Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. My day has been particularly exhausting but I have worked out a good reading routine whilst at school. I can average half a page of reading whilst I’m waiting for my next student to arrive and I must admit it soon adds up.

My chosen book to feature this week is one I picked up in Hay-on-Wye during the Summer. I thought it would the perfect read for October so I’m hoping I manage to read it this month. If it gets cold enough I might even manage to read it in front of a nice fire.

This is a book to be read by a blazing fire on a winter’s night, with the curtains drawn close and the doors securely locked.

The unquiet souls of the dead, both as fictional creations and as ‘real’ apparitions, roam the pages of this haunting new selection of ghost stories by Rex Collings. Some of these stories are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from this vintage era of tales of the supernatural.

There are stories from distant lands – Fisher’s Ghost by John Lang is set in Australia and A Ghostly Manifestation by ‘A Clergyman’ is set in Calcutta. In this selection, Sir Walter Scott (a Victorian in spirit if not in fact), keeps company with Edgar Allen Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu and other illustrious masters of the genre.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far.

My chosen book to feature this week is one that I have only recently added to my Goodreads TBR. I’m really looking forward to reading it soon.

A compelling, authoritative account of the brilliant, conflicted, visionary world of Tudor England
 
When Henry VII landed in a secluded bay in a far corner of Wales, it seemed inconceivable that this outsider could ever be king of England. Yet he and his descendants became some of England’s most unforgettable rulers, and gave their name to an age. The story of the Tudor monarchs is as astounding as it was unexpected, but it was not the only one unfolding between 1485 and 1603.
 
In cities, towns, and villages, families and communities lived their lives through times of great upheaval. In this comprehensive new history, Lucy Wooding lets their voices speak, exploring not just how monarchs ruled but also how men and women thought, wrote, lived, and died. We see a monarchy under strain, religion in crisis, a population contending with war, rebellion, plague, and poverty. Remarkable in its range and depth, Tudor England explores the many tensions of these turbulent years and presents a markedly different picture from the one we thought we knew.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

Happy Monday Everyone. I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. It has been a Bank Holiday weekend here in England and this has meant lots of reading for me.

My chosen book this week is by one of my favourite writers and historians, Alison Weir. I absolutely love Weir’s fiction and non fiction and can’t get enough of her books.

Young Henry began his rule as a magnificent and chivalrous Renaissance prince who embodied every virtue. He had all the qualities to make a triumph of his rule, yet we remember only the violence. Henry famously broke with the Pope, founding the Church of England and launching a religious revolution that divided his kingdom. He beheaded two of his wives and cast aside two others. He died a suspicious, obese, disease-riddled tyrant, old before his time. His reign is remembered as one of dangerous intrigue and bloodshed—and yet the truth is far more complex.

The King’s Pleasure brings to life the idealistic monarch who expanded Parliament, founded the Royal Navy, modernised medical training, composed music and poetry, and patronised the arts. A passionate man in search of true love, he was stymied by the imperative to produce a male heir, as much a victim of circumstance as his unhappy wives. Had fate been kinder to him, the history of England would have been very different.

Here is the story of the private man. To his contemporaries, he was a great king, a legend in his own lifetime. And he left an extraordinary legacy—a modern Britain.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. I had a lovely day visiting the Coalport China Museum and making some new bookmarks.

My chosen book to feature today is the second book in The Songs of Penelope series by Claire North. I had the dispatch notice for this today so I hope it arrives soon so I can get reading it.

In the palace of Odysseus, a queen lies dreaming . . .

On the isle of Ithaca, queen Penelope maintains a delicate balance of power. Many years ago, her husband Odysseus sailed to war with Troy and never came home. In his absence, Penelope uses all her cunning to keep the peace—a peace that is shattered by the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra.

Orestes’ hands are stained with his mother’s blood. Not so long ago, the son of Agamemnon took Queen Clytemnestra’s life on Ithaca’s sands. Now, wracked with guilt, he grows ever more unhinged. But a king cannot be seen to be weak, and Elektra has brought him to Ithaca to keep him safe from the ambitious men of Mycenae.

Penelope knows destruction will follow in his wake as surely as the furies circle him. His uncle Menelaus, the blood-soaked king of Sparta, hungers for Orestes’ throne—and if he can seize it, no one will be safe from his violent whims.

Trapped between two mad kings, Penelope must find a way to keep her home from being crushed by the machinations of a battle that stretches from Mycenae and Sparta to the summit of Mount Olympus itself. Her only allies are Elektra, desperate to protect her brother, and Helen of Troy, Menelaus’ wife. And watching over them all is the goddess Aphrodite, who has plans of her own.

Each woman has a secret, and their secrets will shape the world . . .

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I have done some teaching and chores today but I have also managed some reading and a nice walk. I have also spent a lovely evening making some more Halloween bookmarks for my Etsy shop.

My chosen book today is a new release and one by one of my favourite authors. I really want to read this soon but first I need to go book shopping!

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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