Welcome to Serenity, home of the civilized people of Aterra. The Aterrans live in a technologically advanced world filled with modern luxuries and conveniences and their days are filled with cultured living and peace. For eons, the Aterran people have benefited from technology developed long ago by the Ancients. A technology that, unfortunately, they do not completely understand.
Nevertheless, there were systems and routines that had been in place for longer than anyone could remember, and even today the citizens of Aterra followed them as prescribed. But there was another world on Aterra, a world beyond "The Wall", a high tech impregnable barrier that separates the Aterran world from the Shadowlands beyond its protective border.
The primitive, warlike inhabitants of the Shadowlands know little of the soft life inside the Wall, but they know that they despise the residents that it protects, and maybe one day they will have their revenge.
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About the Author
Born in England, G.L. Cromarty grew up exploring castles and watching Star Wars. As an avid reader, she has been influenced by a wide variety of writers ranging from Tolkien to George R.R. Martin and Anne McCaffrey, and Harry Harrison to Isaac Asimov. Now living in Perth, Western Australia with her husband and two oddball cats, she spends her spare time writing. Divided Serenity is her debut novel. Serenity Falling, the second book in the Divided World series id coming soon. Best known for her popular writing blog TheWritingChimp.com you can find out more about the Divided World series at her website https://glcromarty.com/ and find her on Facebook and Twitter @TheLittleBod.
England 1650: Civil War has given way to an uneasy peace in the year since Parliament executed King Charles I. Royalist officer James Hart refuses to accept the tyranny of the new government, and to raise funds for the restoration of the king’s son, he takes to the road as a highwayman.
Elizabeth Seton has long been shunned for being a traitor’s daughter. In the midst of the new order, she risks her life by sheltering fugitives from Parliament in a garrison town. But her attempts to rebuild her life are threatened, first by her own sense of injustice, then by falling in love with the dashing Hart.
The lovers’ loyalty is tested through war, defeat and separation. James must fight his way back to the woman he loves, while Elizabeth will do anything to save him, even if it means sacrificing herself.
Traitor’s Knot is a sweeping tale of love and conflicted loyalties set against the turmoil of the English Civil War.
“A hugely satisfying read that will appeal to historical fiction fans who demand authenticity, and who enjoy a combination of suspense, action, and a very believable love story.” - Elizabeth St. John, author of The Lady of the Tower
“A thrilling historical adventure expertly told.” - Carol McGrath, author of The Handfasted Wife
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About the Author
Cryssa Bazos is a historical fiction writer and 17th Century enthusiast, with a particular interest in the English Civil War (ECW). She blogs about English history and storytelling at her blog, the 17th Century Enthusiast, and is an editor of the English Historical Fiction Authors blog site. Cryssa's debut novel, Traitor’s Knot, a romantic tale of adventure set during the English Civil War. Traitor’s Knot is the first in a series of adventures spanning from the ECW to the Restoration and is now available from Endeavour Press. For more information visit Cryssa's website. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter @CryssaBazos.
Just how did Jane Austen become the celebrity author and the inspiration for generations of loyal fans she is today? Devoney Looser’s The Making of Jane Austen turns to the people, performances, activism, and images that fostered Austen’s early fame, laying the groundwork
for the beloved author we think we know.
British women writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fascinate me. And yes, there were hundreds of them publishing their work. It wasn’t only Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. From the way the two of them are dominating the conversation today, however, you might be forgiven for thinking they were the only females in all England who ever thought to put pen to paper. They’re in the news now because each author is about to celebrate an important bicentenary: Austen for her death in July 1817 and Shelley for Frankenstein’s publication in January 1818.
So much has been written about Austen’s and Shelley’s lives and works. Surely all of the best ideas have been expressed and the most significant research has been completed? It would take audacity on the part of a writer to sit down at the keyboard and think she might have anything new to add. Yet that’s exactly what I decided to do when I embarked on my book, The Making of Jane Austen (to be published 27 June). Previous literary critics have written about how Austen became an icon in the decades after her death. What I wanted to know is whether we might have overlooked a few things in our recording what is, after all, an incredibly complicated story of her remarkable rise to posthumous celebrity.
I discovered that we’d missed a great deal. I’m excited to report that I’ve corrected a few errors in previous scholarship and have dug up some strange skeletons from the Jane Austen afterlife-closet. I like to imagine this book as a history not only of Austen’s changing public image in the decades after she died but as a collective biography of her earliest devotees, entrepreneurs, and fans. My book charts how Austen’s fiction and characters morphed into every successive new popular medium and how important that transformation was to her reputation. I look at how Austen’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century image was shaped by book illustration, dramatization, film, politics and activism, and teachers, students, and schools. We just haven’t looked as carefully at those popular aspects of her fame as we have at her critical history.
