Eloise Kelly, an American working on her dissertation in London, has hit one dead end after another in her research of secret agents during the French Revolution. There is plenty of information about the Scarlett Pimpernel and the Purple Gentian, two English spies who thwarted the French and saved many a man from Madame Guillotine. The identities of the two famous Englishmen were eventually found out, but Eloise is most interested in The Pink Carnation, who has remained anonymous.

Eloise eventually gets a lucky break when she meets Mrs. Selwick-Alderly, a decedent of Lord Richard Selwick of The Purple Gentian fame. She is given the chance to read through letters from the year 1803 from Selwick-Alderly’s archives, but Colin Selwick, Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s nephew, is less than thrilled with this American scholar snooping through the families private papers.    

The letters tell the tale of Amy, a young half-English half-French women who’s father, a French aristocrat, is murdered during the war. Amy has been safely staying with family in England since she was five and has grand illusions (along with her young cousin Jane) of joining the famous spy league to help overthrow Napoleon and reinstate French aristocrats to power. After her brother sends word for her to join him in France when the war is over, Amy is anxious to go. With her cousin Jane and Miss Gwen, an unmarried friend of the family as their escort, they hop on a boat to cross the Channel.

Unknown to Amy and Jane, their shipmate is none other than Lord Richard Selwick, aka The Purple Gentian. After a mutual attraction, Richard tells Amy of his work with Napoleon Bonaparte  (which is all just a ruse for his spying activities) but Amy interprets his involvement with Napolean as being a traitor. And so the love slash hate relationship begins.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig is a clever novel written with humour and wit. Shifting back and forth between present day Eloise, who is trying to figure out the true identiy of The Pink Carnation and 1803, with Amy and Richard playing a cat and mouse game.

I especially enjoyed the banter between Amy and Richard. The sexual tension between these two characters was smokin’ hot, with one of the scenes towards the end of the book borderline Harloquen romance (you know, the kind of book your Mom would read, then hide in a box down in the basement). It may bring a blush to even the most hardened romance readers.

Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries, describes The Secret History of the Pink Carnation as a “genre-bending read - a dash of chick lit with a historical twist.” While I agree with that statement, I would have to say that the book was way more chick lit than I expected, with the characters in the 1800’s who spoke more or less the same as present day. This didn’t deter from my overall enjoyment of the book, but if you expect them to speak like the characters from Pride and Prejudice, then you’ll be sorely disappointed.

For another view, check out this review posted a few years back from Bookfool - jeez, how long has she been blogging?  Also, Katherine reviewed it recently on her blog. Or, if you’ve already read the book and didn’t like it half as much as I did, you may want to read this funny post titled The Purple Gentian Sucks. In the meantime, I am anxious to pick up the next in the series, The Masque of the Black Tulip.

By the way, I’ll be heading down to Washington DC this holiday weekend, not only to visit family but also to celebrate my ten year wedding anniversary. See you guys back in blogland next week!

First, I just want to say thank you for all of you kind words, comments and e-mails on my last post. It has been truly hard for my entire family to have to say goodbye to my Mother, who was a wonderful woman. My Mother’s funeral was held on Friday and it was a beautiful memorial to such a great person.

Now, I’m happy to announce the winner of Nefertiti by Michelle Moran.

Congratulations go to Anna from Diary of an Eccentric!

Please e-mail me Anna at wordblog(at)verizon(dot)net with your address and the publisher will send you the book in the mail.

For more information about Nefertiti and it’s author, check out the below Q&A: 

You say that your love-affair with Ancient Egypt began on an archaeological dig in Israel when your team unearthed a lapis stone scarab. Can you say a little more about your journey from archaeology to novel writing?

Certainly! I would say that my journey into the world of history actually began with the PBS television program Reading Rainbow. I was eight years old when the program featured a children’s book about dinosaurs. On the screen, a group of school children were huddled around a dinosaur bone, dressed in khakis and safari hats. They were squatting over a gigantic femur and tenderly cleaning off the dirt with their brushes. “That’s what I want to do,” I announced, and when my mother signed me up for a children’s course in paleontology at the Natural History Museum, I knew I wanted to join a dig someday.  

