDAY: I can't wait for The Brisbane Line by J.P. Powell

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings, to spotlight and discuss the books we're excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they're books that have yet to be released. Find out more here.

READ AN EXCERPT/BLOG TOUR + GIVEAWAY (INTERNATIONAL): Distant Signs by Anne Richter

Publication Date: November 7, 2019
Neem Tree Press
Hardcover; 240 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction/Romance/Saga

Synopsis

Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall. In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor's daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in Thuringia. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East