Author name: Sayling@@Away

I am always eager to read any of the books in the two Georgian mystery series by William Savage: The Adam Bascom series and the Ashmole Fox series. This new one did not disappoint. Adam Bascom is born the younger of two sons of a country squire, and, unable to inherit, he pursues a career in medicine and sets up practice in the small town of Aylsham, not far from Norwich. In the previous books in the series, he discovers he has a talent for solving mysteries along with practicing medicine. In this outing, Dr. Bascom has made a love match in his marriage to a young and wealthy widow and has inherited, as her husband, a baronetcy, along with a large agricultural estate and a considerable amount of money. Part of the story is his struggle to adapt to his new circumstances. He has no experience managing an estate, must adjust to being local royalty rather than a lower class country doctor, and has had to give up his medical practice to his former partner. These personal problems are never far from the new investigative case in which he becomes embroiled. The son of a local landowner is found dead on the lonely country road leading to his father’s estate. He has been pierced through from back to front by a sharp implement wielded with some force. He was then either pulled or fell from his horse and the killer left him tidily arranged by the side of the road, face up. The father of the victim wants now Sir Adam to find the killer. The victim, one Fredrick Dalston, is an odious and profligate young man who gambles and involves himself with women of all kinds. As the oldest son, he is bleeding his father’s estate dry by requiring money to pay off his gambling and other debts. The father is loving but ineffectual and cannot refuse his son anything. Frederick was on the way home to demand even more money, enough that would bankrupt the estate. Unlike some of the previous Bascom mysteries, this book starts off quickly, following upon Sir Adam’s return from his honeymoon and his recognition that he is bored with his new social condition. With the encouragement of his very intelligent wife, Lady Alice, Sir Adam leaps at the chance to investigate. The heinous nature of Frederick Dalston and the many different dark alleys from which the murderer may have come are perplexing and seemingly disparate.  The author leads the reader on a merry chase down many of these paths and had me convinced, like Sir Adam, that this one…no, the next one…no, another one… was the solution.  I love to try to figure out these who dun its and finally figured out the answer at about the same time Sir Adam did. As with all his books, the author does a spectacular job with the historical background, social issues, and crimes of the time. He has created memorable characters in Lady Alice, Peter Lassimer – Sir Adam’s best friend and an apothecary, Sir Adam’s mother and the various members of Lady Alice’s family. The pace of all of William Savages book is deliberately slow, as befits the time. This is no investigation by Kathy Reichs or Michael Connelly – after all, it is set in a time when life moved at a careful and enjoyable pace without electronics, phones or cars. The reader must sink into it and enjoy the social interactions that lead Bascom in his thinking. In this book, I also found the descriptions of the countryside were a source of great pleasure. I highly recommend this book and encourage readers to dip into the others in this series and the Ashmole Fox series. Every book is a stand-alone, although the characters progress in their lives during each series. Awaiting the next book and hoping that Sir Adam finds a way to worm back into his medical practice – a great source of characters, gossip and medical history. About the author: William Savage grew up in Hereford, on the border with Wales and took his degree at Cambridge. After a working life largely spent teaching and coaching managers and leaders in Britain, Europe and the USA, he retired to Norfolk, where he volunteers at a National Trust property and started to write fiction as a way of keeping his mind active in retirement. He had read and enjoyed hundreds of detective stories and mystery novels and another of his loves was history, so it seemed natural to put the two together and try his hand at producing an historical mystery. To date, he has focused on two series of murder-mystery books, both set in Norfolk between 1760 and around 1800; a period of turmoil in Britain, with constant wars, the revolutions in America and France and finally the titanic, 22-year struggle with France and Napoleon. Norfolk is not only an inherently interesting county, it happens to be where the author lives, which makes the necessary research far easier. The Georgian period seemed natural choice for him as well, since he lives in a small Georgian town, close by several other towns that still bear the imprint of the eighteenth century on many of their streets and grander buildings. It also had the attraction of being a period he had never studied intensively, and so far he has not regretted his choice. You can find The Reluctant Heir on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Heir-Adam-Bascom-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B086K3N3YZ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+Reluctant+Heir&qid=1587222200&s=books&sr=1-2 William Savage’s blog is Pen and Pension:  http://penandpension.com I highly recommend his blog for his fascinating posts on all aspects of life in Georgian England. You can also find him On Twitter: @penandpension And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009908836774 0 0

