Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Happy #Release Day! Ribbons of Scarlet #HistFic

Ribbons of Scarlet: A Novel of the French Revolution by Kate Quinn, Stephanie Dray, Sophie Perinot, E. Knight, Laura Kamoie and Heather Webb

Six bestselling and award-winning authors bring to life a breathtaking epic novel illuminating the hopes, desires, and destinies of princesses and peasants, harlots and wives, fanatics and philosophers—six unforgettable women whose paths cross during one of the most tumultuous and transformative events in history: the French Revolution.

Ribbons of Scarlet is a timely story of the power of women to start a revolution—and change the world.
In late eighteenth-century France, women do not have a place in politics. But as the tide of revolution rises, women from gilded salons to the streets of Paris decide otherwise—upending a world order that has long oppressed them.

Blue-blooded Sophie de Grouchy believes in democracy, education, and equal rights for women, and marries the only man in Paris who agrees. Emboldened to fight the injustices of King Louis XVI, Sophie aims to prove that an educated populace can govern itself--but one of her students, fruit-seller Louise Audu, is hungrier for bread and vengeance than learning. When the Bastille falls and Louise leads a women’s march to Versailles, the monarchy is forced to bend, but not without a fight. The king’s pious sister Princess Elisabeth takes a stand to defend her brother, spirit her family to safety, and restore the old order, even at the risk of her head.

But when fanatics use the newspapers to twist the revolution’s ideals into a new tyranny, even the women who toppled the monarchy are threatened by the guillotine. Putting her faith in the pen, brilliant political wife Manon Roland tries to write a way out of France’s blood-soaked Reign of Terror while pike-bearing Pauline Leon and steely Charlotte Corday embrace violence as the only way to save the nation. With justice corrupted by revenge, all the women must make impossible choices to survive--unless unlikely heroine and courtesan’s daughter Emilie de Sainte-Amaranthe can sway the man who controls France’s fate: the fearsome Robespierre.

Read an excerpt, or listen to an audio excerpt, here.

Watch for my review, coming up in November.

Pick up a copy at...

Ribbons of Scarlet Tour - Join the authors as they make appearances across the country. 






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Thursday, September 26, 2019

#CatThursday - Parole De Chat


Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

Short and sweet this week. Parole de Chat...it's in French, but the funny translates. 







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Monday, September 23, 2019

Classics Club Spin #21 #ccspin

#5 was the lucky spin!
Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury


I know I shouldn't be adding another book to this busy reading season...and yet I am going to do it anyway. Such is the way the mind of a book lover works. I selected from my Classics Club list using Random.org

  1. On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner
  2. The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
  3. The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
  4. The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp
  5. Zen and the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury
  6. If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland
  7. The Virginia Woolf Reader, Virginia Woolf
  8. The Collector, John Fowles
  9. The Courage to Write, Ralph Keyes
  10. Escaping into the Open, Elizabeth Berg
  11. Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande
  12. Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot
  13. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
  14. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
  15. The Vein of Gold, Julia Cameron
  16. Writing Past Dark, Bonnie Friedman
  17. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
  18. Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin
  19. The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham
  20. Take Joy, Jane Yolen



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Thursday, September 19, 2019

#CatThursday - The #cat snark is real


Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.










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Thursday, September 12, 2019

#CatThursday - #Authors and #Cats (88) Josef Škvorecký



Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.

The second Cat Thursday of each month is Authors and Cats Thursday. Each time I will feature an author with their cat(s), pictured with a cat(s), or guest posts by cat loving authors who also (sometimes) write about cats.



Josef Škvorecký, CM (born September 24, 1924 - died January 03, 2012) was a Czech writer and publisher who spent much of his life in Canada. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz. (from Goodreads)



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Thursday, September 5, 2019

#CatThursday - #Cats and Babies


Welcome to the weekly meme that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats! Share the link to your post with your comment below.








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Sunday, September 1, 2019

Scary Fall Doings! #SomethingWickedFall #RIPXIV #FrightFall


It's that time of year again! I'm so ready for fall...the weather, the scary reading, Halloween! As usual, there are tons of fun events and challenges for those of us who love the scary, and I'm hosting two of them. 🎃

Readers Imbibing Peril XIV (RIP) is here! I look forward to this every year. It coincides well with my other scary events too.

Bonfires.

Gourds.

Sweaters and seasonal socks and candles.

Welcome to the FOURTEENTH year of Readers Imbibing Peril, or RIP, as it is affectionately called. For these many years, we here at RIP headquarters have embraced the spookiness of the seasons’ change.

The purpose of the R.I.P. Challenge is to enjoy books that could be classified as:

Mystery.
Suspense.
Thriller.
Dark Fantasy.
Gothic.
Horror.
Supernatural.

The emphasis is never on the word challenge, instead it is about coming together as a community and embracing the autumnal mood, whether the weather is cooperative where you live or not.

The goals are simple.

1. Have fun reading.

2. Share that fun with others.


I'm doing...

Peril the First:

Read four books, any length, that you feel fit (our very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature.
This is my for sure list of books. I'm sure there will be more.

Doctor Sleep, Stephen King
The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice
The Fall, Bethany Griffin
The Siren and the Specter, Jonathan Janz

Peril of the Short Story:

I'll be reading Poe, of course. Also, short stories by Algernon Blackwood, Nathaniel Hawthorne, M.R. James, Ralph Adams Cram, Ronald Malfi...and maybe more.

Peril on the Screen:

I'm a horror movie lover ALL the time so it's not like this will be any different, but of course, kicking things off with IT next week. We're also going to have some movie watch-alongs during Something Wicked Fall (see below). Probably The Shining to go along with our Doctor Sleep read-along, and possibly Midsommar (a rewatch for me...I absolutely loved it). 

and possibly even...

Peril of the Review:
Submit a short review of any book you read and you may see it here on the blog! 

I'm not terribly great at posting reviews of late, but I will try. 


Something Wicked Fall is an event I created last year at Castle Macabre (my horror blog)...an all encompassing event featuring a read-along, horror movie watch-alongs, Gothic and horror reads, and the penultimate FrightFall Readathon in October.

Get all the details at Castle Macabre here. I hope you will join us!


FrightFall Readathon runs all of October. Sign ups coming very soon at Seasons of Reading. Stay tuned!



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- See more at: http://www.techtrickhome.com/2013/02/show-comment-box-above-comments-on.html#sthash.TjHz2Px9.dpuf