HFVBTour and Giveaway for PROMISED TO THE CROWN by Aimie K. Runyan

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I’m part of the HFVBTour today for PROMISED TO THE CROWN, a historical fiction novel that I found so interesting and loved reading!

Here’s what the tour has to say:

Promised to the Crown (Daughters of New France, Book One)
by Aimie K. Runyan

Publication Date: April 26, 2016
Kensington
Paperback & eBook; 352 Pages

Series: Daughters of New France
Genre: Historical Fiction

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Bound for a new continent, and a new beginning.

In her illuminating debut novel, Aimie K. Runyan masterfully blends fact and fiction to explore the founding of New France through the experiences of three young women who, in 1667, answer Louis XIV’s call and journey to the Canadian colony.

They are known as the filles du roi, or “King’s Daughters”—young women who leave prosperous France for an uncertain future across the Atlantic. Their duty is to marry and bring forth a new generation of loyal citizens. Each prospective bride has her reason for leaving—poverty, family rejection, a broken engagement. Despite their different backgrounds, Rose, Nicole, and Elisabeth all believe that marriage to a stranger is their best, perhaps only, chance of happiness.

Once in Quebec, Elisabeth quickly accepts baker Gilbert Beaumont, who wants a business partner as well as a wife. Nicole, a farmer’s daughter from Rouen, marries a charming officer who promises comfort and security. Scarred by her traumatic past, Rose decides to take holy vows rather than marry. Yet no matter how carefully she chooses, each will be tested by hardship and heartbreaking loss—and sustained by the strength found in their uncommon friendship, and the precarious freedom offered by their new home.

An engaging, engrossing debut.”—Greer Macallister, USA Today bestselling author of The Magician’s Lie

An absorbing adventure with heart.”—Jennifer Laam, author of The Secret Daughter of the Tsar

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

About the Author

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Aimie K. Runyan, member of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Women’s Fiction Writers Association, has been an avid student of French and Francophone Studies for more than fifteen years. While working on her Master’s thesis on the brave women who helped found French Canada, she was fortunate enough to win a generous grant from the Quebec government to study onsite for three months which enabled the detailed research necessary for her work. Aimie lives in Colorado with her husband and two children.

For more information please visit Aimie’s website. You can also find her on Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

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This book introduced a whole new piece of history to me and I found it fascinating. I loved these women’s stories, even though they certainly each had her own share of struggle and hardship. I see that this is Book One – which thrilled me as I would love to read the next books in this series.

I had to ask myself while reading: could I have done this? Could I have travelled across the ocean to be the wife of a man I would scarcely have time to get to know and then face all the challenges of living in the New World? I’m not sure I could have been so brave!

There is a Giveaway associated with this tour – so enter and hopefully win a copy!

Giveaway

Two copies of Promised to the Crown by Aimie K. Runyan are up for grabs! To enter, please use the GLEAM form below.

Rules

– Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on May 31st. You must be 18 or older to enter.
– Giveaway is open to US residents only.
– Only one entry per household.
– All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion
– Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

Link to Giveaway: hhttps://gleam.io/ZEMHo/promised-to-the-crown

Thank you so much for my review e-copy!

Review: LILAC GIRLS by Martha Hall Kelly

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If you know me, you know I love WWII stories. I picked this one from Net Galley and it was wonderful. At times both touching and heart breaking, this is an unforgettable story about three young women in three different places during the war whose paths converge.

Here’s what Net Galley has to say:

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Quick Review: DELIVERING THE TRUTH by Edith Maxwell

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I discovered this book on Net Galley and it sounded really interesting – a historical cozy mystery!

Here’s the Net Galley description:

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Review of THE SWANS OF FIFTH AVENUE by Melanie Benjamin

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Last year, I got a galley of this novel signed at BEA. I also received it through Net Galley. I’m a HUGE Melanie Benjamin fan ever since I read THE AVIATOR’S WIFE (reviewed on here) and I follow her on Facebook (where she seems to be incredibly normal, cheerful, and funny).

Here’s the description of SWANS:

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Review: THE CANTERBURY SISTERS by Kim Wright

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I got an ARC of this novel through Net Galley and it promptly got swallowed up in my kindle! After rediscovering it, I couldn’t put it down and read it in a little over a day. It is a laugh-out-loud funny, touching, and heart-warming story about a woman who follows her mother’s dying wish to take her ashes to Canterbury Cathedral in England.

Here’s the description from Net Galley:

In the vein of Jojo Moyes and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, a warm and touching novel about a woman who embarks on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral after losing her mother, sharing life lessons—in the best Chaucer tradition—with eight other women along the way.

