The Printed Page

Archive for the ‘Cover Attraction’ Category

Title: The Time Weaver
Author: Shana Abe
Release date: 2010

Honor Carlisle may have been born into the drákon clan but she’s always felt like a stranger to her kin. It’s an intuition that proves true when she receives a mysterious letter – a letter sent by her future self. Honor learns she is a Time Weaver: a creature with the extraordinary ability to transport herself into the past or future.

But the letter contains a dire warning. If Honor remains in her home at Darkfrith, she is certain to be killed. Fleeing for sanctuary among old friends in Spain, she practices her Weaving and unknowingly draws closer to an even more immediate danger. For on one of her Weaves into the future, Honor encounters the very man she should most avoid: the prince of a rival tribe of drákon.

Drawn to Prince Alexandru of Zaharen, Honor is unable to resist the temptation of Weaving to him again and again across time. As they surrender to a desire that brings the present and future ever closer, they realize they are true soulmates. But they also risk fulfilling a terrible prophecy – for their union is destined to wreak havoc. Now Honor and Sandu must place their trust – and their lives – in each other’s hands, and their faith in a magical love that could restore order to the drákon universe – or destroy it forever.

***
I don’t read fantasy so you won’t see The Time Weaver reviewed here but I sure do love the cover.

Title: Toads and Diamonds
Author: Heather Tomlinson
Release date: March ‘10

Diribani has come to the village well to get water for her family’s scant meal of curry and rice. She never expected to meet a goddess there. Yet she is granted a remarkable gift: Flowers and precious jewels drop from her lips whenever she speaks.

It seems only right to Tana that the goddess judged her kind, lovely stepsister worthy of such riches. And when she encounters the goddess, she is not surprised to find herself speaking snakes and toads as a reward.

Blessings and curses are never so clear as they might seem, however. Diribani’s new found wealth brings her a prince—and an attempt on her life. Tana is chased out of the village because the province’s governor fears snakes, yet thousands are dying of a plague spread by rats. As the sisters’ fates hang in the balance, each struggles to understand her gift. Will it bring her wisdom, good fortune, love . . . or death?

Title: Daughters of Witching Hill
Author: Mary Sharratt
Release date: April ‘10

Daughters of the Witching Hill brings history to life in a vivid and wrenching account of a family sustained by love as they try to survive the hysteria of a witch-hunt.

Bess Southerns, an impoverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft, as well as her best friend, who ultimately turns to dark magic. When a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate, eager to make his name as a witch finder, plays neighbors and family members against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights.

Sharratt interweaves well-researched historical details of the 1612 Pendle witch-hunt with a beautifully imagined story of strong women, family, and betrayal. Daughters of the Witching Hill is a powerful novel of intrigue and revelation.

Title: The Heretic’s Wife
Author: Brenda Rickman Vantrease
Release date: April ‘10

Tudor England is a perilous place for booksellers Kate Gough and her brother John, who sell forbidden translations of the Bible. Caught between warring factions—English Catholics opposed to the Lutheran reformation, and Henry VIII’s growing impatience with the Pope’s refusal to sanction his marriage to Anne Boleyn—Kate embarks on a daring adventure that will lead her into a dangerous marriage and a web of intrigue that pits her against powerful enemies. From the king’s lavish banquet halls to secret dungeons and the inner sanctums of Thomas More, Brenda Rickman Vantrease’s glorious new novel illuminates the public pageantry and the private passions of men and women of conscience in treacherous times.

I’m very excited to find a new novel by Brenda. I very much enjoyed her other historical novels The Illuminator and The Mercy Seller.

Title: Shadow Princess: A Novel
Author: Indu Sundaresan
Release date: March ‘10

In Shadow Princess, Indu Sundaresan picks up where she left off in The Twentieth Wife and The Feast of Roses, returning to seventeenth-century India a few years after Mehrunnisa’s death, as two royal princesses struggle for power.

The daughters of the emperor, Jahangir and Roshanara, conspire and scheme against one another in an attempt to gain power over their father’s harem. As royal princesses, they are confined in the imperial harem and not allowed to marry. However, this does not stop them from having illicit affairs or plotting who will be the next heir to the throne.

These royal sisters are in competition for everything: control over the harem, their father’s affection, and the future of their country. Unfortunately, only one of them can succeed. And despite their best efforts to affect the future, their schemes are eclipsed, both during their lives and in posterity, as they live in the shadow of the greatest monument in Indian history, the Taj Mahal.

