I'm in two minds about this book. I thought the premise of "Shakespeare's Mistress" was really interesting and definitely admire the author for putting together a 400 page story inspired by a potential mistake/discrepancy in a 400 year old marriage register! There were some lovely descriptive pas...
I wanted to love this book, I enjoy reading books about Henry VIII and his court. Although the story was based on the life of a real person in that court, I felt that the writing fell somewhat flat, due to immature character development, lack of vivid imagery, and missing drama. At a time in En...
The first book in this series was fantastic. In this book, an arsonist is burning down barns in The Home Valley, Ohio, Amish country. Sarah Kauffman is the one who spots the first fire. Nate MacKenzie is called in to investigate the barn arson and knowing nothing about the Amish, he has a lot to ...
Fairly good romance/thriller. A corporate law firm decides to use an Alaskan lodge owned by a former member of the firm, to sort out the candidates for senior partner. Attempted and successful murders, assaults and other mayhem punctuate the story, as well as a mild love story with no sex inclu...
Harper’s book provides a fictional tale of the life of Mary Boleyn, sister to the more famous Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The book starts off with Mary as a little eight year old girl about to be sent off to Europe and then traces her life throughout her time at the French Court, as H...
I'm biased because I adore this particular genre and time period, and I thoroughly enjoyed this entire series of books by Karen Harper. They are written very similarly to Fiona Buckley's Ursla Blanchard Mysteries.... almost confusingly so. This series focuses on Queen Elizabeth I, herself, solvi...
I'm biased because I adore this particular genre and time period, and I thoroughly enjoyed this entire series of books by Karen Harper. They are written very similarly to Fiona Buckley's Ursla Blanchard Mysteries.... almost confusingly so. This series focuses on Queen Elizabeth I, herself, solvin...
And it's more of the same. Another murder that seems to have nothing to do with the queen and in the end it has everything to do with her. Once again the characters are far away of what they could be, especially Elizabeth who becomes more annoying (and I doubted that it was possible), her relatio...
In late summer of 1562, with handsome Lord Robert Dudley by her side, Elizabeth Tudor leads her retinue to London’s Royal College of Physicians -- to demand its help in the raging battle against disease and pestilence. But the stalwart queen is shaken when a frighteningly lifelike effigy of herse...
The daughter of a disgraced earl, she matched wits with a prince.It is the fourteenth century, the height of the Medieval Age, and at the court of King Edward III of England, chivalry is loudly praised while treachery runs rampant. When the lovely and high-spirited Joan of Kent is sent to this po...
I decided to pick up this book because I thought it would be a lightweight reading. And it was light... too light and in a very bad way. I love mysteries, at least I love the mysteries by Agatha Christie, with interesting characters and even peculiar ones, as Poirot, with storylines that tie us f...
First sentence: "Even on this day, damned death so near..." William Cecil whispered to himself, but the queen overheard him as she walked just ahead. The band is back together again. Queen Elizabeth and her court are spending the summer at Hampton Court to escape the danger of the plague in Londo...
This is the only Tudor Christmas story I have ever seen, and I really loved it! Not only did it offer a good picture of what Christmas at Queen Elizabeth's court was really like, it also showed an exciting, and at times spine-tingling murder mystery taking place at Whitehall Palace. All of our fa...
She surfaced from the depths of the sea… and was terrifyingly, inexplicably alone Briana Devon knows her twin sister would never deliberately leave her—but when she emerges from underwater, Daria and their boat have vanished. Fighting rough waves and a fast-approaching storm, Bree doesn't have t...
Johnnie was taking a nap, watched closely by both of my undernurses, and this was my afternoon off. I planned to meet Mabel and take the boys for a walk with us. The leaves were fully budded and the robins and skylarks sang, so why not? Poor Harry, recently turned six, had been put in splints lik...
What does the constant divide divide, anyway? Will we see a big line on the ground?” Tara was tense and she knew Nick was, too, but Claire was having the time of her life, asking continuous questions from the backseat of his truck. Driving in fairly heavy traffic on I-70W, Nick had let Tara do mo...
I hugged myself and spun about, dancing with my dreams. Will was going to tell his folks he’d promised Father Berowne he’d come to read to him and spend some time so that we could have an entire night together. That would surely work since John Shakespeare was tenderhearted toward the old clergy ...
KATH-ER-INE!” JOHN DEE SANG OUT AS HE hurried into their hastily pitched tent on the other side of the encampment from the scene of the fire. He saw she’d been scrubbing at the dirt spot on her skirt, for her ministrations had turned a circle of the dark green damask black. Besides her wash bucke...
I could hear our apprentices, who had cots in the storeroom overhead, beginning to stir. More than once, I had ripped through my clothes coffer, in a fret about what to wear to the palace. Something plain and dark, though not black, to show I knew my place as a merchant of mourning and funeral go...
It may be a long shot, but…” “Great. That’s the general area where a couple of hounds seemed to pick up Mariah’s scent but then lost it along the creek, so you may be on to something. But can you drive into town instead of me picking you up? Vern just dropped in to see how...
The thing was, they had Todd and Amber with them. Grant took them out for Todd’s birthday—an excuse to get them out of their house. Amber’s parents always did babysitting duty with the boys. Grant and Todd had liked this place for years because it had wood from the mill everywhere, including tabl...
It seemed to have a lavender theme and it smelled so much like her field of flowers that tears stung her eyelids. She could probably find ideas here for her own shop at home. Turning away from stocking the shelves, a beautiful Asian woman with shiny, straight black hair dr...
BY NOON, NATE KNEW FOR SURE. He’d been interrupted more than once by curious Amish or others. Bishop Esh had said he trusted Nate’s judgment so, with two of his sons, he was planting a cornfield to the south. Nate had stonewalled the Cleveland reporter and her cameraman, though they still hung ar...
In a way that was what she’d been doing for years, either falling apart or hiding. So what if she was upset by Gabe and Vic’s interrogation and by Marva’s accusation? It was nothing next to what Sandy Kenton, Jill Stillwell, even Amanda Bell, might be going through. If the...
Ashley,” Sir Leonard Chamberlain, Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, informed me, poking only his head in the door of my cell, “good news for you and Master Ashley, for word has come you are both to be released today.” So great was my shock and relief, I gasped and broke into tears. “And to be returne...
But just being with him was revving her up in a far different way. It had been a while since she’d got dressed up for a fancy date—and it seemed ages since she’d been with a man so attentive and attractive. As her mother would have said, Matthew Rowan “cleaned up well.” No...