Adriana Kraft

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On Tour: The King’s Command, by Rosemary Hayes @HayesRosemary #BookReview #HistoricalFiction #Huguenots #LouisXIV #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

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Book Information 

Book Title: The King’s Command: For God or Country
Author: Rosemary Hayes
Publication Date: July 3rd, 2023
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Page Length: 415
Genre: Historical Fiction

Blurb:

Sixteen-year-old Lidie Brunier has everything; looks, wealth, health and a charming suitor, but there are dark clouds on the horizon. Lidie and her family are committed Huguenots, and Louis XIV has sworn to stamp out this ‘false religion’ and make France a wholly Catholic country. Gradually Lidie’s comfortable life starts to disintegrate as Huguenots are stripped of all rights and the King sends his brutal soldiers into their homes to force them to become Catholics. Others around her break under pressure, but Lidie and her family refuse to convert. With spies everywhere and the ever-present threat of violence, they struggle on. Then a shocking betrayal forces Lidie’s hand and her only option is to try and flee the country, a decision that brings unimaginable hardship, terror and tragedy and changes her life forever.

“One of the very best historical novels I have ever read.” Sandra Robinson, Huguenot Ancestry Expert

Buy Links: 

This title is available to read with #KindleUnlimited.
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/bW6zGG
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CB4RH68S
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Kings-Command-God-Country-ebook/dp/B0CB4RH68S/
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Kings-Command-God-Country-ebook/dp/B0CB4RH68S/
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Kings-Command-God-Country-ebook/dp/B0CB4RH68S/

Review

Do you have French Huguenot ancestors? If so, have any stories come down to you about their experience – what they endured, why they chose the risk of leaving France, how they decided to come to the country where they eventually settled? My answer to the first question is yes, but the scant information that was passed down through family stories and recorded over a century ago turns out to contain many errors. I blogged about my own Huguenot history yesterday and hope you will take a peek at it: https://wp.me/p9O7pv-3sP

In The King’s Command, author Rosemary Hayes has brought us a thoroughly researched and detailed account of life for one Huguenot family in southwestern France. Her story opens in 1680, some five years before King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and required all protestants to convert to Catholicism: “One king, one country, one religion.” That the family are her direct ancestors and she has been able to visit the French town where they lived has added greatly to the richness and veracity of her fictionalized account.

I especially appreciated the author’s careful parsing of each step of the transition from respected freely worshipping tradesmen and professionals to a persecuted minority with no rights to property, profession, freedom of religion, or even life itself that took place in France over the decade of the 1680s and beyond.

The persecution and exodus were not a single event, although the crisis peaked in 1685. By opening her novel five years earlier, the author has succeeded in conveying  not only the gradual escalation of attacks and curtailment of rights that preceded the revocation, but also how news traveled, how families learned what was happening to others like them, how they first attempted to protect themselves and their assets, and how they began to consider whether to stay or flee. The peril and travails of her family in their escape is a story shared by thousands, many of whom did not make it.

The novel is well written, engaging, and rich with accurate historical detail. I found it easy to imagine my own ancestors, likely in a different region of France, gradually learning and observing those same changes and weighing their options as the depredations and dangers increased and came closer to home. A highly recommended read.  Adriana Kraft

About Rosemary Hayes:

Rosemary Hayes has written over fifty books for children and young adults. She writes  in different genres, from edgy teenage fiction (The Mark), historical fiction (The Blue Eyed Aborigine and Forgotten Footprints), middle grade fantasy (Loose Connections, The Stonekeeper’s Child and Break Out)  to chapter books for early readers and texts for picture books. Many of her books have won or been shortlisted for awards and several have been translated into different languages.

Rosemary has travelled widely but now lives in South Cambridgeshire. She has a background in publishing, having worked for Cambridge University Press before setting up her own company Anglia Young Books which she ran for some years. She has been a reader for a well-known authors’ advisory service and runs creative writing workshops for both children and adults.