Che Milan’s life is falling apart. Not only has her longtime lover abruptly dumped her, but her eccentric, demanding mother has recently died. When an urn of ashes arrives, along with a note reminding Che of a half-forgotten promise to take her mother to Canterbury, Che finds herself reluctantly undertaking a pilgrimage.

Within days she joins a group of women who are walking the sixty miles from London to the shrine of Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, reputed to be the site of miracles. In the best Chaucer tradition, the women swap stories as they walk, each vying to see who can best describe true love. Che, who is a perfectionist and workaholic, loses her cell phone at the first stop and is forced to slow down and really notice the world around her, perhaps for the first time in years.

Through her adventures along the trail, Che finds herself opening up to new possibilities in life and discovers that the miracles of Canterbury can take surprising forms.

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Oh my goodness — I just loved the character of Che. She is a slightly sarcastic, workaholic introvert, stuck in the middle of this “Broads Abroad” pilgrimage. While each woman is unique and has her own story to tell (part of their walk each day is sharing a story), Che was my favorite and the one we get to know the best.

I once read that “taking a journey” is one of the key plot designs for novels, and this story is no exception. As Che journeys, she finds out more about herself, her relationships, and her true desires in life. Themes of the importance of family and relationships, being true to oneself, self-forgiveness, and that special bond that women share ring throughout this very readable novel, often leaving me nodding my head and thinking, “Yes, that’s exactly how it is, isn’t it?”

Highly recommended! Thank you, Net Galley and Gallery Books, for my review copy!

Review: I’LL SEE YOU IN PARIS by Michelle Gable

I grabbed I’LL SEE YOU IN PARIS off of Net Galley ages ago, then promptly forgot about it! I was looking through my kindle and my Net Galley shelves and “rediscovered” it a week ago as it just had its Pub Day. What a great read! I absolutely loved this story!

Here’s the description from Net Galley:

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Review: MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON by Elizabeth Strout

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Several years ago I read OLIVE KITTERIDGE and just loved it. It’s hard to describe why – I just did. I was excited to MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON come up on Net Galley and got it to read.

Here’s how Net Galley describes it:

Description
A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.

Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.

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I just loved this story. Again, it’s hard to explain why. Lucy is a typical woman, though you can see that she has had hardships (unexplained) in her past. She is just trying to get through life. She wants to be (and becomes) a writer. Her illness gives her an opportunity to reconnect with her mother (her entire family was very dysfunctional). Throughout there are hints that Lucy is keeping some parts of her past hidden as they are too painful to think about. What I really liked, though, was that there never was a “big reveal”. We never exactly discovered all there was to discover about Lucy Barton (though one could make some guesses). It was one of the things I liked most about this book — it’s ability to keep the narrator slightly unknown.

This book would be an excellent book club book, giving folks a chance to make their decisions about what they think about Lucy and her family and her life. Some might find this book slow or unexciting (no car chases!), but I thought it was just right. It is short but beautifully written. Elizabeth Strout has the ability to craft a sentence that is so right and so true that it stays with you.

Thank you for my review e-copy, Random House and Net Galley! MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON publishes today – 1/12/16.

Now I’m throwing it back to my earlier review of OLIVE KITTERIDGE – for your reading pleasure:

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Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and felt like they knew you stripped bare of your outer facade?

This is how I felt about the characters of Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Olive Kitteridge. Olive Kitteridge is a middle-aged woman, living in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and this novel is a series of vignettes depicting the people of the town, their lives, their hopes, dreams, and disappointments. The common thread running through these short stories is the character of Olive. In each story we see a different side of Olive, and by the end come to know her as multi-faceted and deeply human.

Whenever I pick up a Pulitzer, I’m never sure if I’m going to like it. Will it be too deep to get through? Will I feel compelled to love it, and don’t? Will I be able to read it enjoyably, or have to attack it like a college textbook? I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. It is a gem. Strout’s writing is so beautiful and descriptive. She calls on elements of human nature that, as I read, I found myself shaking my head and saying, “Yes, that is exactly how it is in life, isn’t it?” This book portrayed her characters in such a raw state that at times it was a bit painful to read. Yet, each story had a feeling of redemption in it, too. This was a wonderful book. I picked it up on a whim at a local bookstore and purchased it – and I’m so glad I did!

Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tour for THE BEAUTIFUL AMERICAN by Jeanne Mackin with GIVEAWAY!

