“It’s the oldest temptation. Not gold or the power it can buy, not love, not even the deep, drumming fires of lust: what we coveted first was knowledge.”
A legendary curse,
A witch-haunted king,
An ancient blade,
And all-too-modern murder….

As Kate Stanley begins directing rehearsals for Macbeth at the foot of Scotland’s Dunsinnan Hill, it doesn’t take long for the legendary curse on Shakespeare’s evil-ridden play to stir. Strange references emerge to the boy actor who first played Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare’s day and died in the role. A trench atop the hill is found filled with blood shortly after some of the actors go missing. And a mysterious tarot card leads Kate into the woods where she finds a local woman dead in circumstances that suggest not just ritual murder, but ancient pagan sacrifice.

With Kate marked as both suspect and future victim, she and Ben Pearl race to discover an early version of Macbeth, said to contain actual rituals of witchcraft and forbidden knowledge. However much Kate would like to dismiss such rituals as superstition, someone else appears willing to kill for them—and for the cursed manuscript said to be Shakespeare’s darkest secret.

An asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, and every conceivable natural disaster occurs. Seventeen-year-old Alex Morales’s parents are missing and presumed drowned by tsunamis. Left alone, he struggles to care for his sisters Bri, 14, and Julie, 12. Things look up as Central Park is turned into farmland and food begins to grow. Then worldwide volcanic eruptions coat the sky with ash and the land freezes permanently. People starve, freeze, or die of the flu. Only the poor are left in New York—a doomed island—while the rich light out for safe towns inland and south.

Book 1

Book 3

Wow I’m suddenly on a roll with YA fiction which almost never happens. My cover attractions this week and last were YA novels. I’ve read two books from last week’s post, The Luxe & Rumors, and I’m currently reading a YA historical fiction novel, The Queen’s Soprano which of course caught my attention due its cover. I spotted The Dead and Gone about a year ago, fell in love with cover back then and it still holds my attention every time I see it.

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THE LUXE

The beautiful young Holland sisters, Elizabeth and Diana, rule Manhattan society. Or so it appears. When they discover their status is far from secure, everyone—from the ambitious socialite Penelope Hayes, to the debonair bachelor, Henry Schoonmaker, to the Holland’s dour maid, Lina Broud—threatens the girls’ golden future. When Elizabeth’s carriage overturns near the East River, her glittering life, well-known for lighting up the city’s gossip pages, is swallowed by the rough current. Then the question on everyone’s lips is this: Who will take Elizabeth’s enviable place?

Book 2

Book 3

Book 4

I’m by no means a girlie girl. There isn’t a dress to be found in my closet but I’ve admired these covers since the books first appeared. The dresses its all about the dresses. And the shoes, the purse, the hair, the makeup, so on and so forth. The Luxe was offered free earlier this week for Kindle owners so I snagged a copy which I’m currently reading. Usually I don’t read YA fiction but I’ve decided to make an exception to that rule .

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Please feel free to leave a link to a cover that caught your eye.

• In the “Your name:” box, please enter either your name or your blog’s name.

• In the “Your URL:” box please enter the URL/link that will lead directly to the post you are submitting (also called the permalink). This is not the URL to the blog’s home page.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.