Rosemary has recently turned her hand to adult fiction and her historical novel ‘The King’s Command’ is about the terror and tragedy suffered by the French Huguenots during the reign of Louis XIV.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.rosemaryhayes.co.uk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HayesRosemary

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rosemary-Hayes/e/B00NAPAPZC

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/80106.Rosemary_Hayes

Tour Schedule Page:  https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/08/blog-tour-the-kings-command-by-rosemary-hayes.html

Recent Release: The Earl’s Awakening, by Joy Lynn Fielding #LGBTQ #GayRomance #Regency #Review #Giveaway

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RECENT RELEASE

Book Title: The Earl’s Awakening

Author: Joy Lynn Fielding

Publisher: Extasy Books

Cover Artist: Martine Jardin

Release Date: September 8, 2023

Genre: Regency M/M romance

Tropes: Rake/bad boy romance

Themes: Learning to live, self-discovery.

Heat Rating: 5 flames

Length: 55 000 words/ 198 pages

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links

Extasy Books | Amazon US | Amazon UK

 

One glance, and his past life was history.

Blurb

Leander Talbot’s life changed forever when his wife died. He is now reluctantly venturing back into society, knowing that, as the Earl of Ockley, he must marry again to produce an heir. But he can’t bring himself to the sticking point. Instead, he spends his time evading the matchmaking mamas of the ton.

The dark and dangerous Duke of Arden is an infamous libertine. It is said that he seduces innocents, and there are even more sinister tales whispered of his predilections. Only the wild young blades who form his retinue know the truth, but he is shunned by all save those wishing to court notoriety.

A chance meeting brings Leander into Arden’s orbit. Ignoring the warnings about Arden’s intentions, Leander is drawn into a seductive world of sexual indulgence. There, he finds the freedom he craves from his overbearing family. By the time he suspects Arden might have ulterior motives, it may be too late to save his reputation—and his heart.

Excerpt

Leander sighed slightly. He had immersed himself in work and duty since Bella’s death, but it was only now he understood how removed from his contemporaries he had become. Most faces here were unfamiliar to him. Take the character in the corner—a dark complexion, his dress rich but careless in a way that proclaimed he cared little for the opinion of society. Leander was certain he had never set eyes on him, though the deference with which his circle of friends was treating him indicated that he was a man of some standing. He took the opportunity to ask the servant who brought him a glass of champagne.

“His Grace the Duke of Arden, my lord,” the man informed him.

The name was one with which Leander was familiar. It was a name with which all of London and some of the more enlightened provinces were familiar. Arden represented all that was decadent in the ton, his philandering ways extending far beyond opera dancers and actresses to ladies of quality. And it was not only widows or liaisons with married ladies, for it was said of him that he had ruined more than one young maiden. The number of duels that he had fought and won, the drunken orgies at which he presided, and his losses and gains at the gaming table had all assumed the proportions of legend. There were still darker things whispered about him. Only the coterie of wild young blades who formed his retinue knew the truth of these, but the intimations were there, and Arden remained unrecognised by all save those wishing to court notoriety.

Leander became aware that Arden was returning his gaze, his heavy-lidded eyes holding what appeared to be a gleam of amusement. As Leander watched, Arden raised his glass in a mocking salute before putting it to his lips and tossing back the contents.

Perhaps it was the champagne, perhaps it was the shock of realising that his acquaintances now viewed him as a prig. Whatever the reason, some demon prompted Leander to his feet. In defiance of all proper behaviour, he crossed the room to Arden and introduced himself.

Those dark eyebrows raised briefly, a noble head was inclined, and one of the young men clustered around Arden was moving from his seat, offering it to Leander.

“So you’re Ockley.” The duke’s aristocratic fingers curved elegantly around the stem of his glass and his dark eyes surveyed Leander as he sat. “I didn’t think this to be your sort of place. I’d thought you more of a White’s man.”

The provocation was there. It was well known that Arden had been pre-emptively blackballed by the respectable club lest any member lose their faculties and propose him for membership.

“Indeed?” Leander said stiffly, his somewhat lamentable temper aroused by Arden’s dismissal of him as a priggish bore. “And I thought you a legend, sir. A cautionary tale used by protective parents to keep young cubs in line.”