Twelve years later I found myself sitting in Anthropology 101, and when the professor mentioned that she was looking for volunteers who would like to join a dig in Israel, I practically trampled the other students in my haste. Visions of artifacts danced in my head. After all, it was Israel, and who knew what we might find? For the three weeks before the orientation meeting, I agonized over what I should bring. Shorts, of course, and heavy boots. But what about brushes? Were there special brushes that archaeologists used, or would the ones from Home Depot be okay? I finally settled on brushes from Home Depot, and when it came time for packing, I lovingly placed them in protective wrap and imagined all the priceless artifacts they’d soon be dusting. 

For weeks we dug ditches, shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows and hauling the barrels of dirt down a hill. Over that summer I think I lost ten pounds, and I know that I gained some serious muscle. Plus, I never did get to use my brushes. Only seasoned archaeologists were allowed to do the delicate work. But when our team discovered an Egyptian scarab that proved the ancient Israelites had once traded with Egyptians, I began to wonder who had owned that scarab, and what had possessed them to undertake the long journey north from their homeland to the fledgling country of Israel.

On my flight back to America I stopped in Berlin, and with a newfound appreciation for Egyptology, I visited the museum where Nefertiti’s limestone bust was being housed. The graceful curve of Nefertiti’s neck, her arched brows, and the faintest hint of a smile were captivating to me. Who was this woman with her self-possessed gaze and stunning features? I wanted to know more about Nefertiti’s story, but when I began the research into her life, it proved incredibly difficult. She’d been a woman who’d inspired powerful emotions when she lived over three thousand years ago, and those who had despised her had attempted to erase her name from history. Yet even in the face of such ancient vengeance, some clues remained.

As a young girl Nefertiti had married a Pharaoh who was determined to erase the gods of Egypt and replace them with a sun-god he called Aten. It seemed that Nefertiti’s family allowed her to marry this impetuous king in the hopes that she would tame his wild ambitions. What happened instead, however, was that Nefertiti joined him in building his own capital of Amarna where they ruled together as god and goddess. But the alluring Nefertiti had a sister who seemed to keep her grounded, and in an image of her found in Amarna, the sister is standing off to one side, her arms down while everyone else is enthusiastically praising the royal couple. From this image, and a wealth of other evidence, I tried to recreate the epic life of an Egyptian queen whose husband was to become known as the Heretic King.

Writing the novel took years of research. I wanted to be sure that when I wrote Nefertiti I was extremely accurate, down to the color of the palace tiles and shape of the women’s beads. At the same time, however, I wanted to be careful not to weigh the story down in too much detail. There needed to be the same sense of urgency, danger, and passion as filled Nefertiti’s world.

Egypt in 1351 BCE is a setting that feels very “foreign” and exotic to most of us, but you made this period come alive in your very sensuous descriptions of villas, palaces, gardens, clothes, and even cosmetics. What was your biggest challenge in evoking this setting for your readers?

My biggest challenge in evoking 18^thDynasty Egypt was not being able to include all of the information that I had researched. There are so many great resources for studying ancient Egypt, and I was fortunate enough to be in contact with several Egyptologists who were available to answers any questions I had which couldn’t be found in books. But it was a real challenge not to include everything I knew about the Amarna period. One example would be how Nefertiti’s daughter had her own perfume line. To me, this was fascinating. It meant there were celebrity figures even three thousand years ago who young women at court wanted to emulate. But this fact simply had no place in the storyline, so I didn’t include it. Several wonderful biographies exist on Nefertiti, and my job was to remember that I was trying to write a compelling fictional narrative, not another biography.

