Review of THE HYPNOTIST by M.J. Rose

A priceless sculpture that hides an ancient secret; an FBI investigator haunted by the past; and a terrorist plot involving the theft of magnificent works of art all combine to create THE HYPNOTIST, the unputdownable thriller and third entry in M.J.Rose's superb Reincarnationist series (The Reincarnationist and The Memorist).

No author currently writing in the suspense/thriller category does quite what M.J. Rose does; underpinning her novels is the haunting premise that all of us have past lives that connect us to the present, and within this framework she's conjured a high-stakes world of treacherous business dealings, international intrigue, and the often lethal search for the elusive Memory Tools - objects that can assist people to access their pasts and which, if found and harnessed, could provide their owner with unimaginable power. At the center of this web is Dr Malachi Samuels of the Phoenix Foundation, a gifted yet amoral reincarnation expert who allegedly will stop at nothing to possess the Memory Tools.

These entwined themes are spun throughout the series; however, each novel can be enjoyed on its own merits and The Hypnotist is no exception. When Lucian Glass, FBI criminal art investigator, is called in by the Metropolitan Museum in New York City to investigate the horrific mutilation of a stolen painting, he is plunged into a search for the man who, years ago, destroyed his youth and aspiring career as an artist. His investigation leads him back into the elegant, dangerous milieu of the Phoenix Foundation, where a young girl is being treated for nightmarish visions, and the presence of a mysterious woman who might hold the key to his quest. As Lucian begins to uncover a plot centered around a millennial-old sculpture that has surfaced after years of neglect, he finds himself caught up in an intricately linked conspiracy of art smuggling, terrorism, and the race to claim a coveted Memory Tool.

The Hypnotist stands out from the other entries in the series for its lyricism and the timely question: Who truly owns art? In this novel, which is replete with Ms Rose's trademark moments of breathtaking suspense and secrets-within-secrets, Rose has gone deeper into her mythology, detailing the subtle ways in which senseless tragedy shifts and defines us, and the hallowed effect that art exerts on our beings. While her previous novels have all featured lost souls seeking redemption, in The Hypnotist something of Rose's own complex soul comes into display, and it is a fascinating glimpse into a writer who, with this novel, has both matured and exceeded the very high expectations she has set for herself and her readers.

M.J. Rose is the international bestselling author of over nine novels, including the acclaimed Reincarnationist series. To learn more about her and her work, please visit her website.

A special thank you to Meryl Moss Media for sending me an advance copy of this novel.

Interview with Christy English, author of THE QUEEN'S PAWN

I had the pleasure of being offered an advance copy of Christy English's debut novel THE QUEEN'S PAWN. Set in the tumultuous Plantagenet court, this is a compelling and unique look of two women caught up in the dangerous splendor of their era: the infamous Eleanor of Aquitaine and the lesser known Alais of France, who was brought to England to marry Eleanor's son. When Eleanor sees in Alais the vivid image of herself at that age, she takes the young princess under her venerable wing. But as Alais matures and comes into her own, it sets the stage for a fierce rivalry that affects the future of England itself. Taut and detailed, THE QUEEN'S PAWN has been one of my favorite reads about the ever-popular Eleanor, depicting the queen at her arrogant, brittle best as she vies for power against a much younger but equally resolved ingenue.

Please join me in welcoming Christy English to Historical Boys.

Hi, Christy. What inspired you to write THE QUEEN’S PAWN?
About four years ago, I moved to New York to focus on my writing, and I wondered what my next book was going to be. As I was walking along Broadway, going to the train to meet my agent for dinner, this still, small voice spoke in my ear. “Do you remember Alais from THE LION IN WINTER? Would you like to hear her story?” I love THE LION IN WINTER. Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn are two of the best actors who have ever lived, in my opinion. But I had never before thought of the young girl in that movie, the French princess.

My novel begins with nine-year-old Princess Alais leaving her family to marry her father’s enemy. That little girl had to face political realities beyond anything most adults ever deal with, and she did it with courage. After I wrote the first chapter, I saw that there was a lot more to this princess than was portrayed in THE LION IN WINTER, and I knew I had a fascinating story on my hands. The novel has changed a lot over many drafts, but that first chapter is still in there.