Reaction rippled through the assembled ranks, but Leander’s gaze was on Arden’s face. A smile touched his lips as he looked at Leander. “A palpable hit, Ockley,” he murmured. His voice was rich and soft, with a hint of steel that intrigued Leander.

“Lea.” Henry’s voice broke in. He was not precisely floored, but he was foxed enough to ignore all dictates of manners as he tugged insistently at his brother’s arm. Knowing that if he resisted, Henry would only become more forceful, Leander allowed himself to be raised to his feet. His brother had been the same since nursery days—when he wanted something, he wanted it now, and it was usually attention he craved. Leander directed a small bow towards Arden, whose smile had widened at the spectacle Henry was making of them both, before following his brother’s urgent strictures to leave immediately.

Review

I’m always eager to pick up a new LGBTQ romance set in the regency era, where we know such relationships had to be clandestine, deeply hidden, highly cloaked. Having read (and re-read, more times than I can count) all of Jane Austen’s groundbreaking novels from the era, I’m already steeped in what such a novel should look like, and The Earl’s Awakening did not disappoint.

Where the novel departs from the period regency, of course, is in its open bedroom – or ballroom, or card room, or wherever the participants engage in their flaming debauchery and wild orgies.

The novel maintains a single point of view throughout, that of Leander, Earl of Ockley. As the novel opens, his behavior in every aspect conforms with what is expected from an upstanding and desirable male member of the Ton. Having recently lost his beloved wife, he honors the needs of his lady mother and plans to re-marry to provide her with the required heir – just not at present.

Seeds of his dramatic transformation are sown in Chapter Two when he first meets the Duke of Arden at a London gaming salon and notices, in spite of himself, that “his voice was rich and soft, with a hint of steel that intrigued Leander.”

Leander’s internal struggle to deny his urgings and prevent himself from acting upon them is richly and authentically conveyed. At nearly every turning point, he responds with action – powerless to resist that hint of steel – then tries to deny that what has occurred satisfies his deepest desires. The many explicit scenes that propel his journey forward are crafted with superb eroticism.

Is he being played for a fool by a rake who intends merely to ruin him? As he comes to recognize and claim what he truly wants, will he find himself rejected? Afficionados of gay erotic romance will relish the journey and find its conclusion highly satisfying.

Five Stars.

About the Author

Joy Lynn Fielding lives in a small English market town, where she indulges her passions for vintage aircraft, horse riding and gardening (though not all at the same time).

Joy tends to wax lyrical about the fascinating facts she discovers during her research for books. Thankfully, she has a very patient Labrador who has a gift for looking interested in what she’s saying while he waits for the food to arrive.

Social Media Links

Blog/Website | Facebook | Newsletter Sign-up

 

Giveaway

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Celtic Fervour: Series by Nancy Jardine @nansjar #5Stars #Review #Historical #Fiction #Celtic

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I downloaded the first book in this series because I have Scottish/Celtic roots in my ancestry, and I’m always curious to know what my ancestors’ life was like. I was vaguely aware that Rome had attempted conquest of much of what is now Scotland but then had withdrawn to Hadrian’s Wall by the time they began its construction early in the second century AD. I had no idea how far north the conquest actually advanced, and I knew very little about how my ancestors might have lived in Roman Britannia.

Since retiring from teaching elementary students, Scottish author Nancy Jardine has immersed herself in research and publications about the Roman Empire and Roman Britannia. In this five-book Celtic Fervour series, she has expertly woven both historical characters and the few actual events about which some detail is known into her fictional saga. We experience Iron Age tribal life through her fictional Brigante warriors and their families, from 71 to 89 AD – the era when the Roman general and governor Agricola tried unsuccessfully to conquer all of what is now Scotland.

The Brigante tribe itself is real and was quite large. When the Romans began advancing north, the Brigantes covered Eastern Britannia between the firth of Forth in the north and the Humber estuary in the south. Their lives, their culture, their beliefs and their struggles came to life and pulled me in throughout the entire series.

The series has already received high praise from many authors of historical fiction. I highly recommend this read for any who love historical fiction grounded in facts, and especially any who are curious about Roman Britain.