Writers are probably not finding this shut down, sheltering in place, forced to stay home – whatever you want to call it – tremendously difficult. Except for maybe getting exercise. I think I might end up putting on the Covid 15..or 50.         Anyway, I thought about it and then had an idea. Since we can’t market our books except on line, why don’t we help each other by posting a review of a blogging buddy’s book once a week? That might drive sales and spread the word. Whaddaya think?     In the meantime, here’s something to brighten your day. 0 0

 I wrote an A-z series on Renaissance artists a while back, and thought perhaps you could enjoy a little beauty to brighten your days keeping in place and social distancing! So here’s Raphael!  Let me know if you like this, and I can post more art! Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, or Raphael (1483 –1520 was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.  With Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vince, he forms the traditional trinity of the greatest artists of that period.  His artistic contribution is the clarity of his painting and the ease of composition, with a visual ideal of humanity.  Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, called him the ‘Prince of Painters.” Urbino, at the time of Raphael’s birth, was a cultural center for the Arts. Raphael’s father, Giovanni Santi, was a painter for the Duke of Urbino and taught the young Raphael basic painting techniques. Because of this, he was able to experience the intellectual life of the court and the principles of humanistic philosophy. Giovanni died suddenly when Raphael was eleven, and his son took over the task of managing his father’s workshop. He became Urbino’s leading painter at age twelve and quickly surpassed his father. In 1500, the master painter Perugino invited Raphael to become his apprentice in Perugia, where where he was working on frescoes at the Collegio del Cambia. During the next four year, Raphael gained knowledge and hands-on experience, as well as developing his own unique style.  The Three Graces (circa 1503) and The Knight’s Dream (1504) date from this time. By the time he was 21, Raphael had moved to Florence, where he was exposed to, and influenced by, the work of Michelangelo and Da Vinci.  Studying the details of their work, Raphael began to develop an even more intricate and expressive personal style.  From 1504 through 1507, Raphael painted a series of Madonnas, evocative of da Vince, culminating in 1507 with La Belle Jardine. That same year, he created his most ambitious work in Florence, the Entombment, evocative of the ideas of Michaelangelo. Raphael moved to Rome in 1508, and his last twelve years were both hectic and triumphant, working for two Popes and their associates.  He became an enormously productive painter, running a large workshop. The four Raphael Rooms in the papal apartments of the Vatican Palace are famous for their grand fresco sequence, painted by Raphael and his workshop. Note the excellent use of perspective, taught to Raphael by his father, who studied the work of Mantagna.  Raphael painted an additional fresco cycle for the Vatican, but those in the Raphael Rooms are considered the best. This is my favorite: He also produced another successful series of  Madonna paintings,  the famed Madonna of the Chair and one of my favorites, the Madonna with the Goldfinch. By the time Raphael was working on his largest painting on canvas, The Transfiguration, he had begun to work on architecture.  The pope hired Raphael as his chief architect in 1515. With this commission, he designed Rome’s Santa Maria del Popolo Chapel, various other chapels within Saint Peter’s new basilica and also palaces, incorporating ornamental details that would define the architecture of the  late Renaissance and early Baroque periods. Raphael died suddenly on his 37th birthday.  His funeral Mass was held at the Vatican and his body interred at the Pantheon. Despite his early death, Raphael left a large body of work . Michelangelo’s influence overshadowed his until the 18th and 19th centuries, when Raphael’s more serene and harmonious qualities again led him to be regarded as the leading artistic figure of Italian   High Renaissance classicism. 0 0

