Tag: historical fiction

Video Trailer: The Witch of Leper Cove

revised_Leper_cover_(533x800)It’s taken two years, but in the English hamlet of Aldinoch, sixteen-year-old Lily and her twin brothers have finally accepted their parents’ disappearance. Although grappling with grief, loneliness and even guilt, they’re sure the worst is behind them.

Lily is apprenticed to Alice, the village healer who cares for Aldinoch’s sick and the lepers who live downstream. Her herbs and poultices save lives. But its early in the 13th century. Pope Honorius has just launched the Inquisition. Even the good and useful are not safe. When Alice is accused of witchcraft and imprisoned in an ancient dungeon, Lily and her brothers are forced into action.

The Witch of Leper Cove, the young adult historical fiction book by Deborah Bogen, is available at Amazon.com and Amazon UK.

Don’t forget, you can cast your vote for trailer of the month on August 30, 2014 at 1 p.m. Pacific time.

Book Brief: The Witch of Leper Cove

The Witch of Leper CoveThe Witch of Leper Cove
by Deborah Bogen
Genre of the Book: YA Historical Novel, Medieval
Length: 353 pages

Early in the 13th century Pope Honorius launched the Holy Inquisition sending his Hounds of Gods, into Christendom to root out heresy.

In the English village of Aldinoch, sixteen-year-old Lily and her younger twin brothers have finally accepted their parents’ disappearance and are adjusting to new lives. Separated from each other and their childhood home, grappling with grief, fear, loneliness and guilt, each is sure nothing more can threaten them.

Lily is apprenticed to the local healer, Alice, who takes care of Aldinoch’s sick and gives aid to the colony of lepers living downstream from the village. Her knowledge of the local herbs and illness is the only thing standing between Aldinoch’s villagers and the fevers and agues afflicting them.

But when the Church is infected with worldly ambition not even such a force for good is safe. Bishop Hugo, one of the Pope’s Inquisitors, is called to the nearby town of Guildford to hold hearings and investigate heresy. When Alice is officially accused of witchcraft and imprisoned in Guildford’s ancient dungeon the siblings are forced into action.

In The Witch of Leper Cove we meet not the knights and ladies who so often populate historical novels, but common people caught in the cross-fire of the ruthless and striving. Lily and her brothers are forced to take on a monolithic institution and the powerful men within it. What they discover about the Church and themselves will change them forever.

This book is available from Amazon. Continue reading “Book Brief: The Witch of Leper Cove”

Featured Book, The Briton and the Dane: Timeline

TimelineThe Briton and the Dane: Timeline
by Mary Ann Bernal
Genres: romance, historical fiction
Available from Amazon.

A beautiful archeologist besotted with an Anglo-Saxon nobleman is transported back to eleventh century England where treachery abounds. She is determined to learn the identities of the treacherous blackguards hiding in the shadows, but will she walk away or intervene, thereby changing the course of history to save the man she loves?

Featured Book: Jonestown

JonestownJonestown: A Novel
by Ryan Roy
Genre: thriller, suspense, historical fiction
Available from Amazon.

Jonestown is a historical thriller about a father determined to free his son from the compound of cult leader Jim Jones. The novel allows readers to glimpse the sadistic governance of the Peoples Temple, and it carries them along the path of the congressional delegation whose inspection of Jonestown in 1978 led to the shocking climax.

Excerpt:

Jim Jones stepped onto the pavilion stage and looked out at the ocean of faces gazing in his direction. His followers packed the benches, shoulder to shoulder. They looked to their leader.
Maria handed the reverend a microphone. The congregation hushed to a perfect silence—so quiet that the sounds of the jungle two hundred yards away seeped through the open pavilion. Jones gazed longingly at his people. Every minute of instruction, every sermon, every lesson, every session of catharsis and every instance of discipline had prepared them for this one moment. Jones saw in those faces the indomitable spirit of the Cause—a people who had been marginalized and besieged by entities of evil in positions of political power, and yet a people willing to fight back, willing to purchase the attention of the world with the currency of their lives.
Jones settled into the cushioned chair overlooking the crowd. He raised the microphone to his lips.

What others are saying:
“Roy’s ability to create and sustain suspense combined with the thorough research and knowledge of Jonestown is a recipe for an amazing read.” – Robert J. Stephens, Jr.