Five Stars.

SERIES BUY LINK

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D313CWC

Free to read on KU

 

My Review: #5Stars for the Lydiard Chronicles, by Elizabeth St. John @ElizStJohn #HistoricalFiction #UKHistory #KU

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When you read historical fiction that’s anchored in real events, do you ever wonder where your own ancestors were at that point in time, what their role was, what they were doing? My husband and I each have UK and European ancestors, and we’ve been able to follow some of their lines back farther than we’d ever hoped. A distant relative traced one my husband’s lines all the way back to England’s Edward III, through Edward’s second son, John of Gaunt, and John’s mistress, Katherine Swynford (later his wife).

So when the two of us delve into books about UK royalty during the War of the Roses, the Tudor era, and beyond, we’re reading about (very) distant relatives, and yes, we wonder where our related ancestors were and how they fit in with those events.

MY REVIEW

When I downloaded The Lady of the Tower, by Elizabeth St. John, I didn’t know what to expect. I was immediately pulled into 17th century England. The opening lines bring us a woman entering the Tower of London, uncertain what will happen to her next. I feared for her and kept reading. You will, too.

It turns out that the Lady who looks to be in peril is Lucy St. John, a descendent of the St. John family who owned the Lydiard estate, now preserved as Lydiard Park, some 85 miles east of London. The author is a present day descendent of that same family.

In her three-book series, aptly named The Lydiard Chronicles, Elizabeth St. John traces four generations of family members who, as relatives of Elizabeth I, were close to that court and continued to be connected to royalty throughout the 17th century during the reigns of James I/VI, Charles I, and later Charles II. During the civil war and the Commonwealth era, family members took opposite sides, with sometimes tragic results.

The works are thoroughly researched, and the major events are historically accurate. The prose is so engaging and the details rich that I was compelled to stay in in the 17th century through all three books in her series. I didn’t want to set them down, and I know I will go back and re-read them.

Highly recommend.

Five Stars.

BUY LINKS

The Lady of the Tower

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523417889/

The Lydiard Chronicles

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GRDP6QP/

PORTRAITS

Author Elizabeth St. John has graciously sent me the following three photographs of portraits several major characters in the Lydiard series. The portraits were commissioned by their older brother, John St. John, for a family Polyptych which now hangs in St. Mary’s Church, Lydiard.

The Lady St. Johns (Lucy St. John is on the left, Barbara next to her.

The Original Polyptych

John St. John, painted when he had just acquired his title of Baronet in 1611:

The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C. R. Monk @pcrmonk: Review and Reflections #Huguenot #HistoricalFiction #KU

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Both my husband and I have French Huguenot ancestors. Each of our mothers carried the original immigrant’s Huguenot surname, though anglicized. Not long after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, his mother’s ancestor emigrated from Normandy, France, to the Northern Neck of Virginia. He arrived sometime between 1687 and 1693. It is thought he may have come through England, possibly via Jersey in the Channel Islands. We have no family stories about this trip.

My mother’s ancestor arrived somewhat later. Along with his two brothers, he landed in Philadelphia in 1752, having set sail from Antwerp, Belgium. The story we have is that the boys’ mother had fled France with her family many years earlier and settled in Geneva, Switzerland. After her death, the three sons, by then adults, chose to come to the Colonies.

We have no records of the financial situation of either family at the time they left France or arrived in the Colonies. My mother’s ancestors, like many Huguenots, were well educated and quickly found jobs teaching in the Pennsylvania Dutch region west of Philadelphia. My husband’s ancestor must have come with resources. Though he had previously married in France, he fairly quickly married a Virginia woman. By the time he died some 35 years later, he had become the owner of a vast tobacco plantation in Westmoreland County, which he purchased from from Catherine Culpeper and her husband, Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax. His neighbors included the Washingtons, the Monroes, and the Lees.

So it was with great personal interest that each of us read a fairly recent release, The Huguenot Chronicles, by Paul C.R. Monk. The fictional story is, according to its description, “based on true events.” I do not know if this means it is true of a particular family, or more generally true. I certainly believe that every event reported in the series actually happened, over and over, to countless Protestants of conscience during the years preceding and following the edict’s revocation.