There have been some terrific previous accounts of Austen’s fame; they deserve their due. But most focus squarely on the big names who loved and hated her: Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill loved Jane Austen, Mark Twain and Charlotte Brontë hated Jane Austen, and so on. We’ve described her most important scholars and critics, including pioneering editor R. W. Chapman and celebrated critic George Saintsbury, the man who’s said to have coined the word “Janeite.” We quote Virginia Woolf and Rebecca West on Austen. Then we call it a day.
But it wasn’t just famous authors and establishment critics who catapulted Austen to immortality. There were many lesser-known people who were working with great care and no small success to popularize her stories and characters, long before Longbourn or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. My book shows that we can’t possibly understand how Jane Austen became an icon without learning about her popular innovators and their motivations and stories, too. Hundreds—thousands--of lesser-known writers, artists, actors, teachers, and fans shaped her image and told her history in new ways. They made Jane Austen. We’re still making and remaking her, as her stories inspire many to ask difficult questions, not only about who she was but about who we are or might be with her. That’s cause enough for celebration.
Devoney Looser
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About the Author
Devoney Looser is Professor of English at Arizona State University. Her recent writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The TLS, The Independent, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Entertainment Weekly. Devoney grew up in Minnesota and now lives in the desert, near a fantastic roller rink, and teaches women's writings and the history of the novel. She says, 'I met my husband--also an English professor and Austen scholar--over a conversation about Austen, and together we're raising tween sons who find Austen tolerable but un-tempting.' Find out more at http://www.devoneylooser.com/ and find Devoney on Twitter: @devoneylooser and @Making_Jane.
A middle-aged saleswoman becomes a Hollywood star.
A spoilt celebrity becomes a suburban housewife.
An angel becomes a human being.
Meet Irene Nylander, a frumpy housewife from Finland … and a yo-yo dieter. She feels trapped in an unhappy marriage, looking after her domineering mother-in-law and living vicariously through romantic movies.
Meanwhile, in Florence, Mimi Kavanough’s star is rising. She has the body of a Barbie princess, the iron will of an army sergeant – and Hollywood in her sights.
On her fiftieth birthday, Irene discovers her husband is having an affair. Devastated, she prays for a way out: she wants to die.
In heaven, a mischievous angel called Aaron hears her prayers. He decides to make Irene and Mimi swap bodies.
How will the two women cope with their unexpected, and very different, second lives? And will Aaron’s meddling get him evicted from heaven? What will happen if he has to transform into a human being and live on Earth?
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About the Author
Katarina West is the author of Witchcraft Couture and Absolute Truth, For Beginners. She was born in Helsinki, Finland, into a bilingual family that in addition to humans consisted of dogs, cats, horses, guinea pigs, canaries, rabbits and – thanks to her biology teacher mother – stuffed owls and squirrels. She spent time travelling in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and went on to study at Queen Mary and Westfield College in London and the European University Institute in Florence, where she completed a PhD in political science and published a book based on it, Agents of Altruism. During those student years she started work as a journalist, and continued writing for various Finnish magazines and newspapers for over ten years, writing on various topics from current events and humanitarian issues to celebrity interviews and short stories. She also briefly worked as a university lecturer on humanitarian issues in Northern Italy. Katarina lives in an old farmhouse in Chianti with her husband and son and when not writing, she is fully immersed in Tuscan country life, from jam-making and olive-picking to tractor maintenance. Find out more at Katerina's website katarinawest.com and find her on Facebook and Twitter @WestKatarina.
In book two of my Tudor trilogy, Jasper Tudor has to persuade the powerful Welsh lord Rhys ap Thomas to join Henry Tudor’s army and fight with them against King Richard III at what has become known as the Battle of Bosworth:
The great hall fell silent again as Rhys ap Thomas considered Jasper’s
offer. With a glance at the men on either side of him, he called for another
jug of ale. They waited while a servant filled a pewter cup with ale in front
of each of them, then Rhys ap Thomas raised his cup in the air. ‘We are with
you,’ he drank then raised his cup a second time. ‘To victory, for Wales!’
Henry’s men cheered when they saw Rhys ap Thomas ride into their camp
at Long Mountain, outside the town of Welshpool, flanked by Jasper and David
Owen. The black raven standard flew at the front of an army of over nearly two
thousand men, the bright sunshine glinting from their weapons and armour, the
finest soldiers in Wales.
Henry rode forward to greet them. A fine silver helmet replaced his
black hat and a new breastplate gleamed on his chest, a dark riding cape
flowing in the breeze behind him. ‘Praise God, we have doubled our numbers on the march through Wales,
and now have an army worthy of the name.’
(Excerpt from Jasper - Book Two of The Tudor Trilogy)
It is said that Rhys ap
Thomas struck the blow which killed King Richard. Although this is unproven
there is no question that his men were an important factor in Henry's victory
at Bosworth on August 22nd, 1485 is undisputed. Rhys was knighted on the battlefield and
made Governor of Wales.