At the recent North American Historical Novel Society Conference, you mentioned a previous novel, published in Germany, about the biblical Jezebel. How was writing about Jezebel different from exploring Nefertiti’s world? Did Jezebel help pave the way for you?

I wrote Jezebelwhile I was in college and was interested in the Iron Age II artifacts, and as I began researching into that time period, I came across the story of Jezebel, who had been a queen of Israel in 800 BC. The historical Jezebel is the narrator of my novel, and she brought into Israel (from her father’s Kingdom of Tyre) the cult of Baal and his consort Asherah. The book emphasizes the difference between Jezebel’s matrilineal kingdom, where land and inheritance was passed down from mother to daughter, and the kingdom of her husband, which was predominantly patriarchal. The novel is essentially a look at why Jezebel came to be such a hated female figure in the Bible. Jezebel was strong, cunning, and educated, then brought to a culture that emphasized female demureness and passivity. It’s no surprise that she was remembered with such hatred. After all, she had come from a land where women painted their eyes with kohl and dressed like the Egyptians, then became ruler of a kingdom where none of that was acceptable. Her mother had instilled in her the values of a culture that believed women could rule in their own right, and when she arrived in Israel with that attitude, she made quite a few enemies. Her real downfall, however, lay in her desire to change the religion of ancient Israel. Jezebel had grown up worshiping a goddess called Asherah, and a god she would have called by the affectionate term Baal Zebul (Baal the Exalted, who wore a helmet of horns on his head). But there is nothing more dangerous for a ruler than trying to change what her people believe in, and like Nefertiti, Jezebel failed miserably.

The writing and research for Jezebel wasn’t much different from the writing and research required for Nefertiti. What was different, however, was my publishing experience. The experience of having a novel published aboard versus the United States is vastly different. When I sold my book to Germany, I was never contacted by an editor and I had no idea where in the publishing process my novel was at any given time. One day, about a year later, a book arrived in the mail, and it was Jezebel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read a single word, and for all I knew they had translated a completely different book and slapped my name on it (friends of mine who speak German later informed it is indeed Jezebel). But, for the most part, this is what happens when an author sells their work abroad. The experience of selling Nefertiti in the United States, however, was completely different. My editor kept me up to date on almost every aspect of Nefertiti’s journey through publication, and for nearly a year we were in contact several times a week (via email) sharing news and updates.

 Do you have a new book in the works?

Currently, I’m finishing the stand-alone sequel to Nefertiti. It will be in bookstores September 2008 and is titled The Heretic Queen. It follows the destiny of Mutny’s daughter, Nefertari, and traces her transformation from a wild palace child to the strikingly beautiful and intelligent queen of Ramesses the Great.

 Finally, in June 2008 my third novel is due for release. It is titled Cleopatra’s Daughter and follows that young woman’s incredible voyage from Egypt to Rome, from the side of her murdered mother to being held captive in the household of Augustus Caesar.

Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety. It shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations. Beth could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and Mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come. She did not rebuke Jo with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself. She could not say, “I’m glad to go,” for life was very sweet for her. She could only sob out, “I try to be willing,” while she held fast to Jo, as the first bitter wave of this great sorrow broke over them together.

- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

 

Little Women was my Mother’s favorite book. On Saturday evening, after a four month long illness, my Mother died peacefully. She was exactly one month shy of her 66th birthday. She was a wonderful Mother, a caring wife, a fantastic grandmother, a good friend, an award winning quilter and a life-long reader. She faced death with a dignity very much like that of Beth March in Little Women, and, even though it was hard for me to say goodbye, I am so happy that she is finally at peace.

I will be taking a week long blogging hiatus while we prepare for my Mother’s funeral. Even though originally I was going to post about my giveaway of the book Nefertiti this week, I am postponing it until next Monday, June 30th. 

Peace.