You tell the story of THE QUEEN’S PAWN from the points of view of Princess Alais and Eleanor of Aquitaine. How did Eleanor of Aquitaine come to be one of the narrators?
I had been working with THE QUEEN’S PAWN for over two years before Eleanor came on board. I was taking editorial notes from all over town, trying to make the book better. But it just wasn’t working. As strong as Alais is, her voice was not dynamic enough to make the novel soar. This was not the character’s fault. It was mine. But I could find no way to solve the problem. It was pretty frustrating.

Claire Zion of NAL liked my voice enough that she wanted to meet me and talk over ideas for trying to make the novel work. We had plans to meet for lunch on a Tuesday, and I had no idea how to fix the book. The weekend before our lunch, I was sitting in my apartment on the Upper West Side, wondering what on earth I was going to say to Claire when I met her in two days, and Eleanor showed up.

What do you mean, “showed up?”
Both Alais and Eleanor had strong presences from the beginning. Eleanor had always been one of the characters in my novel. But that Sunday, as I sat wondering what on earth I was going to tell Claire in two days, Eleanor volunteered to take over telling of half the story. I don’t know how other writers work, but in my experience, my characters always choose me. I’m lucky Eleanor did. Before including her, I thought I knew what the book was supposed to be. I had a very set idea in my head about the arc of the action and how all the characters related to one another. But then I sat down to write with Eleanor’s voice in my ear, and she blew all my pre-conceived notions out of the water.

So what happened at your meeting with the editor?
Claire had the same idea, completely independently, to include Eleanor as a narrator in the book. That was when I knew THE QUEEN’S PAWN was going to come together. I still had a lot of work ahead of me, but with the voices of Eleanor and Alais balancing each other, shoring each other up, things really started to cook on the page.

How many drafts did it take once you and Claire started working together?
It took three more drafts before we were both satisfied. It turns out that I am working with the perfect editor for me. Claire is as much of a perfectionist and a workaholic as I am. But I love writing… as hard as it is sometimes, I love it.

It's always marvelous to have an editor who inspires you. Have there been any authors or books that have inspired you?
Claire is definitely an inspiration. But as far as other authors, my all-time favorite has been and always will be Mary Renault. My favorite novels are THE PERSIAN BOY and THE MASK OF APOLLO, but every one of her books has taught me something, both as a writer and as a human being. She died in the late 1970’s, but her work is the most wonderful I have ever read. Mary Renault lifts me out of the modern world, and sets me down in the middle of another place and time. She doesn’t spend time on exposition, she just leaps into the river of the narrative, and her writing is so good that exposition really isn’t needed. My goal is to write as well as she does by the time I’m fifty. I’m not sure I’ll make it.

Can you tell us about your next book?

Yes! I'm very excited that my second novel, TO BE QUEEN, is coming out with NAL in April 2011. In that book, Eleanor of Aquitaine marries Louis VII of France, goes with him on Crusade, then divorces him. And in the midst of all that, she battles the Church, becomes a political powerhouse, and meets her second husband, the man who later becomes King Henry II of England.

Thank you for visiting, Christy. Best of luck and I look forward to your next novel. To learn more about Christy and her work, please visit her website.

ANGELOLOGY by Danielle Trussoni

A few weeks ago, Michael Joseph, a UK imprint of Penguin, offered me a review copy of Danielle Trussoni's ANGELOLOGY. I agreed at once, as the book was on my TBR list already, first because of its massive auction and movie-rights deal, and second because its theme - that hybrid angelic beings walk among us - intrigued me. I've never been much for seraphs and cherubs; to me, angels have always been scary creatures, with those enormous statures and huge wings, and I was delighted to discover that Angelology satisfied my deepest fears.

Angelology combines the best of the traditional grand old novel with the suspense of a modern-day thriller, sweeping the reader up in its fantastic premise from the very first page. Once you start reading, you never want to leave this strange world again. It starts with the discovery in 1943 of the corpse of a Nephilim - a cross-breed between fallen angels and humans, which has evolved into a powerful race of beings who have infiltrated human society since Biblical times and wreaked havoc, garnering unassailable prestige and wealth in the process. Organized into a collection of distinctive dynasties with their own hierarchy and status symbols, disguised in plain view within our society, the Nephilim have been behind humanity's most tragic events; but now, in the 20th century, on the eve of the Millennium, they face a grave threat: a lethal virus, which is reducing their near-immortal lifespans and destroying their irreplaceable wings.

Working behind the scenes against the Nephilim since their beginning is a secret society of gifted, dedicated humans called angelologists. Descendants themselves of some of the world's greatest thinkers, they are devoted to hiding ancient artifacts that could bring about the Nephilim's salvation and grant them unstoppable power over the world. The angelologists have been involved in countless battles against Nephilistic beings throughout their long history, including two lethal expeditions into the mountains of Greece, where a deep gorge called the Devil's Throat contains a horrifying secret.

