ShellieLovesBooks

  Sometimes I just want to post about books I'm planning to read or have recently added to my shelves. Stacking the Shelves is perfect for that....it's a weekly meme hosted by Reading Reality . While I might not do it every week, it looks fun to do when I am wanting to share what my TBR pile is looking like. Happy Reading! Book One in a new series.....combine Scotland, a cozy mystery, and a manor house and you make me happy! I recently posted for Can't Wait Wednesday about book two in this new series so I thought I'd start with the first one. Hoping I've found another Verity Bright -type of book.  I'm currently watching this movie (it's four hours long so I'm viewing it in chunks!) and it's on my Classics Club list to read in the next five years. May as well get started, right? I love, love, love Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean so I'm hoping the movie doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the book if the images in my head aren't aligned. Also,

Publication Date: April 1, 1999 Length: 400 pages My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ This is the third biography by Carolly Erickson that I've read. She is one of my favorite authors for narrative non-fiction, meaning books that are true but feel much like a novel. Her research is always solid and includes a multitude of primary sources, diary entries, and little tidbits of information that really make one feel like she is in the mind and personal life of her subject.  The book is divided into Josephine's early life, her marriage to her first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, son of the French Governor of Martinique and a member of the French nobility, her marriage to Napoleon, and later, her life as the divorcee former Empress of France. She was born in the year 1763 on the island of Martinique to impoverished sugar planter parents, Joseph and Rose Tascher who struggled to make ends meet. Living in near poverty and existing alongside the African slaves on the plantation, Trois-Ilets, Josephine

  Publication Date: 1944 Length:  288 pages My Rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ This is the April selection for the Read Christie 2023 challenge. I just love the cover and the title, it is such a contrast of festive and celebratory with the sinister. Having many other books to get through right now and being a teacher in the middle of testing season I wasn't sure I was going to add another Christie book to my TBR pile. But I am glad I didn't skip this one. It was a quick, easy read but with a fun premise that kept me intrigued. I think I'm becoming a Christie fan after all! One year ago Rosemary Barton died suddenly at her birthday party, ghoulishly falling over at dinner, blue and gasping from the poison she ingested. It is assumed that she committed suicide due to her depression after recovering from a serious bout of flu, however her younger sister Iris Marle is not so sure. Living under the guardianship of her widower brother in law, George, Iris has discovered that Rosemary was having

  For this week's Can't Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa at  Wishful Endings , I'm featuring  The Sugar Merchant's Wife by Lizzie Lane. I was drawn by the cover, the title, and the time period. The story is part of a series and that appeals to me too. It looks like a romantic saga but with lots of interesting twists. If you've read one of the books in the series...what did you think? May 25, 2023 ** After posting this I found out this book is not new. It is being republished under another name (same author). It was originally published in February 2005 titled Just Before Dawn,  by Jeannie Johnson.  Historical Fiction Description courtesy of NetGalley In the face of changing fortunes, the Strong family must unite to keep their wealth and status…or risk losing it all.As Cholera sweeps through the streets of Bristol, no one is immune. Blanche and her husband Conrad Heinkel, sugar merchant and master sugar baker, are devastated when their seven-year-old daughter Anne, i

  Publication Date:  August 4, 2022 Length:  330 pages My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ This book had everything I look for in a novel. Mystery, exciting history, well written characters and of course, the Highlands as a location. Add in that it takes place right after the last Jacobite uprising of 1746 and it was a must read for me.  Six years after the Battle of Culloden, Iain MacGillivray is a bookseller in Inverness, trying to forget terrible memories from that time. He spends his days absorbed in his daily routine and is not interested in opening up to either friends or romantic entanglements. Brought up since the age of four by his Highlander grandmother, Mairi Farquharson, he has been schooled on tales of bravery and brutality in the Jacobite wars of 1715 onwards. His grandmother and her friends, called the Grandes Dames, are a tight knit group bound by loyalty to the Stuart cause and their grief at losing sons and husbands in the wars. They are bitter toward the Hanoverian soldiers which have

  For this week's Can't Wait Wednesday, hosted by Tressa at  Wishful Endings , I'm featuring Murder in the Scottish Hills by Lydia Travers. This is book two in the series, The Scottish Ladies' Detective Agency, and it was originally available in the UK. I'm showing you can pre-order both books now on Amazon here in the U.S. so that's great news!  This looks like a fun, cozy mystery to add to my TBR pile. And I just love the colorful cover. Hoping it's a good one and I can access it here in the states soon! May 26, 2023 Historical Fiction/Mystery and Thrillers Description courtesy of NetGalley When Maud McIntyre and her lady’s maid Daisy travel into the Scottish Highlands, the last thing they expect to find is a body on the train… Will these keen amateur sleuths stop a murderer in his tracks? Edinburgh, 1911: When Maud McIntyre receives a letter from a maid called Rose, sharing her suspicions that something strange is happening in the house where she works, s

Publication Date:  1941 Length:  284 pages My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I don't know why it took me so long to read this book. I have loved the movie my whole life ever since my parents introduced me to Bette Davis, and next to All About Eve , it is my favorite. It never fails to make me cry at the end when she says, "Oh Jerry don't let's ask for the moon....we have the stars!" Melodramatic yes. But I love it. Maybe I thought the novel would ruin it for me but that was definitely not the case. I was afraid it would be so different from the picture in my head created so superbly by Davis and Paul Henreid (who plays her love interest) but the movie adaptation appears to have strayed little from the original story. It is an easy, flowing book to read, keeping you interested and moving along swiftly.  Charlotte Vale of the wealthy Boston Vales has had a nervous breakdown and spent the last year in a sanitorium called Cascade, convalescing and trying to save herself from her domin

  This Top Ten Tuesday theme, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl , is all about self-published books.  Now I admit I had no idea which authors or books I like were self published so I had to scour the net. I haven't read most of these but know some of the authors and/or they just looked interesting to me.  I was also surprised to see some of the authors and books that were considered self published or published by Indie publishers. It is not something I know much about but I'm all for people being able to take charge of their own projects. Hopefully I can read some of these soon. 1. Liberty or Death by David Cook The first in a trilogy, this book follows the fictional character of Major Lorn Mullone who is caught up in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This is a unique subject to tackle and one I haven't seen in many books. I also love series books so this might need to go on my TBR list. 2. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller A reimagining of Homer's The Illiad, it seem

Publication Date: June 30, 2020 (new edition)  Originally released in 2014 Length: 402 pages My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I don't give 5 star ratings too often when I write a review. I think 4 says a book was great and even 3 means the book was good but not spectacular. So for me, 5 stars means I highly recommend it and found very little fault with it. This is one of those books and I can't want to read the next two in the series. It is also unique, a topic very rarely tackled, and so that makes it even more special for me. It is more a "one of a kind" type of book. This story takes place between the years of 1171 and 1178 when Balian went from an insignificant youngest son to a member of the royal family in marriage to Queen Maria Comnena. His father, the former Count of Jaffa is deceased and his eldest brother Hugh also dies after a fall from his horse. Hugh prefers Balian to be the one to inherit Ibelin Castle and its lands but it is supposed to go to the middle brother, Baldw