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One fateful afternoon, Lisette is left in charge of the empty chateau. During the dark days that follow, a vow of revenge mars her efforts to make new friends and bask in the attentions of a rugged British officer. The three men she cares about face the battle ordeal of Waterloo. While fleeing the catastrophe of war, her every step is fraught with perils, brigands and heartache-

Description:

Published: August 15th, 2015

April 1815

Rumors of Napoleon’s war plans spread across the French border into the Province of Brabant. The caretaker’s stepdaughter dreads the arrival of Napoleon’s soldiers with good reason...she knows their violent ways only too well. One fateful afternoon, Lisette is left in charge of the empty chateau. During the dark days that follow, a vow of revenge mars her efforts to make new friends and bask in the attentions of a rugged British officer. The three men she cares about face the battle ordeal of Waterloo. While fleeing the catastrophe of war, her every step is fraught with perils, brigands and heartache-

Lisette, a soldier’s daughter with iron will and a kind heart, refuses to surrender to hardship or vile threats... when faced with defeat by the past, she must find a way to protect those she holds dear and win a most precious victory.

EXCERPT




The caretaker’s daily chore of inspecting the abandoned chateau fell to Lisette whenever her stepfather was absent.

Once this task was done, a few hours were hers to spend as she wished; the prospect hurried her from the family cottage with the door key and a workbasket in hand. Skirts held aside, she crossed the wide courtyard under clearing skies, avoiding the puddles strewn in her path.

Chateau Austerlitz, slate roof glistening like a dark mirror after the noonday rain, towered above the estate grounds.

A massive door of oak planks, studded with iron brads in the medieval fashion, guarded the converted fortress above a shallow flight of steps. The rusty lock, stubborn as always, finally yielded; as the door creaked open, dank air rushed past her cheeks. Out of an abundance of caution, she relocked the door from the inside.

Engulfed in a dusty gloom, the cavernous hall held a trove of tapestries, paintings and heraldic shields until the summer previous. Faint outlines on the limestone floors still marked where fine French carpets had resided.

Lisette hastened across the great hall to the stone staircase, pausing now and then to sneeze into her work apron.

Entering the second-floor ballroom, the sound of her footsteps provided ghostly company.

The open space was empty except for a carved trunk mistakenly left behind when the elderly Count Walbourg fled to Vienna; the aristocrat was banished from Brabant when Napoleon was exiled to Elba.

Fond recollections rushed from every corner.

On many a summer’s night, lively music from this grand room drifted across the courtyard to the caretaker’s cottage and into the open windows of Lisette’s attic bedroom.

During winter celebrations, logs blazed behind giant andirons in the two fireplaces. Here, the Austrian nobleman entertained his friends, the fine gilded panels brought from Paris resounding with their gaiety.

Now the salon’s ceiling was freckled with black mold, sad evidence of its changing fortunes.

Loud clattering arose in the courtyard...the sharp echo of horse hooves raced through the empty halls, a sound familiar to Lisette when she was a household servant here.

Was the visitor coming from Genappe? The narrow road past the chateau crossed the Baisy forest and led to Brussels but was seldom used until the drier summer months.

Thoughts in an excited jumble, Lisette rushed down the stairs and crossed the hall while untying her work apron, round wood heels of her shoes clacking on the stone floor.

No one had ever arrived at the estate when she was alone!

This morning after her family sped off to Genappe, she felt capable enough but now her confidence sagged.

Why had she not worn her best skirt instead of the shabby one? Stowing the apron in the basket, she checked her red knit stockings and white cap with trembling fingers.

Lisette carefully turned the large key and, opening the door a few inches, peered outside.

A military helmet, its metal badge gleaming...a soldier!

Sparks lit her memory afire...the French soldiers came to arrest her Irish father for desertion. Jabbing bayonets in every hay-filled corner of the small barn, they found him.

“No one is allowed here,” Lisette said, studying this soldier in the courtyard from behind the safety of the door.

His muddy black boots and splattered greatcoat suggested an arduous journey; tethered beside the steps, his dark bay horse was covered from muzzle to tail with brown road slurry.

Before she could warn the soldier not to come closer, he boldly mounted the steps.

“Bonjour, Miss Lisette.” His helmet perched in the crook of his arm. “I am Corporal Grosbek, serving His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Napoleon. Is Monsieur Pollard at home?”

“What do you want with him?”

How startling to hear their names spoken by a stranger!

“Is not Monsieur Pollard caretaker of this estate?” The soldier’s tone was firm but polite. “He is on a list of possible suppliers for our regiment.”