Veering from a convent in 20th-century upstate New York, where a young nun comes face-to-face with her family's legacy, to the perils of Nazi-occupied France, where two competitive angelological students are caught up in a struggle against the most powerful Nephilistic clan, Angelology is replete with fascinating theological, anatomical, and historical details that mythologize the origins of the Nephilim and their rise. Nevertheless, this neo-classical approach to its theme does not impede its hair-raising premise and genuinely creepy moments, which include a confrontation with a brutal warrior class of angels and a breath-taking plunge into a cavern.

Angelology is that rare book: an accomplished thriller that twists the confines of its genre into something unique, a thinking-person's tale that will keep you reading far into the night. To learn more about the book, the author and their world, please visit Danielle Trussoni's website.

Angelology is published by Viking Penguin in the U.S. and Michael Joseph Penguin in the UK.

(Author photo: Kailin Ruchev)

Review of UNDER HEAVEN by Guy Gavriel Kay

Acclaimed bestselling fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay returns to his roots in Under Heaven, a sweeping vivid adventure set in a fantastical world that closely resembles China during the glory and fall of the 8th century Tang Dynasty. Kay's signature talent for interweaving various characters, motifs and storylines are on full display here, as we enter the life of Shen Tai, a general's second son, whose two years spent burying the bones of those who died on a long-forgotten battlefield as mourning for his father is cut short by the unexpected visit of an illicit assassin and potentially lethal gift of two hundred horses from an impervious queen.

As Shen Tai grapples with the immensity of the responsibility thrust upon him and embarks on a journey back to the intrigue-laden imperial city, we are immersed in a time and place of deep spiritual reflection, sudden violence, implacable tradition, and haunting fragility. A host of characters that includes Shen Tai's female warrior protector, an exiled poet, Shen Tai's ennobled sister, a bewitched barbarian prince, and a doomed concubine all come together to enrich Kay's meditation on the nature of mortality and ephemeral longing in an imperfect world.

Fans of historical fiction and fantasy will not find a more perfect blending of the two genres than Under Heaven. This is an epic novel by a master storyteller whose gift for evoking richly imagined universes that reflect our own is truly unparalleled.

To learn more about Guy Gavriel Kay and his work please visit his website. Under Heaven is published by ROC in the U.S., Viking Penguin in Canada, and Harper/Voyager in the UK. (Author photo: Beth Gwinn)

Guest post from Mary Sharratt, author of DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL

I am delighted to welcome Mary Sharratt, author of the upcoming DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL, an evocative and haunting novel that recreates the Pendle witch trials in Lancashire in the 16th century. Mary lives in the area and has woven a masterpiece of imagination and fact around the women and men caught up in the hysteria of this event. She twists the tale with the possibility that one of the women may have actually possessed supernatural gifts, infusing her book with vivid details of life in a dangerously superstitious era. This is a gorgeously rendered account of faith, persecution, and tragedy that I could not put down and has been called "uplifting in its portrayal of women who persevere, and mothers and daughters who forgive" by Publishers Weekly; and "a fascinating tale . . .unfolds without melodrama and is therefore all the more powerful" by Library Journal.

Mary is the winner of the 2005 WILLA Literary Award and a Minnesota Book Award Finalist and the author of the critically acclaimed novels Summit Avenue (Coffee House 2000), The Real Minerva (Houghton Mifflin 2004), and The Vanishing Point (Houghton Mifflin 2006), which was a UK Guardian Readers’ Book of the Year. She is also the co-editor of the subversive UK fiction anthology, Bitch Lit (Crocus Books UK 2006), a celebration of female anti-heroes. Mary’s short stories have been widely published in journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including the recent Twin Cities Noir (Akashic Books 2006). She also happens to be delightfully witty in person and a devoted equestrian; I am privileged to call her a friend.

Please join me in welcoming Mary Sharratt to Historical Boys.

Daughters of the Witching Hill: In Search of the Pendle Witches

by Mary Sharratt

In 2002, I moved to the Pendle region in Lancashire, Northern England. It didn’t take long before the wild, brooding landscape cast its spell on me and inspired my new novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill.
Pendle Hill is famous throughout the world as the place where George Fox received the ecstatic vision that moved him to found the Quaker religion in 1652. But this rugged countryside is also haunted by the legacy of the Pendle Witches.

In 1612, seven women and two men from Pendle Forest were executed for witchcraft, but the most notorious of the accused, Bess Southerns, aka Old Demdike, cheated the hangman by dying in prison.
"Allow me to introduce you to a woman of power who changed my life forever": this is how Thomas Potts describes her in The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster: "She was a very old woman, about the age of Foure-score yeares, and had been a Witch for fiftie yeares. Shee dwelt in the Forrest of Pendle, a vast place, fitte for her profession: What shee committed in her time, no man knowes. . . . Shee was a generall agent for the Devill in all these partes: no man escaped her, or her Furies."

Reading the trial transcripts against the grain, I was amazed at how Bess’s strength of character blazed forth in the document written to vilify her. Bess freely admitted to being a healer and a cunning woman. She lived as a matriarch with her family at Malkin Tower and instructed her daughter and granddaughter in the ways of magic. Her neighbours called on her to cure their children and their cattle. What fascinated me was not that Bess was arrested on witchcraft charges but that the authorities turned on her only near the end of her long, productive career. She practiced her craft for decades before anybody dared to interfere with her.

Cunning craft—the art of using charms to heal both humans and livestock—was Bess’s family trade. Their spells, recorded in A Wonderfull Discoverie, were Roman Catholic prayer charms—the kind of folk magic that would have flourished before the Reformation. Yet she also drew on an even older source of power: Tibb, her familiar spirit, who appeared to her in the guise of a beautiful young man.

Other books have been written about the Pendle Witches—both nuanced and lurid. Mine is the first to tell the tale from Bess’s point of view. I longed to give Bess Southerns what her world denied her—her own voice.

History is a fluid thing that continually shapes the present. As a writer, I am obsessed with how the true stories of our ancestors haunt the landscape. No one in Pendle can remain untouched by the witches’ legacy. As contemporary British storyteller, Hugh Lupton, has said, if you go deep enough into the old tales and can present them in a meaningful way to a modern audience, you become the living voice in an ancient tradition. Bess Southerns’s voice deserves to be heard.

Long after their demise, Bess and her fellow witches endure, their spirit woven into the land, its weft and warp, like the stones and the streams that cut across the moors. This is their home, their seat of power, and they shall never be banished. By learning their story, I have become an adopted daughter of their living landscape, one of many tellers who spin their unending tale.

Mary Sharratt’s acclaimed new novel, DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL will be published on April 7 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. To learn more, please visit her website at http://www.marysharratt.com/ and join her on her virtual tour: http://booktour.com/author/mary_sharratt#new-event

Guest post from Stephanie Cowell, author of CLAUDE AND CAMILLE

I am delighted to welcome my friend Stephanie Cowell. A marvelous novelist whose work includes the exuberant Marrying Mozart and The Players: A novel of young Shakespeare, on April 6 Crown Publishers will release Stephanie's new novel Claude and Camille, the haunting, passionate story of Claude Monet's youthful love affair with his wife and muse.

Already, the reviews are stunning. Publisher's Weekly calls it "A convincing narrative about how masterpieces are created and a detailed portrait of a complex couple. Cowell's novel suggests that a fabulous, if flawed, love is the source of both the beauty and sadness of Monet's art." And Library Journal adds, "Moving through war, illness, prosperity, and poverty, Cowell writes the couple's love story with an eye for perspective as skilled as any painter's."

I had the honor of endorsing this book, and was captivated from beginning to end by Stephanie's elegant language and sensitive insight into the emotion and torment of this great artist. I highly recommend her unique portrait of Monet as he began his career, and of the woman whose inspiration and secrets he could never forget.

Stephanie Cowell has kindly offered this guest post for Historical Boys, to celebrate the upcoming release of Claude and Camille. Please join me in welcoming her!

Visiting old places with an historical novelist
My parents and I were walking down a street in one of those Italian Swiss hill towns a little before dusk. It was a narrow cobbled street which few cars could pass, lined with squat stone houses which had stood there far beyond memory and low cracked wood doors. To me they were not ordinary houses for I felt the ghosts who had lived there in previous times and walked slower and slower, trying to catch their voices and what they were saying. My father’s call rang from far ahead. “Where are you, daughter? We’re going to eat!” “Oh here I am!” I replied, startled into the present. “Just five centuries and fifty feet behind you, you know…”

I suppose my friends and family are used to it by now. We go to Mozart’s birthplace, a narrow street in Paris where Monet had a studio in his youth or the packed old City of London, where ancient churches rub walls with glass skyscrapers. The names of the streets are Fishmonger’s Lane, Cheapside, Love Street. Friends see the skyscrapers, I see the half timbered house in 1591 on Wood Street where Shakespeare hurried at night, lighting his way with a torch, to the house of his old acting colleague Jack Heminges.

There goes Will and Jack! I want to tell cry. I watch as a hint of brown doublet rounds a corner and is gone. There they were! Most the time my husband waits for me. “You don’t see anything?” I ask him. “Just the financial district,” he replies. “But you see things, Stephanie! I can see your face.”

It is true. The past touches and takes hold of my shirt and draws me back. No, it hurls me back. I never know when it is going to happen. It was so intense when entering the room with the Parthenon marbles in London that I had to leave for a time. I almost passed out before one of Queen Victoria’s dresses. And when we visited the newly constructed Globe Theater on Bankside in London I had no idea if I were in 1601 or 2001. T.S. Eliot says, “The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.” Madeleine L’Engle says that characters come to us and demand, “Enflesh me!”

New England graveyards at dusk, my footsteps on the floors of Windsor Castle, and staring at the spot in the Tower of London where Anne Boleyn was executed. Show me a 300-year-old shoe, a ruined church, the moors behind Haworth. I stand and stare. I write furiously in a notebook. I discovered one winding, deserted street in Vienna in front of the Cathedral after dark and stood as if stunned. I had no idea what was on that street. In daylight I returned and found that Mozart and his wife had lived there in 1785.

Once a kind guard approached as I sat among the ruins of the old boy’s school in Canterbury. “All right then, dearie?” “It’s ok,” I managed, “I’m a novelist.” He retreated, looking a bit bewildered.

We are fortunate, we who love history and historical fiction and who write it for we live in many worlds. The past opens to us in a hidden street, an old pen, a signature of someone long gone. We are wealthy; we share many lives and we listen to older voices. “Don’t mind me; I’m just walking five centuries behind you,” you can say to your friends. If they know and love you, they will understand and be waiting when you show up at the restaurant for dinner.

Stephanie Cowell is the author of several novels. To learn more about her and her work, please visit her at: http://www.stephaniecowell.com/

Library Journal weighs in!

Gortner, C.W. The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. Ballantine. Jun. 2010. c.416p. ISBN 978-0-345-50186-8. $25.
History has depicted Catherine de Medici (1519–89), wife of one king and mother of three, as a grotesque monster, poisoning and murdering to gain and maintain control over the French throne. After the death of Henri II, she began the struggle of her life—keeping one son after the other on the throne through the religious wars that threatened to tear France apart. In this meticulously researched novel, Gortner (The Last Queen) gives us a Catherine who is passionate yet sometimes naive. Most of her decisions following her husband's death are made to keep peace in France or safeguard her children. Yet she is still held responsible for the 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, in which thousands of French Protestants were slaughtered. VERDICT While the Catherine depicted here is in some ways similar to Jeanne Kalodigris's protagonist in The Devil's Queen, Gortner breathes more life into his queen. Historical fiction fans will appreciate the vivid details of Renaissance France. [Library marketing.]—Pamela O'Sullivan, Coll. of Brockport Lib., SUNY

Publisher's Weekly Review is in!

And it's a nice one, despite the evident gender confusion. Guess I should take it as a compliment that the reviewer thought I was a girl :)

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici / C.W. Gortner.
Ballantine, $25 (400p) ISBN 978-0-345-50186-8
Catherine de Medici uses her natural and supernatural gifts to protect the French throne in Gortner's (The Last Queen) portrait of a queen willing to sacrifice happiness and reputation to fulfill her family's royal destiny. Orphan Catherine has her first vision at age 10, and three years later is betrothed to Henri d'Orleans, brother of the sickly heir to the French throne. She heads to France with a vial of poison hidden among her possessions, and after negotiating an uneasy truce with her husband's mistress, she matures into a powerful court presence, though power, she learns, comes at a price. Three of her sons become king in succession as the widow Catherine wields ever-increasing influence to keep the ambitious de Guise clan at bay and religious adversaries from murdering each other. Gortner's is not the first fictional reinterpretation of a historical villainess—Catherine's role in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, for instance, is recounted in a way sympathetic to her—but hers (should be "his") is remarkably thoughtful in its insight into an unapologetically ruthless queen.