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The Beautiful American
by Jeanne Mackin

Publication Date: June 3, 2014
NAL/Penguin Group
Formats: eBook, Paperback, Audio
352 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

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As recovery from World War II begins, expat American Nora Tours travels from her home in southern France to London in search of her missing sixteen-year-old daughter. There, she unexpectedly meets up with an old acquaintance, famous model-turned-photographer Lee Miller. Neither has emerged from the war unscathed. Nora is racked with the fear that her efforts to survive under the Vichy regime may have cost her daughter’s life. Lee suffers from what she witnessed as a war correspondent photographing the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.

Nora and Lee knew each other in the heady days of late 1920’s Paris, when Nora was giddy with love for her childhood sweetheart, Lee became the celebrated mistress of the artist Man Ray, and Lee’s magnetic beauty drew them all into the glamorous lives of famous artists and their wealthy patrons. But Lee fails to realize that her friendship with Nora is even older, that it goes back to their days as children in Poughkeepsie, New York, when a devastating trauma marked Lee forever. Will Nora’s reunion with Lee give them a chance to forgive past betrayals, and break years of silence?

A novel of freedom and frailty, desire and daring, The Beautiful American portrays the extraordinary relationship between two passionate, unconventional woman.

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKS-A-MILLION |GOOGLE PLAY | IBOOKSTORE | INDIEBOUND |POWELL’S

PRAISE

“Will transport you to expat Paris.” – Suzanne Rindell, author of The Other Typist

“A brilliant, beautifully written literary masterpiece” – Sandra Dallas, author of Fallen Women

“Leaves its essence of love, loss, regret and hope long after the novel concludes.” – Erika Robuck, author of Fallen Beauty

“Achingly beautiful and utterly mesmerizing…her vividly drawn characters…come heartbreakingly alive in their obsessions, tragedies and triumphs” – Jennifer Robson, author of Somewhere in France

“From Poughkeepsie to Paris, from the razzmatazz of the twenties to the turmoil of World War Two and the perfume factories of Grasse, Mackin draws you into the world of expatriate artists and photographers and tells a story of love, betrayal, survival and friendship…an engaging and unforgettable novel” – Renee Rosen, author Doll Face

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeanne Mackin’s novel, The Beautiful American (New American Library), based on the life of photographer and war correspondent Lee Miller, received the 2014 CNY award for fiction. Her other novels include A Lady of Good Family, about gilded age personality Beatrix Farrand, The Sweet By and By, about nineteenth century spiritualist Maggie Fox, Dreams of Empire set in Napoleonic Egypt, The Queen’s War, about Eleanor of Aquitaine, and The Frenchwoman, set in revolutionary France and the Pennsylvania wilderness.

Jeanne Mackin is also the author of the Cornell Book of Herbs and Edible Flowers (Cornell University publications) and co-editor of The Book of Love (W.W. Norton.) She was the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and a keynote speaker for The Dickens Fellowship. Her work in journalism won awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, in Washington, D.C. She has taught or conducted workshops in Pennsylvania, Hawaii and at Goddard College in Vermont.

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

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Here I am!

I am really excited to be part of this blog tour through Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours. I received an audiobook CD version of this novel and listened to it during my new, lengthy commute. This was a somewhat sad story, but interesting. 1920’s was truly a heyday in Paris and I’ve always found the ex-pat lifestyle of that time quite fascinating and love to read about it. If you read me regularly, you know I love reading about the WWII era, and this book moved into the war and the characters’ experiences before and afterwards. I found Nora’s search for her daughter heart-wreching, and kept my fingers crossed for a happy ending!

These characters were based on real people, which made the storyline even more poignant. I had never heard of Lee Miller and her work in photography. The CD’s (ten of them) moved quickly and Mackin’s writing flows easily. Her words are read in a smooth, soothing style by Kate Reading.

This was a compelling story that would engage readers who like to read of this era. Thank you for my review CD’s!

But wait – there’s more!

You can enter to win a free copy of this novel — go to:

The Beautiful American
https://js.gleam.io/e.js

Review: BIRD’S EYE VIEW by Elinor Florence

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Several weeks ago I got a friendly email asking if I’d like to review BIRD’S EYE VIEW, a novel about a Canadian young woman working as an aerial photo interpreter during WWII.  You all know my love of historical fiction, and especially that time period, and I didn’t know much about aerial photography during the war, so I said yes.

I have to say – I loved this book! To be honest, I never really thought about what Canada was doing during the war, and it was interesting to see the focus on supporting Britain. Rose Jolliffe is a strong female who wants to do her part for the war, and she ends up going to London to work. Rose is from the farmlands of Canada and she misses her family and her homeland terribly. She has a series of relationships (both friendships and romances) and each one is an opportunity for self-development and growth. She also is quite skilled at what she does and has several successes with the photos. I loved her character and I wanted her to end up safe and happy in the end.

