London at the time of ASHFORD
This morning, Naomi McEneely sent me this wonderful video of London in 1927, captured on film for posterity by a cinematographic pioneer of the time. This is the London that Addie, in The Ashford Affair, leaves behind to go to Kenya. It’s pretty incredible how familiar some bits are and how strange and different others…
Read MoreIf You Like….
Okay, this is less an “if you like”, and more of a “books that fit together under a category that only makes sense in my head”: books I tried to read at the wrong time and then rediscovered later. Don’t you love the way books sometimes reappear at just the right time? I’ve had two…
Read MorePURPLE PLUMERIA Winner!
The winner of the advance copy of The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, aka Pink X, is… Alexandra! (Of Comment #20.) Congrats, Alexandra! If you email me with your snail mail address, I’ll pop the ARC in the mail to you. In the meantime, if you didn’t win a copy here, there’s still a chance…
Read MoreBecause real spies wear purple….
The latest contest for an advance copy of The Passion of the Purple Plumeria ends tonight! To enter, just click here and follow the instructions in the contest post. In the meantime, here’s a little snippet from Chapter One…. (Of course, the book is set eighty-four years too early for the Eiffel Tower to be…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of another book care package, which meant lots of new reads for me this week. Here’s what I’ve been reading: — Jonathan Aycliffe, Whispers in the Dark Very creepy classic Gothic, set in the north of England at the turn of the century, told in the requisite…
Read MorePURPLE PLUMERIA Give Away
The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, aka Pink X, comes out on Tuesday, August 6th! To celebrate hitting the two month mark (how did it get to be June already?), I’m giving away an advance copy of The Passion of the Purple Plumeria. So, for an advance copy of The Passion of the Purple Plumeria,…
Read MoreTwo more months until PURPLE PLUMERIA!
Tomorrow marks just two months to go until The Passion of the Purple Plumeria appears in stores! (A huge round of applause to Shelli Armstrong for designing the Meadows crest, featured above: two crossed parasols on a field of sheep. Isn’t it so perfectly Miss Gwen?) In honor of the two month mark, I’ll be…
Read MoreBook Event with Deanna Raybourn– Tomorrow!
Tomorrow evening, Deanna Raybourn and I will be appearing at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York to speak about our respective 1920s Kenya books, A Spear of Summer Grass and The Ashford Affair, and whatever else you want us to talk about. Here are the details: What: Talk & Signing Where: The Mysterious Bookshop, 58…
Read MoreSummer Reading
Happy June! I know it’s not really officially summer until later this month, but the beginning of June always marks the beginning of summer to me. I have a stockpile of books on hand for this summer. Currently waiting for me are: — the second and third books in C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series,…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
Do you ever start a book at the wrong time? There are a handful of books that I’ve begun while Not in the Mood, put aside, and then re-discovered and loved years later. That’s what happened to me this week with the first book in C.S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr series, What Angels Fear, which…
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