Review: The Caged Graves by Dianne Salerni

From the Back Cover:

“In Catawissa, sometimes the dead don’t stay where you put them.” 

The year is 1867, and Verity Boone is returning to her birthplace, Catawissa, Pennsylvania. She knows that this small farm town will be a big change from Worcester, Massachusetts, where she’s spent most of her seventeen years, and she's ready to face the challenge. She looks forward to a joyful reunion with her father and, of course, to meeting Nate McClure, her future husband, face-to-face for the first time. 

But her homecoming isn't all she expected. Verity's father is awkward and distant, and there's no role for her in his household. Even Nate disappoints—their strained conversations are very unlike the easy exchange of letters that convinced Verity to accept his proposal. 

And a horrifying surprise awaits her. The graves of her mother and aunt are enclosed in iron cages just outside the local cemetery's walls, and Verity is determined to find out why. She hears rumors of grave robbers, hidden treasure, even witchcraft. Were the cages built to keep others out—or the dead in? Verity's search for the truth exposes the town’s closely guarded secrets, sheds light on some disturbing family history, and leads her into mortal danger.

My Thoughts:

This was a great young adult tale with a historical mystery twist on the popular fish-out-of-water theme, and it has a nice, subtle romance, which you don’t find too often in YA. Verity Boone leaves the bustle of city life in Worcester, Massachusetts to return to the rural town where she was born in Pennsylvania, where her father still lives, where a marriage arranged through correspondence awaits her, where there's a mystery surrounding her mother's tragic death, and where whispers of witchcraft, grave diggers, and buried treasure abound.

Blog Tour Review + Giveaway: The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf

From the Back Cover:

An explosive and daring debut novel set during the Enlightenment that tells the tale of a promising young surgeon-in-training whose study of anatomy is deeply complicated by his uncontrollable sadistic tendencies.

Meet Tristan Hart, a brilliant young man of means. The year is 1751, and Mr Hart leaves his Berkshire home for London to lodge with his father's friend, the novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding, and study medicine at the great hospital of University College. It will be a momentous year for the cultured and intellectually ambitious Mr Hart, who, as well as being a student of Locke and Descartes and a promising young physician, is also, alas, a psychopath. His obsession is the nature of pain, and preventing it during medical procedures. His equally strong and far more unpredictable obsession is the nature of pain, and causing it. Desperate to understand his own deviant desires before they derail his career and drive him mad, Tristan sifts through his childhood memories, memories that are informed by dark superstitions about faeries and goblins and shape-shifting gypsies. Will the new tools of the age-reason and science and scepticism-be enough to save him?

Unexpectedly funny, profoundly imaginative, and with a strange love story at its heart, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is a novel about the Enlightenment, the relationship between the mind and body, sex, madness, the nature of pain, and the existence of God.

Blog Tour Interview + Giveaway: Roses Have Thorns by Sandra Byrd

Please join me in welcoming author Sandra Byrd to Let Them Read Books! I have loved each of the novels in Sandra's Ladies-in-Waiting trilogy, and the final installment is the best of them all! If you're looking for a new take on the Tudors, one that sheds light on them from a different angle while keeping the story completely rooted in historical fact, this is the series for you! I'm thrilled to have Sandra here discussing her inspiration for Roses Have Thorns and the challenges she faced in writing about Elizabeth I. She's also brought along a copy of the book and a lovely necklace to give away to one of my lucky readers. Without further ado, here she is!

What kind of challenges did you face in writing a novel about such a well-known figure as Elizabeth I?

Because she is so well-known, people have, for the most part, already formed decided opinions about her.  I knew that some might disagree with me if they didn't see the Elizabeth they expected to see. So the trick was to stay true to what we really know about her - from primary sources and reliable secondary sources - but bring out an aspect of her personality that might not be often explored. Although Elizabeth was clearly demonstrative, and got angry or jealous, I don't think that happened as often as it is portrayed in books and movies.  Biographer Alison Plowden said, "Elizabeth had learnt to conceal her innermost feelings before she grew out of her teens, and as she grew older she either 'patiently endured or politely dissembled' her greatest griefs of mind and body."

Teaser Tuesday: The Caged Graves

Today I've got a teaser from a spooky young adult historical I'm currently reading. Verity Boone leaves the bustle of city life in Worcester, Massachusetts to return to the rural town where she was born in Pennsylvania, where her father still lives, where an arranged marriage awaits her, where there's a mystery surrounding her mother's tragic death, and where whispers of witchcraft and buried treasure abound. This is from page 80:

     "'Tis the Devil's child," he yelled, his fist still raised. Alarmed, Verity let go of Cissy and moved between him and the baby. "The child has no earthly father. My daughters carry the family stain. This one lay with the Devil in the Shades and bears his child!"
     "No, Eli, she lay with Tommy Hicks behind Cahill's granary," Aunt Clara snapped. "Half the town knows that, including Tommy's wife."

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that others can add the book to their TBR Lists!

Got a teaser?

Leave a comment with a link so I can visit!

Blog Tour Review: Blood Between Queens by Barbara Kyle

From the Back Cover:

Following her perilous fall from a throne she’d scarcely owned to begin with, Mary, Queen of Scots, has fled to England, hoping her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, will grant her asylum. But now Mary has her sights on the English crown, and Elizabeth enlists her most trusted subjects to protect it.