“He is not here. Good day.”

Grosbek sprang across the threshold, forcing her aside as he said, “May I wait until he returns?”

“My stepfather doesn’t allow strangers in here!”

Ignoring her protest, the corporal loped across the entrance hall to the drawing room like a haughty fox.

Why was he so certain of himself? Alarmed, Lisette edged to the open doorway, poised to run down the front steps.

“I am not a stranger,” he said, returning.

“I don’t know you, so you are a stranger.”

“Monsieur Pollard surely knows our family,” Grosbek replied, “as we have always lived in this parish. In fact, you visited Wavre a few summers ago. We spoke after Mass.”

“I’m very poor at remembering names,” she replied, unable to think of a better excuse while turning the matter over in her thoughts as if scrubbing potatoes.

After bitter arguments with her mother, Lisette was sent away to visit a distant cousin in Wavre for an entire summer.

That was three years ago...however, she recalled fleeing the church hall to escape from a brash young man, a pestering nuisance!

Could this be the same fellow?

“I remember you were rude to me, Miss Lisette, and hurried away as if I was a bore.”

The truth of his accusation stung. “You are mistaken.”

“Well, it was a few years ago.” He shrugged, adding a wry smile. “When does Count Walbourg return?”

“His Excellency resides in Vienna,” she replied, her pride in tatters, “and you may write to him there. However, you should know...since leaving here, he seldom replies.”

Lisette rubbed her fingers, recalling how raw they were after days of packing every candle, pot and kettle of Count Walbourg’s into straw-filled barrels and crates.

“Walbourg is an Austrian and Austria is our enemy,” he said in a gruff voice. “We can take property or anything else from enemies...or their friends.”

What kind of loyalty to a staunch ally was this? She wanted to explain how Count Walbourg received the former Spanish estate as a gift of France and later renamed it in honor of Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz.

Arguing with the soldier, however, did not seem wise.

“Surely,” he said, eyeing the staircase, “some useful articles were left behind.”

“No, my family watches over an empty house.”

He tapped his boot toe in a rapid drumbeat. “Empty, yes,” he said finally, “and not what I had expected to find.”

While he spoke, she picked up the basket.

Forgoing the search for new dampness in the chateau for the time being, Lisette opened the front door wide and stood beside it, always a hint for a visitor to leave.

Grosbek agreeably followed her outside and looked up at the Latin motto chiseled above the doorway.

While she locked the door, he read the inscription aloud.

“FORTUNA AUDACES IUVAT...what does it mean?”

“I recall it translates as, fortune favors the bold.”

He hiked his chin. “When my unit from Paris arrives in this area, we will be very bold.”

“What town will they inhabit?” Lisette slipped the chateau’s key into her hidden skirt pocket, her mind racing with alarm. “Towns are the best place for billeting troops.”

That hardship must not darken their doorstep; she prayed he did not intend to bring his unit to the chateau.

“I’m not allowed to say.” He frowned. “We’ll forage to supply our regiment, possibly for weeks. I thought we might store supplies here...but it’s too damp.”

The burden of that terrible run-for-your-life feeling eased; her common sense, having flown away in fright, returned.

Relieved to be outside and thinking the soldier was a reasonable man, she sighed inwardly.

After they went down the steps to the courtyard, Corporal Grosbek glanced at his horse.

“I am traveling home from Charleroi.” Pushing aside his greatcoat, he grasped the hilt of the short saber at his waist. “May I water my horse and allow him to graze in your pasture for a while?”






About the author:
Olivia M. Andem lives in Southern California and enjoys speaking to book clubs, library and civic groups about the historic Georgian era that inspired The Hawthorne Diaries saga. 

She is a member of Romance Writers of America and is an avid reader and researcher of her English and American heritage. 
Aided by the encouragement of family and support of a Yorkie terrier, Harley-Girl, current projects include works of both romance and historical fiction.

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Casting Lots is the tale of how a Greek slave, Lucinius, becomes an influential religious leader and literary figure in the First Century A.D. His spiritual awakening is prompted by an unlikely mentor, a Centurion, who was at the crucifixion. 

Description:

Casting Lots is the tale of how a Greek slave, Lucinius, becomes an influential religious leader and literary figure in the First Century A.D. His spiritual awakening is prompted by an unlikely mentor, a Centurion, who was at the crucifixion. 

Lucinius is ordered by his master to assemble the stories told by eye-witnesses to the life and death of Jesus Christ. Cornelius was the Centurion at the Crucifixion. Cornelius is hated by the Jews and the Romans. He is haunted by the Crucifixion because he won the shroud worn by Christ in a game of dice. He takes Lucinius on a journey throughout the Empire and tells him what seem to be fantastic stories about famous Romans during the era of the Republic, some 100 years ago. These stories contain elements which Cornelius could not possibly know, unless he is making them up or unless there is some other explanation.

The book answers the question of who wrote the Gospel of Luke and why he wrote it. The book answers the question of who is Cornelius and why he said Jesus was an innocent man at his Crucifixion. Thus, it is a tale of the two men's spiritual journeys.

EXCERPT

I walked to his home again.
The streets were crowded and the world’s smells washed over me: the sweat of the men, the perfumes of the women, the urine of the animals, bread baking, cloth just cut, fruit drying on the stands, gutters of the streets, leather being tanned.

Sweet, pungent, acrid, acidic, salty, bitter, biting smells grabbed my nostrils as if I smelled these for the first time. The smells were counterpoint to the sounds of the city. The hammer of the artist cracking tiles, rocks, and glass to make mosaics, bleating of sheep and lowing of cows as they awaited slaughter, the rumble of wagons carrying bolts of cloth, or carcasses of meat and exotic goods along the cobblestone streets, the tramp of soldiers’ caligae, their hob-nails clicking on stone, as they marched, crying babies needing to be nursed, yelling mothers trying to find lost children, heralds blaring out the whereabouts of some legion killing some barbarians somewhere on some frontier, tax collectors demanding payment of tax, while the taxpayer screamed insults or begged for mercy, and the sound of my heart pounding so hard that it might burst, blended together in a discordant cacophony of life.

If the smells did not grab your attention, or if the sounds did not demand your notice, then the play of light would surely command your consideration. The light side-by-side with the dark was sharp, stark, defined, and distinct, as where the land ends and the seas begin. 

You walked most of the time in the shadow of the tall insulae, the apartment buildings, fearing that from the darkness above would flow that most unsavory of liquids. Then the sunlight blaring from a blue crystal-clear sky dazzled your eyes, when you walked across some broad street. The brilliant sun radiated off the temples’ gold-leaf veneers. You were in the presence of the Gods. 

All the while, I thought about how I could approach him. An offer of money, I thought, would only insult and repel him. The quest of my master disgusted and dismayed him. Before I had decided what to do and how to do it, I was there at his door. 

“Damno ad averno!” (“Damn it to hell!”) Cornelius spat as spoke these words as if the spitting added to the curse.
“I will wait until you tell me.” I stood resolutely. 
“What?” 
“I will wait until you tell me.” I sat down and smiled slightly. 
“Get underfoot, eh?” 
“If necessary.” 
“All day and all night?” he asked.
“If necessary.” 
He turned into the darkness of his home. I waited. Time passed. Then I saw him coming back, his vitis rudis, that is his vine hand. No true centurion was ever without the symbol of his authority, his vitis rudis, gnarled and worn. 
“Do you think a man who has wielded this,” he gestured with his vitis rudis, “will ever break?” 
“Do you think that a slave who has been beaten all of his life will fear one more beating?” 
“Well, that is the first thing you have said that makes any sense at all!” He smiled.

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About the author:
William D. McEachern is a graduate of Duke University with a bachelor of arts in religion and psychology. His focus at Duke was on early Christianity. His fascination with Rome grew out of his Latin and Greek classes at St. Paul's School in New York in the early 1960s. Reading Caesar fueled his love of Rome and ancient history, which he has studied for half a century. A practicing tax attorney for more than thirty-five years, he has written numerous articles and several law treatises about estate planning, estate and gift taxation, and the use of trusts. In this his first novel, Mr. McEachern's unique voice blends law, religion, and history.

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Harriet Wolf has a final confession. It can be found only in the final book of the series that made her a famous writer. But does that book exist?


Description:

Release Date: August 18th, 2015

A brilliantly crafted saga about three generations of women and their secrets, including the discovery of a final unpublished book by the family matriarch, a revered and reclusive author.

Harriet Wolf has a final confession. It can be found only in the final book of the series that made her a famous writer. But does that book exist?

This absorbing novel spans the entire twentieth century, telling the moving story of a mother, her daughter, and two granddaughters, one of whom is the only person alive who knows the whereabouts of Harriet's final book. When a hospitalization brings the family back together, the mystery not only of Harriet's last book, but also of her life, hangs in the balance. Will the truth ever be known, or is Harriet's story gone forever?

A multi-generational tale of long-lost love, motherhood, and family secrets, this is Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet.

EXCERPT




Chapter One

The Baby, Twice Born

Harriet

This is how the story goes: I was born dead—or so my mother was told.

According to the physician, good old Dr. Brumus, I didn’t cry. I wasn’t capable of even this innate reflex. I was mute and sallow and already a bleeder, one red bead poised at each nostril. Imagine my exhausted mother—the saint, Irish and Catholic—her legs sagging wide beneath the bloody sheet like two pale, bony wings.

The year was 1900. The world was taking a new shape: the Paris Exposition’s moving sidewalks, Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, and a tunnel being dug for the subway at Borough Hall, Manhattan. But in our house near the Chesapeake, not far from bustling Baltimore—with its canneries and foundries, its harbor of moaning steamboats, its tenements teeming with typhoid—there was little to do for either my mother or me, medically. Science had come only so far.

But given that Dr. Brumus—winded, permanently overwhelmed—had delivered three stillborn babies from my mother already, it seemed, for the moment, he’d finally won something. He was always watchful, however, always squinting as if in bright sun, even at dusk, the hour I was born, mosquitoes whining past an ear. And Brumus knew, what with my bleeding nose and my pallid, lightly furred skin, that something wasn’t right. He wrapped me in a blanket—though the summer hung wet and steaming outside. Like an aging football captain, he shuttled me down the stairs to the porch, where my father, the banker, was pacing. Dr. Brumus presented me to my father and gave the news: “It isn’t fit.” I wasn’t a girl yet. I was still dangling before my father, midair, a lost pronoun, and it would take years before I would become a child in any real form in my father’s eyes.

“No, it isn’t fit,” my father agreed, perhaps expecting as much, given the three lost before me.

“It may only live long enough for her to get attached,” Dr. Brumus said, teary now.

“The baby’s mother isn’t fit either,” my father said. “Mary has those dark moods. You’ve seen them. She couldn’t withstand that kind of attachment and loss.”

Dr. Brumus tried to hand me to my father, whose face was poised above mine, his nose fat and squat, a boxy fender, though he was youngish and handsome in his taut pink skin and glossy hair. He didn’t like what he saw. “Take it with you,” he said.

Dr. Brumus oversaw the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children in Owings Mills, long before Baltimore started spilling into it with such ferocity. My father was betting that I wouldn’t make it—but what if I did? Was he asking Dr. Brumus to be my father, or at least my warden? The two men had known each other since they were boys.

“Jackie,” Dr. Brumus said, using the pet name normally reserved for times when he’d drunk a Scotch and soda and was looking slack and heavy-lidded. But that wasn’t his mood now. His eyes raced. “I can’t take the baby with me—”

“You said it’s going to die. You said so!” And my father became a little boy, his face plump and sweaty.

“Where’s the baby?” my mother called, her voice carrying from the open bedroom window above, her Irish accent heavier because she was too tired to fight it. She could have been calling to them from reeds, a marsh with a fog rolling in.

My father shook his head. “No,” he whispered to the doctor, fiercely.

And then my father marched upstairs, past the water stains on the wallpaper and into the bedroom. “No,” he said to his wife in a lilting voice of his own. Was he going to sing to her? “Darling, no.”

And so, for my mother, I was dead.

But still there was a baby. And this other baby with its dim pulse was bundled and taken away to start its other life at the Maryland School for Feeble Minded Children.

In just over a decade’s time, this child would become a supposed Girl Genius, and, more important, she would find Eppitt in the laundry and love him too much. (You don’t know Eppitt yet, dear ones, but you will.) And then this same child would make her way back here again—to this very porch, to her mother’s bed.

Some of us are born dead, some never really born at all, and others are born fresh every day—as if they’ve had new eyes stitched on overnight—which is the best way to live.

I hope you will understand eventually why I’ve denied all of this for so long. Are you reading this, my Eleanor? My Ruthie? My dear Tilton? Are your eyes catching on these words, fastening one to the next, aware of my life collecting on the page? Are you here with me?

I still desire the veil of fiction, the means to monkey and fidget with the details so I can convince myself that I’m writing about another baby, another mother, another life. If not that, then I wish it were lovely. But what did I learn in writing out the lives of my characters Weldon and Daisy? You can’t have love without knowing sorrow; you can’t have miracles without desperation.

Here, then. My desperation.

Excerpted from Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott. Copyright © 2015 by Julianna Baggott. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY. All rights reserved.




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About the author:
Critically acclaimed, bestselling author, Julianna Baggott -- who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher (The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted) and N.E. Bode (The Anybodies) -- has published 17 books, including novels for adults, younger readers, and collections of poetry. Her latest novel, PURE, is the first of a trilogy; film rights have sold to Fox2000 -- www.pure-book.com. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Best American Poetry, Best Creative Nonfiction, Real Simple, on NPR.org, as well as read on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and "Here and Now." Her novels have been book-pick selections by People Magazine's summer reading, Washington Post book-of-the-week, a Booksense selection, a Boston Herald Book Club selection, and a Kirkus Best Books of the Year list. Her novels have been published in over 50 overseas editions. She's a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and the founder of the nonprofit Kids in Need - Books in Deed. For more, visit www.juliannabaggott.com.

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Ammi, a pregnant 24-year-old, flees New Delhi with millions of Muslim migrants in the early hours of the 1947 Partition of India, clawing her way through a controversial caste system and into the heart of Lahori society. 

Description:

Ammi, a pregnant 24-year-old, flees New Delhi with millions of Muslim migrants in the early hours of the 1947 Partition of India, clawing her way through a controversial caste system and into the heart of Lahori society. 

A family broken by betrayal.

Two of Ammi's beloved sons immigrate to the United States and secretly marry dazzling, contemporary American brides. One bride converts to Islam. The other commits apostasy, the sin of all sins. 

Three women who stand to lose everything.

The collision of two belief systems—two worlds—come to a head as Ammi, Carolyn, and Ivy fight to keep their own marriages, families, and futures secure.

GUEST POST
FIVE RULES FOR WRITING A PASSIONATE LOVE SCENE THAT READERS WILL BELIEVE 

When it comes to making sure a book is relatable to readers, an author has to turn their attention to everyday life scenarios. From the mundane to the insane, if you want to captivate a reader and make your story and characters come to life, a writer cannot take short-cuts. I write stories about women in interracial and interfaith relationships, and the crossing of culture, tradition, and religion always—ALWAYS—finds its way into the bedroom. It's inevitable when you have two people who are born worlds apart, they might not jive right out of the gate. Whispers from the East has a heat factor of about 2 on a 1-10 scale, but the little sizzle it summons still required me to learn this element of the writing craft. 

Here are the five biggest things that helped me bring realistic passion to my pages. 

1. Keep it real. 
Everyone says this about virtually everything, but when it comes to writing it is especially important. The reality is, most people don't speak in clichés while in the throws of passion. Seriously. Have you ever had someone ask, "Are you ready for my torpedo?" 

Good fiction will draw you out of real life and place you somewhere you might not normally go, so I'm not saying to keep it all vanilla. Take it as far as you are comfortable going…just don't make it cheesy. Be bold. Be fun. Be crazy. But in doing all that, keep it real. 

2. Don't use scientifically accurate names for intimate body parts. 
If you are unable to come up with clever synonyms, Google is the pal that never disappoints. If your issue isn't coming up with the words, but an actual discomfort in using any words you didn't learn in health-class, you should leave the scenes out altogether. Whatever you decide, make sure it doesn't include the line, "Is your vulva ready for my torpedo?" 

3. Employ all the senses. 
Description is key to any story, and when writing about passion the act is usually less important than a readers' connection to it. Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste are the characterizations that matter most. A warm, velvety breath against a flushed collarbone. The gentle brush of fingertips down a quivering jaw line. When you are able to tap into all of the senses, the rest tend to fall naturally into place. 

4. Don’t be afraid to get silly. 
Passion can be fun! Who said it always has to be serious—even in a serious book? Sometimes we laugh, sometimes it's awkward, and sometimes we think about how we really need to do the laundry. This gets back to keeping it real. There's nothing wrong with injecting a wee bit of malarkey into your prose. If it suits your characters, it will likely suit your story as well. 

5. Keep writing. 
No matter what, always remember you have a whole story to tell and love scenes are just a small part of that. Keep writing. Even the most provocative romance novels have only a couple of detailed encounters. You might not have noticed, but if you go and count there is usually around four: the "discovery" kiss, the first real encounter, a second encounter, and a finale. All good books have a story to tell and it is important that you make that come to life. If you are struggling with a passionate scene, skip over it until you know your characters better. But whatever you do—keep writing.

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About the author:
Amie Ali's stories focus on the lives of Western women who find love among the cultural breadth of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian countries. Weaving western expectations of love and family with extensive cultural and religious differences, she enjoys writing stories that bridge divides and offer a peek into these diverse, often controversial relationships.

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