Blog Post
In The Beginning
by RiponGood
Sharpe's Tiger is historically the first novel in the Richard Sharpe series, written by Bernard Cornwell. In 1799, as a private, Sharpe enters Seringapatam in India, trying to rescue a captured colonel from the Tipu. Sharpe leaves the city a sergeant and a very wealthy man.
Blog Post
The Braid
by K.C.
When their family is evicted from the Western Isles of Scotland in 1850, teenage sisters Jeannie and Sarah are torn apart. Jeannie goes with her parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada. Her older sister, Sarah, hides so she can stay behind with Grandma. Before they separate, the sisters braid their hair together, and cut it off, each taking half of the braid.
Though likely separated for life Sarah and Jeannie each tell their stories through poems that are knitted together and resonate with those things most important to both sisters, home, security, and heritage. The Braid made the 2007 Best Books for Young Adults list.
Blog Post
March New and Noteworthy Historical Fiction
by muffy
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier.
The author of Girl with a Pearl Earring turns her focus this time on 18th century London. The plot centers on young Jem, the fresh-from-the-country chair maker’s son and Maggie, a poor, sexy firebrand. Their coming-of-age story is to be the inspiration for Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, who makes a cameo appearance as a neighbor. “An easy pleasure to read”.
The God of Spring* by Arabella Edge
“Sparkling, …gorgeous” novel (indeed high praise from the reviewers at Kirkus) of the birth of the classical painting The Raft of Medusa, by French artist, Theodore Gericault.
Six years after winning the Gold Medal at the Paris Salon, Gericault was casting about for a subject to paint and was soon consumed by the Medusa disaster of 1816, when a frigate carrying 400 went aground off the coast of Africa. “This is a thoughtful and richly imagined story about the darker aspects of the artistic process and the costs of obsession”. A good read, especially for art lovers.
* = starred review.