Blog Tour - Longbourn's Songbird by Beau North

Today, I am welcoming the blog tour for Longbourn’s Songbird by Beau North. I was lucky enough to be provided with an e-book of this story for my honest review, which follows below. As this is a blog tour, there are stops at other blogs, some of which have the chance to win a copy of the book for yourself. A list of blog tour stops is at the bottom of the post, but meanwhile, why not read on to see what I thought of Beau North’s debut novel...

Birthday Book Loot

It was my birthday back in September and I meant to share details of my bookish loot with you at the time, but I didn't find time to get to it until now. I thought I'd post a few pictures so you can appreciate what delights I have before me, though goodness knows when I'll have time to read them all!

Winner - A Jane Austen Christmas by Carlo DeVito

Last week I posted a short excerpt from 'A Jane Austen Christmas' by Carlo DeVito. This book takes a look at Christmas as Austen may have celebrated it. The publisher, Cider Mill Press was kind enough to offer a hardcover copy of the book to a US/Canadian reader. Earlier today I got my daughter to choose a winner at random, and the winner is...

Then Comes Winter - Cover Reveal

Earlier this year Meryton Press released 'Sunkissed: Effusions of Summer' which was an anthology of summer stories from some of Meryton's established authors and some who were new to the publisher. You may have heard that a winter version was in the works. Well, it's due out this month, and I am very pleased to share the cover of the new book with you today.

* * * * *

Planned Reading for November 2015

Hello everybody, and happy November! I hope you enjoyed Halloween (if you celebrate it). We don't celebrate it really. Sometimes we carve some pumpkins, but that's about it. However, I was celebrating yesterday, because I had a training course that I finally finished off. I had been working so hard on it during October, it took up nearly all of my free time. So what did I read last month? Diddly squat :( Well that's not entirely true, I did reread some short stories in the Holidays with Jane Christmas Cheer anthology, but I didn't have enough time to read anything new. A reread I can pick up and put down and just read bits of, unlike a new story.

So, what do I have planned for November? A huge amount of catching up! I am hopeful that I will get chance to read it all, but you know me, I am often overly optimistic! So instead of telling you about all of the infeasible amount that I have planned, I will just highlight a couple of things.

One of my reads for this month will be a book focusing on one of my favourite secondary characters, from 'Pride & Prejudice'.  'Colonel Fitzwilliam and the Countess of Sainte Toulours'. Here we will see the Colonel on-duty and abroad. I'm really looking forward to reading this book, which is by an author I've been meaning to read for a long time, Stanley Michael Hurd, the writer of the 3 book 'Darcy's Tale' series showing 'Pride & Prejudice' from Mr Darcy's point of view. Stanley is also kindly offering a giveaway of the book, so look out for that.

I will be taking part in the blog tour for 'Longbourn's Songbird', written by Beau North. This book is 'Pride & Prejudice'-inspired and set in South Carolina, in the late 1940s. I enjoy reading versions set in different periods; often things will either be set in the same time as P&P or in the current day, so it'll be interesting to read one set in a period that I'm not as familiar with.

If I have time, I'd like to read the newest 'Holidays with Jane: Trick or Sweet'. If you don't know, this is an anthology. There are six different authors, (Jennifer Becton, Melissa Buell, Rebecca M Fleming, Cecilia Gray, Jessica Grey and Kimberley Truesdale) and each one has written a modern short story linked to a different one of Austen's main 6 novels. The 'Trick or Sweet' edition has stories themed around this time of year, Halloween, mainly I think, so it'd be good if I could fit in something seasonal. We'll see how it goes.

I hope you get some good reading in this month. What do you have planned?