The Printed Page

** The Printed Page now blogs at A girl and her books. Go ahead and update your readers, feeds and blog links if you’d like. I do own the rights to The Printed Page and will continue to do so. If you have post links they’ll still work. **

While one day browsing blogs I noticed a question posed by Book Bloggers Hop which started me thinking, not always a good thing especially if you ask my technical support person. The question: Do you ever wish you would have named your blog something different? The (very short) answer: You betcha. The Printed Page was a name I came up with simply to get a blog going years ago. I’ve never really been vested in the name so change comes easily. Easily for me but pity my poor tech support person. One day I promise to leave things ‘as is’ and peace will again reign in his life.

I really wanted something that’s a lot more ‘me’. And nothing is more descriptive of ‘me’ than A girl and her books. The new domain is agirlandherbooks. If you visit right now there’s this ugly placeholder page – ignore it. A new name and home calls for some remodeling and change of address. So here’s a sneak peek at the new theme. The move date is tentatively set for Saturday, 3.26. There is also a new email address: agirlandherbooks [at] printedpage [dot] us. I will be updating TPP as the move progresses. If you’d like to update feeds, readers, blog rolls please do so.

It’s Venice, 1600. A dangerous place for free-thinkers and gamblers alike and Choradino da Mosto is both. Once the student of Giordano Bruno – newly tried and executed in Rome – Choradino is already being watched. When he is finally arrested he is offered a harsh choice: to remain in gaol or become a spy for the Republic. All eyes are on England, where an ageing Elizabeth has yet to name her successor. The Venetian authorities have intercepted coded messages from the Queen’s magician, John Dee. They know Dee is chasing a mysterious manuscript – rumoured to have been brought back from Macedonia centuries before by Marco Polo. Choradino is charged with finding – and destroying – the heretical text before it falls into the hands of the Protestants. Choradino has no choice but to follow his orders. But as he joins a ship bound for Korcula, he discovers another cipher running beneath Dee’s code. And the whisper of a secret which could strike at the very heart of the English court..

In a city-state known for magnificence, where love affairs and conspiracies play out amidst brilliant painters, poets and musicians, the powerful and ambitious Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara, takes a new bride. Half of Europe is certain he murdered his first wife, Lucrezia, the luminous child of the Medici. But no one dares accuse him, and no one has proof-least of all his second duchess, the far less beautiful but delightfully clever Barbara of Austria.

At first determined to ignore the rumors about her new husband, Barbara embraces the pleasures of the Ferrarese court. Yet wherever she turns she hears whispers of the first duchess’s wayward life and mysterious death. Barbara asks questions-a dangerous mistake for a duchess of Ferrara. Suddenly, to save her own life, Barbara has no choice but to risk the duke’s terrifying displeasure and discover the truth of Lucrezia’s death-or she will share her fate.

Violante isn’t supposed to be here, in one of the grandest courts of Renaissance Italy. She isn’t supposed to be a lady-in-waiting to the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia. But the same secretive politics that pushed Lucrezia’s father to the Vatican have landed Violante deep in a lavish landscape of passion and ambition.

Violante discovers a Lucrezia unknown to those who see only a scheming harlot, and all the whispers about her brother, Cesare Borgia, never revealed the soul of the man who dances close with Violante.

But those who enter the House of Borgia are never quite the same when they leave-if they leave at all. Violante’s place in history will test her heart and leave her the guardian of dangerous secrets she must carry to the grave.

In January 1692, the unordained Rev. George Burroughs and his closest friend, Capt. Peter White, are living in the remote settlement of Wells, in Maine, where Burroughs rescues young Mary Cheever after a local Indian massacre. Meanwhile, in Salem, Mass., Burroughs’s former parish, two girls on a winter’s night whip themselves into a frenzy that sends the whole of Salem into superstition and hysteria resulting in the witch examinations and trials. Burroughs, now married to Mary, is accused as the “leader of witches,” arrested, and taken in irons to Salem. Mary and Peter travel to Salem, where their energetic efforts to prove his innocence fail, including Mary’s meeting with the priggish, lecherous religious figure Cotton Mather.

Eleven-year-old Tilly Martin is dragged from her suburban bedroom. Her mother, Cora, pleads for mercy but the kidnappers are clear: if they don’t get their $5 million back in five days, Tilly dies. If anyone contacts police, Tilly dies.

Journalist Jack Gannon’s estranged sister, Cora, disappeared without a trace decades ago. Now she is frantically reaching out to him for help. Cora tells him about the shameful mistakes she’s made – but she guards the one secret that may be keeping her daughter alive.

A twenty-year-old assassin, haunted by the faces of the people he’s executed, seeks absolution as he sets out to commit his last murders as a hired killer.

In the U.S. and Mexico, police and the press go flat out on Tilly’s case. But as Gannon digs deeper into his anguished sister’s past, the hours tick down on his niece’s life and he faces losing a fragment of his rediscovered family forever.

Vanessa ‘Michael’ Munroe deals in information – expensive information – working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. Born to missionary parents in lawless central Africa, Munroe took up with an infamous gunrunner and his mercenary crew when she was just fourteen. As his protégé, she earned the respect of the jungle’s most dangerous men, cultivating her own reputation for years until something sent her running. After almost a decade building a new life and lucrative career from her home base in Dallas, she’s never looked back.

Until now.

A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget.