Excerpt… England, summer, 1326 THE DAWN BROKE on clouds gathering over a steep coast, colored sullen orange to deep red. They were reflected against the oily, steadily increasing swell beneath the Faucon’s hull. “Yes,” the captain said, “let’s get docked now.” She brought the ship in close enough to what looked like an uninterrupted shoal…
Read more The oily, steadily increasing swell beneath the Faucon’s hull.
Ehrenreich writes an introduction for this reprint of a 1973 classic, and as she says …we have to remind ourselves that WMN was written in a blaze of anger and indignation. This book was contemporaneous with Our Bodies, Ourselves, the feminist text on the female body. It enlightened a generation of women who until then had taken…
Excerpt… England, summer, 1326 They crossed the river Seine at Tancarville and followed it down to its mouth, where the town of Harfleur presented a bustling picture of energy and industry. “They’re starting a merchants’ association here,” Tiphaine said, returning to the inn where they had procured rooms for the night. “Perhaps Wu Company should…
Read more A heavenly bean stew flavored with bits of chicken and sausage and a lot of garlic.
I was incredibly lucky to have been raised by a mother who never said “You can’t do that, honey, you’re a girl,” so I never paid enough attention to the women’s rights movement. So it’s lucky Collins wrote this definitive history, so I can read about Lois Rabinowitz getting thrown out of a NYC court…
Excerpt… “Look up,” Hari said. “Look up, now.” Obediently they opened their eyes and looked up, and were assaulted by a blaze of colored light shining through windows that on every side reached for the sky, for the heavens, for the stars themselves. Crowned figures royal and religious, common folk wielding axe and saw and…
Chartres, winter, 1325–1326 The forest had given way to rolling fields of stubbled grain. At noon Shasha said, “What’s that?” and they followed her pointing finger to the massive stone spires rising up from the horizon, as if to knock at the very doors of heaven itself. “That would be the cathedral,” Alaric said. Chartres…
This month I’m running some reviews in honor of Women’s History Month. A lively history of the struggle for women’s rights in the UK that will make you wish Lewis would migrate to the US to write one for us, too. With lots of snark without getting nasty, Lewis creates a series of vignettes of…
Read more A lively history of the struggle for women’s rights in the UK
Excerpt… Lyons and environs, late fall, 1325 North Wind had had a trying few months. He had been force marched over the Alps from Milano to Lyon with no chance to stretch his legs in a race. In Lyon he had been imprisoned on a farm, where, to add insult to injury, when a mare…
Read more His human had gone away and left him for an unconscionable amount of time.
I swear, Fred could write anything, on any continent, in any time period. In The Eighth Veil, it’s Jerusalem, 26 AD. A serving girl in Herod Antiphas’ palace has been raped and murdered. The local Roman prefect, one Pontius Pilate, summons Gamaliel the Elder to squelch this scandal before it makes Rome’s hand-picked satrap look…
Read more Three different books:three different series:one great writer
Excerpt… Provins, October, 1325 “How high is the rock, do you think?” Shasha said. “Five times the height of the towers of St. Mark’s, and that’s just the rock,” Firas said. Everyone’s eyes raised to what grew from the top of the rock. On a ledge close to the summit many tiny houses had been…
Read more L’Arête wasn’t just impregnable. It was unassailable.