Quick Update

I thought I'd give a quick update on what's happening, seeing as I'm waiting on a few guest posts from fellow authors.

First off, my website has been re-designed and I hope you like it. There's a new section under Books with special features for each of my titles, as well as a section called Fun Stuff. I'll be adding more as I get closer to the launch of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, but if you don't find anything you like to see on my site, please let me know. I'm hoping it's easy to navigate and worth spending a bit of time on.

Second, I'm working on Princess Isabella and in fact just hit 106 pages. Rarely has a first draft poured out of me so fast, and I'm delighted to report that I'm discovering all kinds of interesting information about her that is rarely reported. Isabella was far more dynamic and fascinating than the image of that stern, pious matron that has come down to us through history; and I'm really enjoying walking with her at the moment. Of course, as with all characters I choose, she has a more somber side, but to me, it's this juxtaposition between light and dark that makes her so compelling. She truly was the first queen of the Renaissance, and the systems she fought to set up in Spain, such as a strong centralized monarchy, to which the nobility must bow; a codified system of justice; reorganization of the Church; a civilian police force that could be summoned to serve as a national guard, to cite a few - became the model for the reigns of Western European monarchs to come, including Henry VIII, Francois I, Charles V, and Elizabeth I. Without Isabella's accomplishments, the landscape of European soveriegnity might have looked much different.

Review of O JULIET by Robin Maxwell

Taking on the Bard is no mean feat; Shakespeare's work has become so ingrained in our collective cultural consciousness (whether or not we've ever actually read him) that iconic characters like Romeo and Juliet seem, well, untouchable.

This is partially why Robin Maxwell's new novel O JULIET is so interesting. It takes some chutzpah to clamber onto this particular ledge and she wisely doesn't attempt to re-write Shakespeare's tale. Instead, she utilizes the underpinnings of the famous play as a springboard to deliver an exuberant and at times shamelessly romantic story of first love, as told through the lovers' eyes. She also returns the story to its historical roots by setting it in Florence. However, she selects Florence under the Medici, where Mafia-like techniques co-existed alongside the Renaissance's intoxication with classical antiquity, infusing the story with the era's quioxtic passion and violence.

Juliet dominates the narrative, the daughter of a silk merchant contemplating with distaste, as no doubt did most girls of her era, an arranged marriage. Juliet is best friends with Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a proper Florentine girl about to wed into the Medici clan. At a banquet to celebrate the nuptials, Juliet dances with a virile youth in a wolf mask; soon, they find themselves exchanging barbed bits of Dante and getting that warm oozy feeling we've all have experienced at least once in our lives. Maxwell's Juliet is brash and rebellious; more intriguingly, she's an aspiring poet and Dante-obsessed, and her aspirations clash with her family's expectations of her. Romeo, on the other hand, is everything Romeo should be, including demonstrating a streak of testosterone-driven recklessness that gets him into serious trouble.

In Maxwell's novel, they are truly first-time lovers, smitten with desire and flown on the hyperbole of their hearts, unaware they're careening toward danger. Maxwell excels at depicting the excesses Romeo and Juliet feel for each other, as well as the lengths they're willing to go to indulge them. She brings 15th century Florence alive, particularly a night climb to the Duomo, and evokes the immortal joy and tragedy of youth in an unapologetic paean to a love that transcended death.

Watch PAST LIFE on February 9

On February 9 at 9:00 p.m. (8 central) please tune in to watch the exciting preview of PAST LIFE, a series inspired by fellow author and my friend MJ Rose's bestselling novel The Reincarnationist. Springing off the premise of MJ's spellbinding series, which feature the Talmadage Center for Behavioral Health, where the study of reincarnation is a scientific pursuit, this new television show promises an incredible journey into past life regression coupled with a thrilling police procedural unlike anything seen before on television. The special preview on February 9 will be followed by the series premiere on Thursday, February 11.

I'm a big fan of mythological shows like Fringe and crime shows like CSI: New York, so Past Life looks just like the type of show I'd like to see more of on our reality-glutted screens. I also love MJ's novels in the series, The Reincarnationist and The Memorist - both of which, together with her upcoming new release The Hypnotist, will be published with gorgeous new cover designs, so you can read as well as watch!

I hope you will join us! If you do, please come back here and post your comments so we can talk about the show. (I might even coax MJ herself to make a guest appearance :)

International Day of Commemoration

The General Assembly of the United Nations has designated today, the 27th of January, as the International Day of Commemoration to honor the victims of the Holocaust. This year, the theme is "The Legacy of Survival," emphasizing the universal lessons that survivors pass on to succeeding generations.