This series is a chilling story about a treacherous and hazardous period of history. Thousands of French Protestants did not survive the harsh turnabout that took place in 1685. Thousands more converted to Roman Catholicism to save their lives and those of their families.

As I read these books, I was constantly imagining the experience and journey of my ancestor. Did that family, like the heroine, have a long trek on foot through France to reach the refuge offered by Switzerland? Did they, like her, travel with a small band of refugees, walking by night, hiding by day? Since I do not know when my ancestor’s mother fled with her three sons or how old they were then, I wonder how much her experience paralleled the travails so vividly brought forth in Monk’s work.

My husband’s ancestor likely travelled a different route; much of Normandy is not far from England. Perhaps he, along with other refugees, was able to cross the channel furtively and proceed with less threat from there. It is not clear from existing records whether his first wife had died in France, or whether he left her behind. Records do show that three children of that union reached adulthood in France. Perhaps, as with some of the families in Monk’s story, his wife was unwilling to make the sacrifice and chose instead to remain in France with her children and convert.

Can the fictional family in Monk’s series possibly have a happy ending? Odds are definitely against them; but so were the odds against safe and successful flight from persecution in France for my ancestor and my husband’s. Were this not true for thousands more, the early colonies and our infant nation would not have benefitted so greatly from the significant contributions of Huguenot immigrants.

In short, I found this trilogy of books to be well-told, gripping, and realistic. I highly recommend it, especially to anyone with Huguenot ancestry. More generally, it offers a vivid picture of prejudice, hatred, and power in a tumultuous period of history that many Americans know little about.

Five Stars.

Buy Link:

https://www.amazon.com/Huguenot-Chronicles-Merchants-historical-fiction-ebook/dp/B09J3RYL5G/

Read for Free on Kindle Unlimited

 

My Review: Code Girls, by Liza Mundy @lizamundy #WWII #WomensHistory #Review #KU

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Code Girls, by Liza Mundy, is the third book in my current series of book reviews featuring the role of women in the WWII Allied victory. The first two books – The Atomic City Girls, and Daughters of the Night Sky – are historical fiction based very closely on actual events and characters.

Code Girls is not fiction, even though through most of its pages it reads as smoothly and dramatically as any novel. Following interviews with more than twenty participants and years of meticulous research, much of the data having spent decades as classified and unavailable, Liza Mundy has crafted the story of over 10,000 American women, most freshly out of college, who secretly worked during the war to break the German and Japanese military codes. These women saved thousands of lives and in no small part helped to bring down first Germany, and then Japan.

They – and their superiors – could tell no one about it for decades.

In November, 1941, letters began going out to select women who were seniors at several of the nation’s elite colleges. The letters invited the women to an interview, where the questions simply were whether they liked crossword puzzles and if they were engaged to be married. If they answered appropriately, they were invited to further meetings where they learned about “cryptanalysis” and were told never to utter that word to anyone else. They entered on-campus training in code breaking – again, about which they could tell no one, not even family members. Those who passed the rigorous training were the earliest recruits to facilities being readied for them in Washington, D.C., by both the Navy and the Army.

Over the ensuing years, recruitment criteria broadened, but secrecy, the ability to identify patterns, and having a bright mind remained paramount. Mundy’s account traces the initial American codebreaking developments between the wars, then proceeds through the war years chronologically. By weaving together historical data and material from her interviews, she provides a window into the mundane as well as the dramatic. We learn what interaction was like in the cramped working quarters; how the women were treated by outsiders – who could never know how technical and important their work was – how they spent their relatively few free hours; and, for many of them, how their lives unfolded after the war.

Most of them remained unacknowledged and unsung for the rest of their lives. Some family members never learned what a mother – an aunt – a grandmother – had accomplished, how many ships were sunk because the Navy “happened” to be in the right place at the right time, due to intelligence provided by the codebreakers.

I found this book to be both informative and very engaging, and I highly recommend it.

BUY LINK

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316439894/

Code Girls is available exclusively at Amazon
and is currently on Kindle Unlimited

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