Now Reading.... Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Footsteps in the Dark
by Georgette Heyer

Publication Date: January 2007
(first published 1932)
Paperback: 352 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Romance



Overview
The ramshackle old house, with its rambling charm, is beloved of Peter, Margaret, and Celia who inherited it from their uncle. Local wisdom, however, says the Priory is haunted and then a murder is committed. Can the answer be found in the realm of the supernatural or is it more down to earth?

The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips

Rating: BRAG!

The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips
Historical Fiction, Mystery
Paperback: 464 pages
Publication Date: April 2010





Verdict
Mesmerizing! The Devlin Diary goes down as one of my all-time favorites! I loved this book.... LOVED IT! Claire and Andrew are history fellows at Trinity, Cambridge and are trying to solve a murder in the current time period. Hannah and Edward are both doctors trying to solve several murders during the 1670's near Whitehall. Mystery, romance, high level vocabulary, history, royalty.... It's got it all! Christi Phillips ability to perfects the details of the time period is astounding. You will lose yourself in this book! Terrific purchase.

Good Reading,
Sarah :)


 

Trinity, Cambridge



Whitehall from St. James Park
Copyright © Sara Douglass Enterprises Pty Ltd 2006

About the Author
Christi Phillips is the author of The Devlin Diary and The Rossetti Letter, which is being translated into eight languages including Russian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Her research combines a few of her favorite things: old books, libraries, and travel. When she’s not rummaging around in an archive or exploring the historic heart of a European city, she lives with her husband in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is at work on her next novel, set in France.
http://christi-phillips.com/

Now Reading.... The Devlin Diary by Christi Phillips

The Devlin Diary

by Christi Phillips
Historical Fiction, Mystery
Paperback: 464 pages
Publication Date: April 2010







Cover Description

From the bestselling author of The Rossetti Letter comes a “thrilling” (Library Journal) novel of intrigue, passion, and royal secrets that shifts tantalizingly between Restoration-era London and present-day Cambridge, England. London, 1672. A vicious killer stalks the court of Charles II, inscribing the victims’ bodies with mysterious markings.Are the murders the random acts of a madman?Or the violent effects of a deeply hidden conspiracy?
Cambridge, 2008. Teaching history at Trinity College is Claire Donovan’s dream come true—until one of her colleagues is found dead on the banks of the River Cam. The only key to the professor’s unsolved murder is the seventeenth-century diary kept by his last research subject, Hannah Devlin, physician to the king’s mistress. Through the arcane collections of Cambridge’s most eminent libraries, Claire and fellow historian Andrew Kent follow the clues Hannah left behind, uncovering secrets of London’s dark past and Cambridge’s murky present and discovering that the events of three hundred years ago still have consequences today. . . .

Good Reading,
Sarah :)

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Rating: BRAG!

by Sarah Addison Allen
Contemporary Fiction, Mystery
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publication Date: March 2011






Cover Description

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.  Show More

For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.

Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.


VERDICT

Delicious enough to devour in a day! Sarah Addison Allen bestows on us a magical tale about friendship, southern charm, romance, and female independence. The Peach Keeper was thoroughly entertaining until the very end.
This charming story is the first novel I have read of Ms. Allen's. Now, I cannot wait to read more from her.

Good Reading,
Sarah :)


Quotes from The Peach Keeper

"Happiness means taking risks. And if you're not a little scared, you're not doing it right."

"When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath."

"Maybe you're afraid to relax and let some things just happen."


About the Author
taken from www.sarahaddisonallen.com

Seven Things About Sarah
1. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a trash man. I would spend hours daydreaming about riding on the back of a garbage truck, jumping off at every house and dumping people's trash into it.
2. I was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, a place Rolling Stone magazine once called "America's New Freak Capital."
3. I have my B.A. in Literature, a major I chose because I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate.
4. I can't turn away stray cats and I'm convinced they know this.
5. My father was a copy editor, reporter, and award-winning columnist for our local paper.
6. My mother has a nose ring, but we pretend it's not there.
7. Garden Spells, my mainstream debut, didn't start out as a magical novel. It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own... and my life hasn't been the same since.