Back in March I joined up on the Once Upon a Time challenge, hosted by the very clever Carl V.  I quickly came up with my list of six books to read by this time in June (you can see my six choices here). Well, three months later I only ended up finishing three of the books, but found that each one was well worth reading. My favorite by far was The Book of Lost Things, but I also really enjoyed Tuck Everlasting and The Goose Girl. Thank you again Carl for hosting such a great challenge and I look forward to this fall for RIP!

For more about The Book of Lost Things and all things fairy tale-ish, make sure to check out The Bookworm Carnival over at Nymeth’s blog!

My reading has been a bit slow this week, since I’ve been focusing a lot of my time on an on-line digital scrapbooking class I’m taking that will help sharpen my skill set in Photoshop (it is a four week course). So far I’ve created a couple layouts and am really excited to learn some new techniques! In the below layout, I learned how to change a color photo into a sepia photo and be able to erase some of the sepia overlay to let the color of Leah’s hat peek through! It really is a neat technique.

Or this layout, where we were challenged to create a four photo layout about ourselves. I opted to write about a few of my favorite things in life and am pleased with the results.

Of course, I didn’t neglect reading altogether and picked up Baby Proof by Emily Giffin at the library. I am reading it for my book club meeting next month, of which Nicole is a member, although I don’t think my review of Baby Proof will be quite as glowing as her review, since I’m struggling through it. Hmmm, maybe the last half will be a little better?

Oh, and don’t forget that you still have time to enter my giveaway of the novel Nefertiti by Michelle Moran. Make sure to leave a comment on this post to enter!

EXCELLENT!

It’s not very often that I start a review with the word “excellent” but in this case I just can’t resist. After reading Nefertiti, a fast paced and utterly absorbing historical fiction novel written by Michelle Moran, I just new that this was a winner. The story is of two sisters, Nefertiti and Mutnodjmet, who each play a part in a high stakes political game over 3,500 years ago in ancient Egypt. Nefertiti has been chosen to marry the Pharoah Amunhotep, a hot-tempered, unstable ruler. It is the hope that Nefertiti can temper her husband and help him avoid any political mistakes. Nefertiti though is ambicious and placates her husband when he talks of forsaking the Egyptian God Amun and worshiping the sun God, Aten. They move to a new city, which they plan to build with the use of their Army, temples to Aten and statues of themselves. In the meantime, her younger sister Mutnodjmet is used by her father as a spy who ultimately compromises her own beliefs to preserve Nefertiti’s place as the next queen of Egypt.

The novel itself is atmospheric and descriptive.   

She looked at herself in the mirror as Thutmose came up behind her. He raised the flat-topped crown so all of us could see it, then fit the burden tightly around Nefertiti’s head. No one else could have worn it. It had been designed for her, tall and slender with an asp ready to spit poison into her enemies’ eyes. Nefertiti turned around, and if I had been a peasant in the fields, I would have thought I was staring into the face of a goddess.

No doubt there will be many comparisons between this book and another well known historical fiction novel, The Other Boleyn Girl (you can see my review here) most likely due to the ambitious nature of both Ann Boleyn and Nefertiti, and yet this novel stands on it’s own as a great piece of fiction. What I loved about this book, and realize that only a skilled writer could pull off, is the character of Nefertiti. Yes, she is portrayed as a power-hungry, hardened, dare I say “bitchy” woman who will do anything to retain the crown, and yet there is a vulnerability to her that makes you see that yes, like the rest of us, she is just human. In the end, even though the author portrayed Nefertiti in not the most flattering light, I was sympathetic to her character and found myself saddened at the moment of her death. Now that is good writing!

On a side note, as I was reading this book I came upon this picture of Angelina Jolie over at Hooked on Houses and immediately thought that the picture has a striking similarity to the book cover. Could Nefertiti have been reincarnated into Angelina?

Michelle Moran is realeasing her next novel, The Heretic Queen, this September and will follow up with Cleopatra’s Daughter in 2009. Be sure to check out her website for more information. She also has a wonderful section on her site full of photographs of her travels, which include famous Egyptian artifacts. Also, check out Iliana’s post about the book and her trip to Berlin, where she actually got to see the bust of Nefertiti! 