On this day in 1945, the concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army; 5,000 prisoners had been left behind to die and many survived to bear witness to the atrocities committed at the camp, helping to both hunt down and prosecute fugitive Nazi criminals. It is estimated more than a million people died in Auschwitz; a staggering 90% were Jewish or of Jewish origin. The other groups who died in large numbers were Sinti and Roma (gypsies), Poles and Soviet prisoners-of-war; gay people and people with disabilities also perished in the camp, often after months of slave labor.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in 2007: "The International Day in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is thus a day on which we must reassert our commitment to human rights. [...] We must also go beyond remembrance, and make sure that new generations know this history. We must apply the lessons of the Holocaust to today’s world. And we must do our utmost so that all peoples must enjoy the protections and rights for which the United Nations stands."

In honor of the millions who suffered and died during the Holocaust, I'd like to recommend a book that, for me, became a profoundly transformative experience when I first read it in my teens: Elie Wiesel's Night. Now a Nobel laureate and the author of fifty-seven books, Mr Wiesel and his family were deported to Auschwitz when he was just 16 years old; he spent eleven months in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. What he saw and underwent are unforgettable. Written with devastating simplicity, Night is one of the most important personal testaments about the Holocaust. Mr Wiesel once said, "In Night, I wanted to show the finality of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night."

מאי אנחנו לעולם לא אשכח
May we never forget.

It's official!

Thanks to all of you for being patient. I did promise you to deliver the news as soon as it was "official" and today it appeared in PW.

My fabulous agent, Jennifer Weltz, deserves all the accolades. She's one of the hardest working and nicest agents in this business, and I honestly don't know what I'd do without her. Plus, she keeps me very busy and out of trouble, as you can see :)

Review: SACRED HEARTS by Sarah Dunant

An era convulsed by religious reformation and a convent on the threshold of irrevocable change are the basis for Sarah Dunant's eloquent, compelling third novel in her Renaissance trilogy, SACRED HEARTS.

When young and willful Serafina is immured against her wishes in the Convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, she is merely following in the terrible footsteps of countless unwanted or tarnished girls before her. It is estimated that by the late 16th century, dowries had grown so exorbitant that almost half of the noble women in Italy were obliged to take the veil. But Serafina's rebellion is not like that of other girls'; heart-wrenching, relentless, and ultimately explosive, the disruption she creates sets off a series of events that grow to involve the wry dispensary mistress, the worldly abbess, and ambitious novice mistress. Each sees in Serafina a means of deliverance or downfall; each aspires to influence the wayward girl's course. But as they struggle to subdue the passion in Serafina's rebellious soul, each finds she must come to terms with the sorrows, lost hopes, and decisions of her own past as well as the unstoppable changes bearing down on the convent from the outside.

SACRED HEARTS is an extraordinary journey into a world we rarely see, a place where women sacrificed their personal desires and dreams to come together for safety. Though set within a convent, Dunant offers a rich and complex tale that will speak to anyone who has longed for redemption and fought for the impossible.

Now available in hardcover, SACRED HEARTS will be released this April in trade paperback.

Book Trailer Sunday: Robin Maxwell talks about O, JULIET

It's actually Monday, I know; and a day to honor the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King. But for some reason this post didn't actually "post" when I timed it for yesterday.

So, here is my Sunday author video, a day late. Author and good friend Robin Maxwell talks about how she fell in love with her husband Max and the genesis for her upcoming book, O JULIET, in which she novelizes for the first time ever the tale of the world's most famous lovers. Enjoy!

Guest post from Ben Kane, author of THE FORGOTTEN LEGION

I'm delighted to welcome Ben Kane, author of The Forgotten Legion and The Silver Eagle. The Forgotten Legion was a 2009 Book of the Year selection at the UK-based retailer Waterstones and was recently released in paperback here in the US. Set amongst the splendor and chaos of the Roman Republic in first century BCE, the novel introduces us to four very different people struggling to survive. Ben offers us a detailed look at the underbelly of the oft-romanticized republican life through the eyes of two gladiators, a soothsayer, and a prostitute, as well as the horrors of the slave trade and of war at this time in history. There's intrigue, violence, passion, and drama in abundance, making this a thrilling read; it also sets the stage for the exciting sequel, The Silver Eagle, which is due out on March 16 here in the US.