After Bosworth, Rhys ap Thomas helped suppress the Brecon rising of 1486, Lambert Simnel's rebellion in 1487, the Cornish rising of 1497, and Perkin Warbeck's attempted rebellion in October 1497. His reward for ridding King Henry VII of two notorious royal pretenders was to be made
a Knight of the Garter in 1505.
Carew Castle
He celebrated this with a grand tournament at Carew Castle in Pembrokeshire. He was also one of King Henry VIII's most experienced commanders and fought for him in France in 1513, when he was sixty-five. His son, Gruffudd ap Rhys, was also a close friend of Henry VIII's son, Prince Arthur, though both died before their fathers.
Sir Rhys retired to
his Welsh homelands, which he ruled like a king. It is said he had more than twelve children by his wives and mistresses, who married into the gentry houses of South Wales.
When he died in Carmarthen in
February 1525 he was buried in the Fransiscan Greyfriars priory where he spent his last days. After the
dissolution of the monasteries his tomb was taken to nearby St. Peter's Church,
Carmarthen, where I visited it for my research.
The church is close to the centre
of the town in one of the quieter streets. Established in the fourteenth
century, it is the largest church in Wales.
Although the tomb of Sir Rhys ap Thomas was originally in the north east
corner of the chancel it was moved by his descendant, Lord Dynevor, to a more prominent location
and to make room for a new organ in 1866. During this work his bones were collected and placed in an urn beneath the tomb.
The Friends of St Peter's church have arranged for a large mirror to be placed over the tomb to enable visitors to have a better view, and there is a display area with information about Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his part in supporting the future of the Tudor dynasty.
Sadly, the great legacy of Sir Rhys ap Thomas proved short-lived. Six years after his death in 1531 his grandson, Rhys ap Gruffudd, was beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII for treason and all the family's lands and estates were confiscated by the crown.
Presenting the diverse voices of those most affected by the results of the 2016 American presidential election, 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy is a charitable project meant to prioritize and highlight marginalized writers for a good cause. One hundred percent of profits from the sale of this book will be donated to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization, and the ACLU, the nonprofit organization defending the constitutional rights of Americans.
11/9: The Fall of American Democracy contains the work of a number of award-winning poets and authors including Roger Aplon, Laura Foley, Alan w. Jankowski, Mike Jurkovic, Sergio A. Ortiz, Mindela Ruby, Claire Scott, and Jan Steckel, in addition to a number of unpublished poets and fresh young voices. From a precocious four-year-old writer to octogenarians, amateur poets to Pushcart nominees, American expats to teens who have never left their hometown, this volume collects poetry and short prose reflecting on 11/9/16.
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About the Authors
There are more than fifty authors included in the anthology, which is edited by Casey Lawrence and William D. Dickerson Casey is a Canadian writer and student at Brock University. She has published two Young Adult novels with a bisexual, biracial female protagonist, Out of Order and Order in the Court (Harmony Ink Press). William is an American writer and teacher. He studied English and Elementary Education at Alfred University. Find out more on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/119Anthology/.
In the novella of the title, the antiquarian Jack Tregarden looks back to his first disturbing investigation. The young Jack is a brilliant scholar from a working class background who forms an unlikely friendship at Oxford with the charismatic and mysterious aristocrat Simon de Betancourt.
Many years later Tregarden is invited by de Betancourt to his family home, Ashcombe Abbey, ostensibly to revise the catalogue in the house's remarkable library. But as the days unfold Tregarden is confronted with a fiendish centuries' old puzzle which he must solve to unlock the great mystery of Ashcombe. As a result he is confronted by unimaginable forces which challenge his most fundamental beliefs.
In '24th June' the anniversary of his wife's death turns into a day Matthew Hargreaves will never forget. The idea of all-pervasive Nature is given its ultimate expression in 'How the Trees Grew'. An infamous crime returns to terrify the latest member of an ancient family in 'Golgotha Heights'
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About the Author
Dr. Michael Cook began by writing academic books, including the first full length study of the locked room mystery followed by a lively comparison of the detective and ghost story. Drawing on these themes, he has now started writing fiction, developing a different kind of mystery, one which features elements of both detection and the supernatural. ‘The Librarian & other strange stories’ is his first collection of tales. The short novel of the title introduces us to Jack Tregarden, an antiquarian investigator, recounting his first disturbing case.He is a fervent advocate of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, M R James, E F Benson, Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, all of whom have influenced his own writing. As a former National Trust director, he has a close affinity with the Devon countryside which provides inspiration for his books, while his garden allows thinking time for his writing. He has a lifetime interest in sport, particularly Yorkshire cricket, and a passion for collecting books. Find our more at Michael's website www.michaelcookonline.com and find him on Twitter @MichaelDodCook.