Justine Thornleigh is delighting in the thrill of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to her family’s estate when the festivities are cut short by Mary’s arrival. To Justine’s surprise, the Thornleighs appoint her to serve as a spy in Mary’s court. But bearing the guise of a lady-in-waiting is not Justine’s only secret. The weight of her task is doubled by fears of revealing to her fiancé that she is in truth the daughter of his family’s greatest rival. Duty-bound, Justine must sacrifice love as she navigates a deadly labyrinth of betrayal that could lead to the end of Elizabeth’s fledgling reign…

Compelling and inventive, Blood Between Queens artfully blends history’s most intriguing figures with unforgettable characters, bringing to dazzling life the fascinating Tudor era.

My Thoughts:

I finally got a chance to read a Barbara Kyle novel, and now I see why so many of my friends are fans. Though Blood Between Queens is the first of her novels I've read, it is the fifth installment in her popular Thornleigh series, but fortunately, not having read the previous novels was not an issue, as the story is designed to stand completely on its own. In fact, the things that happened in previous books were only touched upon, and in such a way that now I really want to go back and read those stories to see how some of the characters got to where they are in this book.

The Hinges of History by Barbara Kyle ~ Blog Tour Guest Post + Giveaway: Blood Between Queens

Please join me in welcoming author Barbara Kyle to Let Them Read Books! I've just finished Barbara's newest novel -- which is the first novel of hers I've read -- Blood Between Queens, and I thought it was great! (Come back for my review tomorrow!) I'm thrilled to have Ms. Kyle on the blog today sharing some of her favorite interactions with readers. Without further ado, here she is!

The Hinges of History
by Barbara Kyle

Game changer. Turning point. We use these terms to describe crucial, pivotal events. In my historical novels I like to call such events the hinges of history. It's a powerful image: a swinging door. An opening, a closing. Sometimes with a joyful whoosh, sometimes an anxious creak, sometimes a furious slam! 

I set my stories at these hinges of history – decisive historical events – to test my characters’ mettle as the doors of change open and close. My “Thornleigh” books follow a rising, middle-class English family through three tumultuous Tudor reigns during which they must make hard choices about loyalty, allegiance, duty, family, and love.

The Thornleigh family is fictional; I created them. But the historical events they're passionately involved in are dynamic, hard facts.

Teaser Tuesday: Beauty and the Blacksmith

Today I'm sharing a teaser from a brand new release from one of my favorite authors. If you're a fan of historical romance and you haven't given Tessa Dare's Spindle Cove series a try, you're missing out! Spindle Cove is a special little seaside resort town run by women, and the series is full of smart dialogue, laughter, and of course, true love. Beauty and the Blacksmith was released today and it features one of the ladies of the town who I'd been hoping would get a full-length novel of her own, the lovely and fragile Diana Highwood, but I'll settle for a novella! Here's my teaser from page 23:


     "Listen," he said, "I know you've been living in some sort of cage. And tonight, it seems you learned you've been holding the key all along. You deserve a bit of rebellion, but I can't be it. I can't be the man you wake up regretting."
     "Then make the kiss good. So I won't have regrets."

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! Share the title & author, too, so that others can add the book to their TBR Lists!

Got a teaser?

Leave a comment with a link so I can visit!

Review: Mystic City by Theo Lawrence

From the Back Cover: 

Aria Rose, youngest scion of one of Mystic City's two ruling rival families, finds herself betrothed to Thomas Foster, the son of her parents' sworn enemies. The union of the two will end the generations-long political feud—and unite all those living in the Aeries, the privileged upper reaches of the city, against the banished mystics who dwell below in the Depths. But Aria doesn't remember falling in love with Thomas; in fact, she wakes one day with huge gaps in her memory. And she can't conceive why her parents would have agreed to unite with the Fosters in the first place. Only when Aria meets Hunter, a gorgeous rebel mystic from the Depths, does she start to have glimmers of recollection—and to understand that he holds the key to unlocking her past. The choices she makes can save or doom the city—including herself.

My Thoughts:

I give Mystic City big props for a unique, alternate-reality twist on the Romeo and Juliet theme. A futuristic New York City where the rich and powerful harness the magic of the oppressed Mystics for their own use, where rival mafia-like political families wage war for control of the city, where underground rebels are staging a resistance, and where Juliet can't remember her Romeo? I'm totally in. And I was, for the first 200 pages or so. I was really drawn into Lawrence's story world. This vision of a New York under water, where the wealthy live high up in the Aerie, in a network of crystal-palace skyscrapers connected by footbridges and skyrails towering over the Depths, down at water level, where the poor and the Mystics are consigned to live in muck and poverty--it was fantastically rendered in a gritty and glorious world of contrasts. And the story set-up was superb. Aria, the only daughter of one of the city's most influential politicians, wakes up one morning to discover that she can't remember the last weeks of her life. She's told that she suffered a near-fatal drug overdose and has been in a coma, and that she's newly engaged to the son of her father's worst enemy. She remembers none of this, but everyone else in her life does, and Aria struggles to fit into a life she can't remember, a life that just doesn't feel right, until a chance meeting with a gorgeous rebel named Hunter, who Aria can't help but feel like she's met before, sets Aria on the dangerous path to recovering her memories, the truths about her family, and the love of her life--dangerous because there are several people who will stop at nothing to make sure she never remembers. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, because there are a few surprises, I'll leave off with the plot there.