Now for the giveaway - if this novel sounds interesting to you and you would like to win a copy of the book, please leave a comment here by midnight EST time on Monday, June 23rd and you will automatically be entered to win a copy of Nefertiti. For an even better chance to win, post about this contest on your own blog (linking back to this post) and your name will be entered twice! I will announce the winner on Tuesday the 24th and will post a Q&A session with Michelle Moran at that time. Good luck!

I really enjoy historical fiction, so when I got Nefertiti in the mail I just couldn’t wait to jump in. I will be posting my review of this book next week, along with a giveaway, so make sure to stop on by!

Since I showed a picture of one of my kitties yesterday, I figured I would post a picture of the other one. So sitting next to a copy of Dedication, which I received from Simon & Schuster, is cat number two named Dumpling. She is a beautiful cat, but unlike Howard, is not very nice. Kind of like an old antique - pretty to look at, but NO touching! Anyway, Dedication is written by the two women who wrote The Nanny Diaries, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This one sound pretty good too! Anyway, check out what Dedication is all about (and even read an excerpt on the website).

As I’m wrapping up my Book Booty series (ARGGGH, I’m all outta booty Mateys - sorry, I couldn’t resist) I figured I would include my Weekly Geek post also. This week Is “Photo Week” where we can post photos of anything bookish. For the last few years, my husband has been using one of our bedrooms in our home as an office. It is a nice size room, with a full bathroom attached. Recently we decided to convert this room into a guest bedroom/office and clean it out in the process.

Here is the before picture (keep in mind it also became our dump n’ split room, where we would dump our junk and run out really quick)! Since I’m a mother of two and in my mid-thirties, I thought it was high time that we grew up and got rid of the junk room once and for all!
 

I know, pretty bad, right? After some fresh paint, cleaning up and our new pull out couch, the room has been transformed into a space that I just love.

OK, so my husband has actually cleaned up his area next to (or on for that matter) his desk, but that is something he will be tackling this weekend. My daughter, the ham that she is, insisted that she be in the picture. With the recessed lights my husband installed, that comfy couch is my new favorite place to READ (see, I told ya I’d get something bookish in there)!

For some more Weekly Geek photos, check out these cool sites!

I know, two posts in one day? I’m just trying to wrap up this little series so I can tie in my Weekly Geeks post before the end of the week! Back to the books…

The folks over at Picador wanted to send me a copy of Rules for Saying Goodbye, and I just couldn’t say no! From the website:

In the world of Kate Taylor, heroine of Rules for Saying Goodbye, pleasure and melancholy are close neighbors–like the summer hats and lobster boilers squashed together in the tiny closet of her Manhattan apartment. In this hilarious, bittersweet story, we follow young Kate from her girlhood in Fresno California, through a career at a chilly New England prep school, and on to life in Manhattan, where she finds a sometimes dissipated, sometimes glamorous life of fourteen-dollar cocktails, empty cupboards, and extravagantly unsuitable men.

In this witty and affecting debut, the real-life Katherine Taylor chronicles the moment when you stop waiting for things to happen, and go in search of them yourself.

When the book came in, I was thrilled to also find Out Stealing Horses in the same package. 

Out Stealing Horses has been embraced across the world as a classic, a novel of universal relevance and power. Panoramic and gripping, it tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he’s out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss, and in the precise, irresistible prose of a newly crowned master of fiction.  

You can read more about Out Stealing Horses at Ready Steady Book.

Two VERY different books, yet don’t they both sound intriguing?

I figured it was about time to sneak a photo of one of my cats in these posts, so here is Howard, my lovable yet oh-so-annoying boy. And yes, his one ear is deformed, but don’t mention it because he’s a little sensitive (actually, he suffered a hematoma a few years back and now we lovingly call it Howie’s bum ear).

