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Every week Tanzanite features upcoming historical fiction and history related non-fiction books that have come to her attention and may be of interest to others. Since she has an out of control TBR pile, so should everyone else!
Mozart's Last Aria by Matt Rees. UK release May 1, 2011;US release November 1, 2011. Transporting readers to the salons and concert halls of 18th century Austria
In December 1791, Madame Maria Anna Berchtold von Sonnenburg – known to her family as Nanneri – receives a letter from her sister in law Costanze with devastating news: Nanneri’s brother, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is dead.
But Constanze’s letter carries more than just news of the great composer’s death. Months earlier, Mozart had confided in his wife that he believed his life was in danger, and on his deathbed announced that he had been poisoned – though he was never able to name his murderer.
Now, as Nanneri sets off for Vienna to pay her final respects, she finds herself entering a web of suspicion and intrigue involving rival composers, jealous lovers, and sinister creditors, where even Moazart’s Masonic brothers – including Prince Lichnowsky – harbor dark secrets about their one time friend.
The Girl in the Mirror by Sarah Gristwood. UK release June 9, 2011. Jeanne, a young French exile orphaned by the wars of religion on the continent, is brought to London as a young girl disguised as a boy. Growing up, the disguise has not been shed and she finds a living as a clerk, ending up in the household of Robert Cecil. As she witnesses the intrigues and plots swirling round the court of Elizabeth I in the last days of Gloriana’s reign, she finds herself sucked into the orbit of the dashing and ambitious young favourite, the Earl of Essex. The queen draws near to the end of her life, with no heir to follow, and the stakes are high.
As Essex hurtles towards self-destruction, Jeanne finds her loyalties, her disguise and her emotions under threat – in a political climate where the least mistake can attract dire penalties.This is a beautifully written and evocative novel, rich with the details of life and politics of Elizabeth I’s court. Jeanne’s struggle for survival and love is interwoven with her passionate pull towards the gardens she documents, a lovely and seductive backdrop to the novel.
The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer. UK release October 6, 2011.
We think of Queen Elizabeth I as 'Gloriana': the most powerful English woman in history. We think of her reign (1558-1603) as a golden age of maritime heroes, like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Francis Drake, and of great writers, such as Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. But what was it actually like to live in Elizabethan England? If you could travel to the past and walk the streets of London in the 1590s, where would you stay? What would you eat? What would you wear? Would you really have a sense of it being a glorious age? And if so, how would that glory sit alongside the vagrants, diseases, violence, sexism and famine of the time? In this book Ian Mortimer answers the key questions that a prospective traveller to late sixteenth-century England would ask. Applying the groundbreaking approach he pioneered in his bestselling "Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, the Elizabethan" world unfolds around the reader. He shows a society making great discoveries and winning military victories and yet at the same time being troubled by its new-found awareness. It is a country in which life expectatncy at birth is in the early thirties, children can be hanged for theft and Catholics persecuted for their faith. Yet it produces some of the finest writing in the English language and some of the most magnificent architecture, and sees Elizabeth's subjects settle in America and circumnavigate the globe. Welcome to a country that is, in all its contradictions, the very crucible of the modern world.
The third installment in Nick Drake Egyptian series will be released in the US on December 6, 2011. The book is yet untitled, but here is a summary:
In this third and final installment of Nick Drake’s acclaimed Ancient Egyptian trilogy – begun with the acclaimed Tutankhamun – the future of Egypt
King Tutankhamun has died without an heir, and now his young widow, Queen Ankhesenamun, struggles to maintain power and order. To defeat her enemies, she has but one hope: to forge an alliance with the Hittites, a powerful kingdom beyond Ehypt’s borders.
The loyal Rahotep, a chief detective in the Thebes
Back in Egypt Thebes
I want to read that Girl in the Mirror. I love those kinds of books. Thanks for letting us know.
February 12, 2011 10:43 AM
Ooh, The Girl in the Mirror sounds intriguing!
February 12, 2011 11:43 AM
Leave to me to get Jean Plaidy's boring book! lol
I had heard so many good things about her novels, so I ordered "A Murder Most Royal," because I really like reading about Anne Boleyn, but so far it's just draaaaggggging...I'm putting it down in favor of Susan Higginbotham's "The Stolen Crown."
February 12, 2011 9:00 PM