With a flair and enthusiasm for history and culture, Sundaresan creates a story full of rich details that brings the reader deep into the world of the lives of Indian women and their struggles for power and the profound history of the Taj Mahal, one of the most celebrated works of architecture in the world.

For the second week my Cover Attraction is also my Wish List and Waiting On post. I spotted this beautiful cover at Fantastic Fiction (one of my favorite sites), immediately dashed over to Amazon to update the already super-sized wish list and then found out that a copy is in the mail and on it’s way to me.
Title: The Sheen on the Silk
Author: Anne Perry
Release date: March ‘10

The Sheen on the Silk is an epic historical novel with a heart-stopping love story at its core, and a deep spiritual quest.

It’s set in the gorgeous, cosmopolitan and enlightened city of Byzantium, in the twilight years of its Empire. Surrounded by the fierce Ottomans to the East, Saladin and the infidels to the South, the barbarian European tribes to the North and the powerful Venetian Empire to the West, Byzantium’s Emperor badly needs an ally. The city has never recovered from its sack by the Venetians in 1204, and now, in 1272, it’s in acute danger. Another Crusade is being mounted, and Byzantium is in its path.

This is the city into which Anna arrives. A handsome woman with an unhappy past, she has just learned that her brother has been imprisoned for murder. Unable to believe that he’s guilty, she will stay in Byzantium until she can find out the truth and secure his release. However, she needs a way to move freely in all levels of society. This isn’t something she can do as a woman and as a stranger. She will pose as a eunuch; this cadre, while past its heyday, still has power and influence. And she will work as a doctor.

As the future of Byzantium grows ever darker, Anna struggles to navigate the complex truths of her brother’s guilt or innocence, the intrigues of the powerful, long-simmering revenge plots… and the even more perilous currents of her heart and her spirit. Only in Byzantium’s darkest hour does she discover the truths that will lead to salvation for Byzantium and the soaring path to the forgiveness and love of God.

I’m covering all my bases with this post. I love the cover, I added it to my Amazon wish list yesterday and found out just today that a copy is in the mail and on it’s way to me. Happy dancing
Title: The Confessions of Catherine de Medici
Author: C.W. Gortner
Release date: May ‘10

The most infamous queen of the Renaissance reveals her secrets in an epic tale of persecution, intrigue, and betrayal.

At the age of fourteen, Catherine de Medici, last legitimate descendant of the Medici blood, finds herself betrothed to the King Francois I’s son, Henri. Sent from her native Florence to France, humiliated and overshadowed by her husband’s life-long devotion to his mistress, when tragedy strikes her family Catherine rises from obscurity to become one of 16th century Europe’s most powerful women.

Patroness of Nostradamus and a seer in her own right, accused of witchcraft and murder by her foes, Catherine fights to save France and her children from savage religious conflict, unaware that her own fate looms before her — a fate that will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and passion of her own embattled heart.

From the splendors of the Loire palaces to the blood-soaked battles of the Wars of Religion and haunted halls of the Louvre, this is the story of Catherine’s dramatic life, told by the queen herself.

This is my first of two cover attraction posts today and they couldn’t be more different in look and subject matter.
Title: Burn
Author(s): Ted Dekker & Erin Healy
Release date: January ‘10

The past Janeal thought had burned away is rising from the ashes.

Years ago, the Gypsy Kumpania where Janeal Mikkado lived was attacked by outsiders. With her best friend about to be consumed by a fire, Janeal had two options: try to save her friend–at serious risk to her own life–or disappear with the million dollars that she had just discovered . . .

But the past is quickly coming back to haunt her. Both the best friend and the boyfriend that she was sure were dead have reappeared in her life, as has someone who knows about the money. There’s a debt to be paid for the money she found, but there’s an even greater debt she must face–and if the chaff isn’t burned from her own heart, it will consume her.

I’m a very visual person and love beautiful, or interesting, cover art. It entices, and invites, me to stop and take a peek instead of walking right on by. Here’s a cover that caught my eye.
Title: Honolulu
Author: Alan Brennert
Release date: March ‘09

Hardback Cover

Softback Cover

LP Edition Cover

“Honolulu” is the richly imagined story of Jin, a young ‘picture bride’ who leaves her native Korea – where girls are so little valued that she is known as Regret – and journeys to Hawaii in 1914 in search of a better life. Instead of the prosperous young husband and the chance at an education she has been promised, Jin is quickly married off to a poor, embittered labourer who takes his disappointments out on his new wife, forcing her to make her own way in a strange land. Struggling to build a business with the help of her fellow picture brides, Jin finds both opportunity and prejudice, but ultimately transforms herself from a naive young girl into a resourceful woman. Prospering along with her adopted city, which is fast growing from a small territorial capital to the great multicultural city it is today, Jin can never forget the people she left behind in Korea, and returns one last time to make her peace with her former life.