I purchased the book for review as a member of Rosie Amber’s book review team. This book covers multiple generations of the titled Scawton family of England. The center of the story is the current Lady Scawton, Pamela, who discovers the body of a stranger in the woods near the family home of Ashly House. Pamela represents perhaps the last generation of the English upper class raised to be waited on and respected for their title alone, but she is, in fact, rather down to earth. She endured years of emotional and psychological trauma at the hands of her husband, CJ, and her only son, Charles, now Lord Scawton, is as selfish and overbearing as her husband. In the pocket of the stranger is a letter addressed to Lord Scawton and an odd stone, one which changes color from green to pink, depending on the light. Pamela has no idea why the stranger, who had come to England from New Zealand, wanted to see her husband, what the abbreviated letter means, nor the reason for the stone. Eventually, she, against the strong wishes of her son, she travels to New Zealand to get answers. The stone, an alexandrite, mined in Tsarist Russia, gives its name to the book. The book has numerous flashbacks to scenes involving the family and their servants during the two decades after WWar I, and from Ashly House to New Zealand farmland. Pamela’s trip reveals how the flashbacks to events after WW I are woven into the present. I enjoyed the book, but for me it was a long read, with a great deal of exposition and some confusion with the many characters in the various time lines and places and multiple points of view. A character list at the beginning of the book would have been helpful. The site transitions within chapters also created some difficulties for me as I struggled to identify and remember the characters. That being said, the author does a wonderful job creating the main characters. I felt pity for Pamela having such a difficult married life, knowing she was trapped there, and having a son who treated her disrespectfully. She is such a good character that I wanted to shake her and tell her to stand up for herself. It was gratifying that eventually she did. Her son Charles; the butler Godfrey; Ginny, the daughter of Pamela’s friend Di Williams; and Theodore Cook, the brother of the dead man and a shambling old wreck in and out of his memories, made strong impressions. I also liked the scenes set in New Zealand, where the author resides, especially the sheep shearing and Karekare Beach. Another strong element for me was the description of the different roles of women set against the British class system, class conflicts and changing societal values. This book had much to recommend it, but the numerous characters and their relationships are  difficult to sort out through the various stories winding within the book. About the author Born in England, Dione Jones has been a New Zealand resident for years. Married to Chris and with two adult children, she lives on a small farm in South Auckland. She has had varied pursuits: at one stage she flew and helped sell aeroplanes and at another ran a laboratory in an abattoir. Her interest now encompasses her family and grandchildren, dogs, horses and polo, the business world, the environment we live in, historical changes in society – and of course good books.  Writing is a long held passion and she is now a Master of Creative Writing. You can find Dione Jones On Twitter @DioneJonesAuthor And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DioneJonesAuthor/ The Alexandrite can be purchased on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Alexandrite-Dione-Jones/dp/B07YQGP79R/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Dione+Jones&qid=1584200601&s=books&sr=1-1 0 0

It’s lovely to meet them, and I hope they’ll stop back for a visit from time to time. Eamon at https://artofneed.com has a book out: Divide the Dawn for those of you enthralled by the living dead! Alison Little at https://alisonlittleblog.wordpress.com writes about women’s issues and showcases her art – painting of sculptural forms which represent areas of urban residence. Very lovely! Michael Frank at https://peachfuzzcritic.com. Michael is a 20-something who blogs about movies. https://modelelenamollymurgu.home is the blog of very beautiful model Elena Molly Murgu, who models for high end magazines such as Vogue. Her blog is about fashion news and trends, designers, models, style and the business of fashion. Any fashionista out there will love her blog. Divya Srivastava at https://exploringmelife.wordpress.com. Her blog is an advice column and she has a ton of followers. Tanner Shurtliff at https://tfam13.com. Tanner is writing a sci fi series on his blog called The Pale Chronicles.  Sci fi fans out there will like this. Lance at https://beyondthecryptsandcastles.wordpress.com is writing a four book series called Beyond the Crypts and Castles, a working title, set on the fictional continents of The New World and The Old World. The books are in the genre of Game of Thrones, and he’s publishing chapters for comments and advice from readers. Sandeep Dhawan at https://insightful.co.in  who blogs about geopolitics. Great topic! Viktor Shklvtch from the Ukraine at https://id9272288zfvdgk.home.blog/ https://pickvitaminhome.wordpress.com/  a blog about the uses and benefits of vitamins Capitan Quiros at https://capitanquiros.com He blogs in Spanish, so I can partially understand. He is a writer, student teacher, and a blogger. Captain Quirós raises a series of reflections and tips for a change of real life and personal transformation. He is currently working on his first book Mom the Book Thief at https://thebookthiefsblog.wordpress.com, age twenty four with a full time job, a boyfriend, two lovely dogs, two sometimes lovely siblings (of the moody teenager variety) and an obsession with books. Her blog center around all things books. KC Avalon at https://kcavalon.com/ author of Three in the Key, a suspense novel with romance! hellyton – no info, just a gravatar 0 0