Like the female code breakers of Bletchley Park (with whom I am a little obsessed), these aerial photography interpreters are a fascinating bunch and it was so interesting to read about how they tried to figure out what the Germans were doing, looked for evidence of rockets, studied troop movements, etc.

Here’s a link to a BBC site about the interpreters at Medmenham, where this story takes place:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/places/raf_medmenham

I’d like to thank Elinor for her novel to review and give it a big thumb’s up!

http://www.elinorflorence.com

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pictures via google images and Elinor’s website

Litfuse Blog Tour for A FRIEND IN ME by Pamela Havey Au

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Today I’m part of the Litfuse Blog tour for the nonfiction book: A FRIEND IN ME by Pamela Havey Au. This is a Christian title, focusing on how older, experienced women can reach out and be valuable friends to the young women in their lives.

Here’s what the tour has to say:

Book info
About the book: A Friend in Me (David C. Cook, June 2015)
Young women long for relational connection with women further ahead of them on the journey. Yet, without realizing it, many of us tend to distance ourselves from those in younger generations.

Can we really have close relationships with women who have different thoughts on church, different experiences with family, and different ways of talking about God? Where do we start?

In A Friend in Me, Pam Lau shows you how to be a safe place for the younger women in your life. She offers five patterns women need to internalize and practice for initiating relationships and talking about issues such as faith, forgiveness, sexuality, and vocation. Most significantly, she reminds you that there doesn’t need to be a divide between generations of women. Together, we can have a global impact—and experience a deeper faith than we’ve ever known.

Purchase a copy: http://bit.ly/1RXNAmd


About the author:

Pam Lau is the author of Soul Strength and numerous articles for such publications as Christian Scholar’s Review and Christianity Today. She has taught writing at George Fox University and speaks around the country at conferences and retreats. A graduate of Liberty University and Colorado State University, Lau lives near Portland, Oregon, with her husband and three daughters.

Find Pamela online: website, Twitter

I enjoyed this book, which was a thoughtful and positive look at how women bond and how we “older” women (I’m in my 40’s but the book is directed at “older” as in “experienced”) can mentor and support young women today as they face the various trials of life. Ms. Au does a great job in providing anecdotes and then Biblical stories to show us how we can be helpers and how we can provide a safe haven for women who are struggling. I particularly liked the chapter on sexuality and felt it provided a lot of good info on how not to be judgmental or closed to those who might have issues and/or experiences that aren’t in our own experience.

Thank you, Litfuse, for my review copy!

You can find this book online or in a bookstore or library near you.

You can see more on the Litfuse landing page, and/or follow the tour!

Blog Tour Schedule:

6/8/2015
Robin | Enchanted Excurse

6/9/2015

Kimberly | KCreatives

6/10/2015

Sarah | Growing for Christ
Tiffany | The Crafty Home
Paula | Grow Where You’re Planted
Amanda | Inklings and Notions
Brandy | Busymommylist
Kasey | Four Seasons of Blessings
Lindsey | Growing Kids Ministry

6/11/2015

Tami | This Mom’s Delight

6/12/2015

Carla | Working Mommy Journal
Kim | Window To My World
Dianna | Savings in Seconds

6/13/2015

Donna | Books and Such

6/15/2015

Crystal | Our Perfectly Imperfect Life
Lis | The Indigo Quill
Sarah | On Another Note
Erin | For Him and My Family
Pam | Pamela Black

6/16/2015

Annie Kate | Tea Time with Annie Kate

6/17/2015

Jessa | momsummary
Beth | Beth’s Book-Nook Blog
Kari | Slow it Down
Val | Wise-Like-Solomon

6/18/2015

Kristie | Moments

6/19/2015

Hope | Finding Joy

6/20/2015

Julie | More Of Him
Penny | Beauty in the every day
Randi | A Modern Day Fairy Tale

6/21/2015

Jennifer | Jennifer Sikora

6/22/2015

April | ElCloud Homeschool
Tammy | Bluerose’s Heart

6/23/2015

Krista | Welcome to Married Life
Erin | ReviewsByErin
Tima | Book Reviews by Tima
Debra | Footprints in the Butter

6/24/2015

Alexis | God is Love
Grace | Klassy Tots

6/25/2015

Bethany | Perfect Beginnings
Faith | Found a Christian by His Grace
Sarah | runningthroughthestorms
Ramona | Create With Joy

6/26/2015

Michelle | New Horizon Reviews
Shirley | A Mom After God’s Own Heart
Carrie | Farming On Faith
Amanda | The Talbert Report
Neysa | Lyric & Longhand
Ariel | The Librarian’s Bookshelf