Please join me in welcoming Ben Kane to Historical Boys!

How The Forgotten Legion was Born
Just over ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit some of the countries in Central Asia. In the ruins of Merv, an ancient city situated in modern day Turkmenistan, I was absolutely intrigued to discover that Roman legionaries had been there more than two thousand years previously. This was half a world from Italy, and more than two thousand miles from the easternmost Roman provinces of Syria and Judaea. Upon my return home, I did some research, finding that the unfortunate soldiers had been captured after the battle of Carrhae, in 53 BC. Their leader had been Marcus Licinius Crassus, a member of the triumvirate which ruled Rome at the time. Unhappy at the shining military credentials of his co-rulers, Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus, Crassus determined to annex the desert kingdom of Parthia. His stunning victory would earn him the Roman people’s respect, which he so badly craved.

His plan came badly unstuck for a number of reasons. First among these was his lack of cavalry. At the time, Roman armies retained no horsemen of their own, relying instead on mercenaries – Spanish, Gaulish and German tribesmen. Alongside more than 30,000 infantry, Crassus had only 2,000 cavalry. Ariamnes, a local tribal leader, had brought approximately 6,000 horsemen to augment these forces, but, as so often in such cases, they were of questionable loyalty, and duly deserted before the battle. A second reason for Crassus’ defeat was the military expertise of his opponent, the Parthian general Surenas. Along with his 1,000 cataphracts, or armoured heavy cavalry, Surenas brought to the field approximately 9,000 horse archers. These warriors, trained to use their compound bows from childhood, were capable of loosing clouds of arrows while guiding their horses with only their knees. To the rear, a caravan of more than 1,000 camels carried tens of thousands of arrows, ensuring that the Parthians would not run out of ammunition.

Once Crassus’ cavalry had been dispersed or killed, he and his infantry were completely at their enemies’ mercy. One can only imagine how terrible the ensuing massacre was. By the day’s end, more than 20,000 legionaries lay dead, and a further 10,000 had been taken prisoner. A mere 5,000 escaped to the River Euphrates and safety. No one knows what happened to the Roman captives – apart from the fact that they were marched to Antiochia (later called Merv) in Margiana (modern day Turkmenistan). There, at the outer limits of the Parthian empire, they served as border guards, and were lost to history forever.

Struck by the unfinished nature of their tale, I eventually decided to write the legionaries’ story. The Forgotten Legion seemed a natural title for the book. The backdrop was perfect too, set as it was during the last days of a once mighty Republic, with the ensuing tumult of the civil war and Caesar’s rise to power. Armed with a quartet of interesting characters, three of whom would march with Crassus, and one who would stay in Rome, I sat down and began to type. Eighteen months later, I had a finished novel, and soon after, a book deal.

Thank you, Ben. Best of luck! I'm looking forward to the next book and to Ben's new trilogy on the Second Punic War. To find out more about Ben and his work, please visit him at his website.

Thank you, Bloggers!

Better late than never, right? I wanted to again thank all the bloggers, in particular the fabulous ladies of The Historical Fiction Roundtable, where I'll be making my first official visit in May to promote The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. Bloggers tirelessly and enthusiastically championed my work in 2009; their support for writers is invaluable, and without them getting word out about my books wouldn't be nearly as fun or rewarding. I was also just informed by my agent that The Last Queen was mentioned on several Best of 2009 Reads, which is fantastic! I am very grateful, and so, I like to think, is Juana herself, who's definitely having the last laugh.

The Last Queen made the following Best Reads of 2009 lists:
Jo-Jo Loves to Read
The Burton Review
Historical Tapestry
Historical Fiction.com
Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books
Historically Obsessed

Thank you again, de corazon.

It's 2010; time to win some bling!

Happy New Year. I hope you had a lovely time ringing out the decade. May 2010 bring you much love, health, and success.

Now, time to win some bling! Fellow historical fiction author and good friend Robin Maxwell is launching her "O, Juliet Love Games" in celebration of her upcoming novel O, JULIET - a sumptuous, first-time-ever novelized account of the legendary lovers. Today, Monday, January 4th, and on the next two Mondays to follow, you can enter to win a signed copy of the book and a heart necklace (one hand-crafted solid silver, one blown glass, and one carved Thai silver) on Robin's blog. All you need to provide is your email address and answer a simple question about love. You can read a sneak peek of O, JULIET here.

Good luck! What better way to start the new year than with books and jewelry?