As a run-up to the publication of The Last Pilgrim, I am re-posting blog pieces I wrote earlier about the Separatists. Remember, they were not called ‘Pilgrims’ until named that by William Bradford toward the middle of the 17th century. When the Separatists finally settled on what is now Plymouth to be their home, their food supplies were spoiled and running low. They had long before run out of fresh water, which they were able to renew from springs they discovered in their explorations of Cape Cod. One of the things this site offered was a brook with good water, which teemed with spawning fish once a year. The was no livestock on the Mayflower. The only animals mentioned in any historical reports are two dogs, an English mastiff and an English spaniel. However, they must have brought some chickens because chickens wandered freely in the early village and were fed worms because grain was in short supply. Here were possibly some goats and pigs. By 1623, a visitor to the colony reported there were six goats, fifty pigs and many chickens. The Fortune was the second ship to reach the Plymouth Colony, but other than the passenger manifest, I’ve been unable to find any mention of animals aboard. The first cows arrived on the ship Anne in 1623, and they were nicknamed the ‘Great Black Cow,’ the ‘Lesser Black Cow,’ and the ‘Great White-Backed Cow.’ By 1627, two of them had had calves.  Onboard the Jacob in 1624 were four black heifers. By May 1627, there were 16 head of cattle and at least 22 goats living in the colony. So the Pilgrims initially had a source of eggs, possibly some pork (after the pigs had offspring) and maybe a bit of goat’s milk; however, they had no butter, milk, cheese or cream. I’ve found no mention of goat cheese. They had no flour, except for what they brought with them, and that would undoubtedly have been moldy after so long in the Mayflower’s lowest deck. After the first year’s corn harvest, they had corn flour for making bread. They did plant barley (for beer) and peas in the spring of 1621, but the plants did poorly, possibly because, unlike the corn, they lacked fertilizer. The Pilgrims were taught how to grow corn by the Wampanoags, specifically Squanto – two fish were planted with a few corn kernels, and squash was planted around the corn stalks and twined around them as the corn grew, providing the corn with shade from the sun. The Indians also taught them how to fish and hunt. Remember that the Pilgrims were not farmers but craftsmen and tradesmen, used to purchasing their food, and they knew little of survival skills. How amazing is it then, that they survived? In his journal for the year 1622, William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth colony, recorded the landing of new colonists from England. Bradford confessed that he and his fellow colonists were humiliated because with their limited food resources, that they had little  better to offer the newcomers than lobster.                                                              from www.Plimoth.org One thing I’ve found is that Plymouth Harbor teemed with fish of all sorts, and the nearby streams had eels. In fact, I used to play in one of them (aptly named Eel River) when I was a child. There were abundant wild turkeys, swans, geese and ducks, and deer and rabbits in the forests. Plus there were mussels, clams and lobsters – the latter so common that they could be plucked by the bushel from the nearest tidal pool. In considering what the Pilgrims ate, you must consider what was normal for the time: beer, bread, meat and cheese. English settlers looked on seafood – except for oysters and eels – with scorn.  The Pilgrims wanted meat, not anything from the sea. They weren’t trained as fisherman and had brought the wrong size fish hooks. They had to fashion some when it was clear they would need fish to fertilize their corn and feed their pigs.                                                              