I got a copy of Stone Creek from Book Club Girl (you don’t know about Book Club Girl? Tsk tsk)! Stop on by her very informative blog sometime. As described at the HarperCollins site:

In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.

Danny, a young widower, still grieves for his late wife, but for the sake of his five-year-old son, Caleb, he knows he must move on. Alone in her summer house, Lily has left her workaholic husband, Paul, to his long hours and late nights back in the city. In Stone Creek, she can yearn in solitude for the treasure she’s been denied: a child.

What occurs when Lily and Danny meet is immediate and undeniable—despite Lily being ten years older and married. But ultimately it is little Caleb’s sadness and need that will tip the scales, upsetting a precarious balance between joy and despair, between what cannot happen. . and what must.

An unforgettable novel of tremendous emotional heft, Stone Creek brilliantly illuminates how the powers of love and loss transform the human heart.

Now, for something a little lighter, I got The Next Thing on My List, again from the very nice people at Three Rivers Press.  

From the Amazon.com website:

June Parker’s life is meandering along until a freak car accident leaves Marissa, her 24-year-old passenger, dead and June wracked with guilt. June discovers a list Marissa had been keeping of 25 things she wanted to do by the time she turned 25. After a run-in with Marissa’s brother, June resolves to complete the list. Kissing a total stranger and throwing away her scale prove far easier than pitching an idea at work or changing someone’s life. But June approaches the list with aplomb, daring to speak up about being passed over for a manager position, and becoming a Big Sister to a quiet, studious Latina teen named DeeDee. But when June uncovers a secret of DeeDee’s, she realizes changing someone else’s life might involve changing her own as well. Clever and winning, Smolinski’s novel will have readers rooting for June as they eagerly turn the pages to keep up with her progress on the list. 

According the the author’s site, the movie rights to for The Next Thing on My List have been picked up by New Line Cinema. I just love reading books that are going to be turned into movies!

Before I start discussing those three pretty books in the picture below, let me just direct a couple of you to this post I wrote in January entitled FREE BOOKS! A few of you asked me how I’ve been so lucky to have gotten all these books recently, so just read through that old post to find out how you too can get books in the mail. Make sure to check out the comments too, since a lot of bloggers had insights as to how they obtain advance reader copies and free books. Also, Eva wrote an entire post on the subject - make sure to check out her suggestions too. Now, back to the booty…

Ah, finally, a picture of a stack of books, all courtesy of Three Rivers Press. Don’t they look pretty sitting on my new patio furniture (sorry, I just had to show it off to someone)! The books, from top to bottom, are as follows:

First off is The Spiritualist by Megan Chance. Already reviewed over at Book Escape, The Spiritualist is a suspensful story of murder and the spirit world. Check out more information over at the author’s website.

Then there’s A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans, which based on this review over at Entertainment Weekly might just be a perfect addition to my RIP challenge this fall. Want to learn more? Click on the author’s website for additional information.

Lastly is The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson. Originally titled Crossed Bones on this advance reader copy, you can read a great review of this book over at BookPage. Sounds pretty intersting, right? There is more information over at Johnson’s website.

I’ve always been a big fan of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (click on the links to take a peek at my reviews of the first three books). I have been saving the fourth one to read this summer, in anticipation of the movie coming out in theaters this August.

Anyway, since I consider myself a fan of the author Ann Brashares, I feel lucky to have scored a copy of her first foray into adult fiction, The Last Summer (of You & Me). As described on Amazon.com:

Riley and Alice, two sisters now in their twenties, and as fiercely different as they are loyal, have spent every summer at their parents’ modest beach house on New York’s Fire Island. Each year, they return to the house and community they have known since they were children—and to Paul, the boy next door. But this summer marks a season of change: budding love and sexual interest, an illness, and a deep secret force all three to confront the increasing complexities of their lives and friendships.

With a book cover like that and a story that revolves around the summer season, it seems like this would be a natural addition to a big ol’ beach bag. Now if I could only find my flip flops and sunglasses…