I was an English major in college. In pursuing my love of books and language, I fell into a love of history. The passion for history began with author biographies as I tried to understand how the culture affected various authors’ writings. This is why my history strength resides in European history, because most of my favorite authors come from Europe. The more I read of the biographies, I often came across historical events I wasn’t knowledgeable about and so fell down a rabbit hole of historical research. The more I learn, the more I love history!
I loved this book! It’s about a lacemaker who escapes to America from Revolutionary France. Green is a recent find for me, but I want to read everything she writes now!
The prose was so beautifully written with such lush detail. As an author it was a wonderful study in setting. I learned through this book that lace was banned in Revolutionary France because of its association with the aristocracy. I was so fascinated with the idea that I had to research it further and write a blog about it.
Lacemaker Vivienne Rivard never imagined her craft could threaten her life. Yet in revolutionary France, it is a death sentence when the nobility, and those associated with them, are forced to the guillotine. Vivienne flees to Philadelphia but finds the same dangers lurking in the French Quarter, as revolutionary sympathizers threaten the life of a young boy left in her care, who some suspect to be the Dauphin. Can the French settlement, Azilum, offer permanent refuge?
Militiaman Liam Delaney proudly served in the American Revolution, but now that the new government has imposed an oppressive tax that impacts his family,…
I love true crime and I love history. This book combined the two in an enthralling, often poetic read.
It’s about the case of Lizzie Borden. In this multi-POV story, Schmidt gets into the characters of Lizzie, her sister, a housemaid, and Lizzie’s uncle to explore how the crime unfolded.
It leans literary in its narration style, but I personally like that. The details used in the story really make the reader feel present in the scenes and get into the minds of the characters.
Haunting, gripping and gorgeously written, SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE by Sarah Schmidt is a re-imagining of the unsolved American true crime case of the Lizzie Borden murders, for fans of BURIAL RITES and MAKING A MURDERER.
'Eerie and compelling' Paula Hawkins 'Stunning' Sunday Times 'Gripping... outstanding' Observer 'Glittering' Irish Times
Just after 11am on 4th August 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He's found on the sitting room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both murdered with an axe.
It is younger daughter Lizzie who is first on the scene, so it is Lizzie…
I cannot speak highly enough of Gwynne’s book! This book is only a few hundred pages, but he somehow manages to detail the very complex relationships between Texas, Mexico, the United States government, and the Comanche Indians while making a believable case for the Comanche being an empire in its own right.
While I’m a big history nerd, I tend to focus on European history. But lately, I’ve come to have a deeper appreciation for U.S. history. It certainly gave me a broader understanding of the Wild West, indigenous people, and the socio-political atmosphere.
The best part is that it wasn’t dry and boring, as some history books can be. It read like a novel. As a writer myself, I’m still amazed at how he managed to pack so much information inside the covers. Not a single word was wasted. That’s an impressive feat!
In the tradition of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, a stunningly vivid historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West, centering on Quanah, the greatest Comanche chief of them all.
S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moonspans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood…
I grabbed this historical true crime nonfiction book in order to conduct research for one of my own projects.
This book is about the rampant crime in 1600s Paris and, by extension, the Affair of the Poisons and Louis, The Sun King’s, solution. The king’s solution was to hire a police chief, La Reynie, to bring peace to the city streets. La Reynie ordered candles put in every window in the belief that the light would deter the criminal element, thus creating the City of Lights.
La Reynie was also the central investigator in the Affair of the Poisons and responsible for arresting the key figures in the crimes. Tucker also shows in this fascinating book how many of these criminal incidents were related to witchcraft and black magic.
The beauty of this book is how it reads more like a novel than nonfiction history.
In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and "inheritance stews"-not even the Sun King himself.
Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime…
This is a fantastic genre fiction book series, and there are 14 or 15 books in this series, but I’ll mention only the first: What Angels Fear. So far, I’ve read the first four books, and I love this series!
It’s set in Regency England around 1811. Sebastian St. Cyr is a Viscount who gets involved in solving murders. I love this series for the superb and rich details she includes in her stories. It brings Regency England to life. Mystery. A touch of romance. History. Adventure. This series has it all!
'Harris' riveting debut delivers a powerful blend of political intrigue and suspense ...This fresh, fast-paced historical is sure to be a hit.' - Publishers WeeklyIt's 1811, and the threat of revolution haunts the upper classes of King George III's England. Then a beautiful young woman is found savagely murdered on the altar steps of an ancient church near Westminster Abbey. A duelling pistol discovered at the scene and the damning testimony of a witness both point to one man, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, a brilliant young nobleman shattered by his experience in the Napoleonic Wars.Now a fugitive running for…
Lady Ravenna Birchfield yearns to put her dark past behind her. Nine months after losing her husband, she wants to return to London to lead a quiet life of charity work and fencing lessons. But those plans fall apart when her old friend, Foreign Secretary Lord Hawkestone, pays a visit and doesn't leave her drawing room alive.
Now with other politicians mysteriously falling ill, and her stepson in line to become England's next foreign secretary, Ravenna becomes the focus of the investigation. Hoping to protect her stepson, and her secrets, she is now in a race to discover the killer before her past is exposed. Surrounded by spies, lies, and an international plot, Ravenna discovers the killer is much closer than she'd ever imagined.
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