Myles standish’s cooking pot With regard to drink, beer was the preferred drink for the whole family, even children. It is possible, from some of what I’ve read, that a few families in Plymouth brewed a small amount of beer from corn in the first years. Most had to drink water, which at that time was considered unhealthy! Eventually the colonists realized their children remained healthy, despite drinking water instead of beer. Cow’s milk was not considered good to drink either, and when it was eventually available it was usually made into butter or cheese, or cooked with grain to make porridges. From all this, it is clear that one of the Plymouth colonists’ main goal was to get food on their tables, in order to survive. Most of the work that they did — hunting, fishing, farming, gardening, cooking, and taking care of their animals — had to do with getting and preserving food, enough for the whole year. The women had brought a few spices with them, and they grew onions, garlic, lettuces, carrots, parsnips, squash and pumpkins during their first year in the New World. But imagine a diet without dairy products, flour, sugar, oil, vinegar, wine and barley for beer. While these staples eventually arrived yearly on ships from England, the Pilgrims’ first two years were hard! And yet, after the first winter, they were a hale and hearty population – perhaps because of a healthy diet? 0 1

I was introduced to Tony Riches when I read his Tudor Trilogy and reviewed all three books. I loved them and wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy another series from this author quite as well. I’m pleased to say that the first in the Brandon Trilogy – Mary, Tudor Princess –  is very much up to what I’d hope for.  The author creates plausible and well-rounded characters against the background of detailed and true history. His writing engages the reader’s interest and doesn’t let go. Another draw for me was that the central character here is not Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, but Mary, his sister. In literature, she is eclipsed by the charisma and outrageousness of her brother and one might think Mary would be cunningly used by Henry as a pawn in his machinations to maintain and increase his power. As it turns out, Mary is as clever a Tudor as Henry. As drawn by the author, Mary’s life is not an easy one. Her mother and father both died when she still young, and she knew her brother would use her marriage for political gains. Mary was first betrothed to Charles, the son of Philip I of Castile, who would become the Holy Roman Emperor. But when Henry sees a better opportunity for himself, the engagement is called off, and Henry sends her instead to France, where at the age of 18, she marries the elderly and ailing King Louis XII. She treats the king with kindness and respect, but when he dies, she wants to marry the man with whom she is already in love, Charles Brandon, the first Duke of Suffolk. The author creates in Mary a clever, loyal and sympathetic woman, who risks the king’s anger to marry and raises both children and step children in a loving household.  But the Tudor world is turbulent and dangerous, and she must carefully balance her affection for Queen Catherine against the machinations of the ambitious and calculating Ann Boleyn. Keeping her family and her husband safe against the predations of the royal court and Henry’s demands is occasionally overwhelming, especially later as she deals with a progressive illness. I delighted in the detail of the court and was impressed with the difficulties from the political maneuvering and complex drama of Henry’s court that Mary had to manage. Mr. Riches draws a colorful web against the history of the time. Mary – Tudor Princess is quite different from the books of the Tudor trilogy, and it took some adjustment on my part. It lacks in the head-long action of those trilogy books, seen from a male point of view, but this book presents Tudor history through a woman’s eyes – totally different, just as revealing, and just as much a compelling read. Kudos to the author. I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction, and especially to those enamored with the Tudor era, as something quite different in the telling. About the author Tony Riches was born in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, and spent part of his childhood in Kenya. He gained a BA degree in Psychology and an MBA from Cardiff University and worked as a Management Consultant, followed by senior roles in the Welsh NHS and Local Government. After writing several successful non-fiction books, Tony decided to turn to novel writing. His real interest is in the history of the fifteenth century, and now his focus is on writing historical fiction about the lives of key figures of the period. His novels Warwick, The Man Behind the Wars of the Roses and The Secret Diary of Eleanor Cobham have both become Amazon best sellers. Today Tony has returned to Pembrokeshire, an area full of inspiration for his writing, where he lives with his wife. In his spare time he enjoys sailing and sea kayaking. Visit Tony online at www.tonyriches.co.uk Tony Riches Author on Facebook and on Twitter @tonyriches. Mary – Tudor Princess can be found on Amazon: 0 0