I’m a very visual person and love beautiful, or interesting, cover art. It entices, and invites, me to stop and take a peek instead of walking right on by. Here’s a cover that caught my eye.
Title: Blood Royal
Author: Vanora Bennett
Release date: April ‘09

Catherine de Valois, daughter of the French king is born in troubled times. Though she is being brought up in a royal court, it is a stormy and unstable environment. Her only firend is the remarkable poet and writer Christine de Pizan. She is married off to Heny V as part of a treaty honouring his victory over France, and is destined to be a trophy wife. Terrified at the idea of being married to a man who is at once, a foreigner, an enemy and a rough soldier, Catherine nevertheless does her duty. Within tow years she is widowed, and mother of the future King of England and France – even though her brother has already claimed the French crown for himself. Caught between warring factions and under threat the powerful lords of the English court and her own brothers-in-law, she has to find her own way, if only for the sake of her baby son.She takes strength from the teachings of her mentor de Pizan, and the possibility that she will be able to return home to France. She is also supported by Owain Tudor, controller of her household-a dangerous support as rumours of their relationship would jeoperdise her right to keep her child. To save her son, and herself, She must turn away from her love and all that is familiar and safe to find another way forward.

Title: Figures in Silk / Queen of Silks
Author: Vanora Bennett
Release date: 2009 (WL)

US/UK Cover HB

UK Cover PB

UK Cover PB - title change

Two sisters discover passion during the War of the Roses–one in the arms of the king, the other in the world of silk From the author of the acclaimed novel “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” comes an epic tale of love and intrigue. The year is 1471. Edward IV, who won the throne with the help of his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is restoring law and order after years of war. Under Edward IV, life in England begins to improve. Business is booming once more and the printing and silk industries prosper in London. When silk merchant John Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters, their fortunes are forever changed. Elder daughter Jane Shore begins a notorious liaison with the king while industrious and clever Isabel finds herself married into the house of Claver, a wealthy silk dynasty. Fate delivers Isabel a challenge when her new husband is killed and she is forced into apprenticeship to her mother-in-law, Alice Claver. It is from Alice Claver that Isabel learns to love silk and the exotic and passionate fabrics from Italy, Persia, Spain, Tunisia, and beyond. Isabel learns to make her way in this new world of silk–to find friends and enemies–and she strikes an alliance with her sister’s lover, King Edward IV, that will bring the secrets of silk-making to London. As Isabel grows in power and her plan for a silk industry run by Englishwomen is set into motion, the political landscape shifts in dangerous ways. One sister will fall as the other rises and choices must be made that will change their lives forever.

Title: Portrait of an Unknown Woman
Author: Vanora Bennett
Release date: 2007 (WL)

HB Cover

PB Cover

PB Cover

“The year is 1527. The great portraitist Hans Holbein, who has fled the reformation in Europe, is making his first trip to England under commission to Sir Thomas More. In the course of six years, Holbein will become a close friend to the More family and paint two nearly identical family portraits. But closer examination of the paintings reveals that the second holds several mysteries… ” Set against the turmoil, intrigue and, tragedy of Henry VIII’s court, “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” vividly evokes sixteenth-century England on the verge of enormous change. As the Protestant Reformation sweeps across Europe to lap at England’s shores, relations between her king and the Catholic Church begin to plummet-driven by Henry VIII’s insatiable need for a male heir and the urgings of his cunning mistress Anne Boleyn-and heresy begins to take hold. As tensions rise, Henry VIII turns to his most trusted servant and defender of Catholic orthodoxy, Sir Thomas More to keep peace in England, but soon the entire More family find their own lives at risk. At the center of “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” is Meg Gigg’s, Sir Thomas More’s twenty-three year old adopted daughter. Intelligent, headstrong, and tender-hearted, Meg has been schooled in the healing arts. And though she is devoted to her family, events conspire that will cause Meg to question everything she thought she knew-including the desires of her own heart. As the danger to More and his family increases, two men will vie for Meg’s affections: John Clement, her former tutor and More’s protege who shares Meg’s passion for medicine, but whose true identity will become unclear, and the great Holbein, who’s artistic vision will forever alter her understanding of the world. With a striking sense of period detail “Portrait of an Unknown Woman” is an unforgettable story of sin and religion, desire and deception. It is the story of a young woman on the brink of sensual awakening and of a country on the edge of mayhem.