I am a huge fan of Mae Clair, having wandered happily through pretty much everything she’s written. Take a pinch of history, a curse or time-traveling threat, a touch of the supernatural and a whole lot of mystery and you have one of her books! A Desolate Hour is the last in her Point Pleasant series, but you don’t need to read the first or second to enjoy this one – the creepiness is nicely explained as the story unfolds. This book is a superb ending to the series. Something happened in the area in 1777 – the brutal murder of a Shawnee Chief who cursed the town of Point Pleasant with his dying breath. At the same point in time, a man named Obadiah Creech (great name!) performed a ceremony of evil incantation in revenge for the death of his wife, and Jonathan Marsh happened upon it. Over the years, the town has been devastated by a series of catastrophes and is barely managing to stay alive as a result. Adding to its sad history are the sightings over the centuries of a supernatural being the townspeople call the Mothman, an enormous alien being with huge wings and dazzling red eyes. Living now in Point Pleasant is a descendant of Obadiah Creech – Shawn Creech, former winning dirt-track racer but now a day laborer and a drunk, being divorced by his wife for domestic violence. Quentin Marsh, a descendant of Jonathan Marsh, arrives in town to see if he can determine why, when twins are born into his family, one of them always meets disaster. His sister is carrying twins and wants him to discover the nature of the curse and why their family is involved. Was his ancestor involved in the killing of the Shawnee Chief? Sarah Sherman, a historian working at the town library, helps Quentin in his search. Although she doesn’t believe in curses, she feels compelled to use her knowledge of Point Pleasant to uncover the long-buried truth, perhaps because she and Quentin possess eerily similar family heirlooms. As the two of them dig into the past, Shawn Creech become possessed by an evil spirit linked to Obadiah’s hunting knife. The deeper Sarah and Quentin go in their search, the more the ancient mystical forces surrounding Point Pleasant become enraged. I’d love to say more, but I want the reader to discover the enjoyment of a good read for themselves. As I’ve said with previous books, Mae Clair has crafted a gem of a creepy thriller about supernatural occurrences and a centuries-old monster. The tale is chilling, but not particularly gory. I loved the characters, so well-drawn, and the author is supremely talented at physical descriptions, which add color and atmosphere to the overall tension of the story. There are many twists and turns in the plot, and I couldn’t wait for the author to resolve all the questions she created for me. This is one book a reader cannot put down, and I highly recommend it. About the author A member of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers, Mae loves creating character driven fiction in settings that weave contemporary elements of mystery and suspense with urban legend and folklore. Married to her high school sweetheart, she lives in Pennsylvania, and is passionate about writing, old photographs, a good Maine lobster tail and cats. You can find her On twitter: @maeclair1 On the internet at: https://maeclair.net/ And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maeclairauthor/ A Desolate Hour is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Desolate-Hour-Point-Pleasant-Book-ebook/dp/B01MDPY2A5/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=A+Desolate+HOur+by+mae+clair&qid=1583510716&s=books&sr=1-1 0 0

A new arrival on February 11, Elias James. ‘Nuff said! 0 0

I am re-posting this from Maureen Johnson, who writes on CRIME READS and who has this warning for all fans of Midsomer Murders. I found it on Nicholas Rossi’s blog. ****** It’s happened. You’ve finally taken that dream trip to England. You have seen Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. You rode in a London cab and walked all over the Tower of London. Now you’ve decided to leave the hustle and bustle of the city and stretch your legs in the verdant countryside of these green and pleasant lands. You’ve seen all the shows. You know what to expect. You’ll drink a pint in the sunny courtyard of a local pub. You’ll wander down charming alleyways between stone cottages. Residents will tip their flat caps at you as they bicycle along cobblestone streets. It will be idyllic. Unless you end up in an English Murder Village. It’s easy enough to do. You may not know you are in a Murder Village, as they look like all other villages. So when you visit Womble Hollow or Shrimpling or Pickles-in-the-Woods or Nasty Bottom or Wombat-on-Sea or wherever you are going, you must have a plan. Below is a list of sensible precautions you can take on any trip to an English village. Follow them and you may just live. ___________________________________ PLACES TO AVOID ___________________________________ The village fête The village fête is a fair, a celebration on the village green. They toss coconuts, judge cakes, drink tea, and whack toy rats with mallets. It’s a nice way to spend a summer’s day and thin out the local population, because where there is a fête, there is murder. If you enter a town while the fête is happening, you are already dead. The tea urn is filled with poison. The sponge cakes are full of glass. There’s an axe in the fortune telling tent. The coconuts are bombs. It’s like the Hunger Games, but dangerous. You can read the rest at:     It’s hilarious! Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village 0 0