Friday 30 October 2020

Welcome to the Final Day of the blog tour for The Potential for Love: A Regency Novel by Catherine Kullmann #BookReview #RegencyRomance #CoffeePotBookClub @CKullmannAuthor @cathiedunn

THE POTENTIAL FOR LOVE: A REGENCY NOVEL

BY CATHERINE KULLMANN


OCTOBER 19TH - OCTOBER 30TH 2020

AMAZON • WATERSTONES • BARNES AND NOBLE


Publication Date: 31 March 2020

Publisher: Willow Books

Print Length: 414 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/Historical Romance/Regency Romance/Historical Women’s Fiction


1816


For over six years, Thomas Ferraunt’s thoughts have been of war. Newly returned to England from occupied Paris, he must ask himself what his place is in this new world and what he wants from it. More and more, his thoughts turn to Arabella Malvin, but would Lord Malvin agree to such a mismatch for his daughter, especially when she is being courted by Lord Henry Danlow?


About to embark on her fourth Season, Arabella is tired of the life of a debutante, waiting in the wings for her real life to begin. She is ready to marry. But which of her suitors has the potential for love and who will agree to the type of marriage she wants?


As she struggles to make her choice, she is faced with danger from an unexpected quarter while Thomas is stunned by a new challenge. Will these events bring them together or drive them apart?


We are celebrating the release of the special hardback edition of The Potential for Love during this tour. With a beautiful dust jacket over an elegant laminated cover, it will enhance any library and is the perfect gift for lovers of historical women’s fiction and historical romance.


The first stop of the tour is over on Candlelight Reading for a fabulous review.


Check out a snippet: “As a reader, you get a true sense of watching events unfold in front of your eyes, as you can easily imagine characters, locations and events. Full of clever and unexpected twists – not least in part due to Lord Henry Danlow's increasing obsession with Bella and a stroke of good fortune for the Ferraunt family – The Potential for Love sweeps you off your feet, and you'll be happy to spend many hours turning the pages.” Cathie Dunn Head over to Cathie Dunn Writes... to check out the rest of the review!

Click HERE!


Have a sneak-peek between the covers of John Copenhaver's fabulous book — Dodging and Burning #HistoricalFiction #HistoricalMystery @johncopenhaver

 




Dodging and Burning 

By John Copenhaver



A lurid crime scene photo of a beautiful woman arrives on mystery writer Bunny Prescott's doorstep with no return address―and it's not the first time she's seen it. The reemergence of the photo, taken fifty-five years earlier, sets her on a journey to reconstruct the vicious summer that changed her life.

In the summer of 1945, Ceola Bliss is a lonely twelve-year-old tomboy, mourning the loss of her brother, Robbie, who was declared missing in the Pacific. She tries to piece together his life by rereading his favorite pulp detective story “A Date with Death” and spending time with his best friend, Jay Greenwood, in Royal Oak, VA. One unforgettable August day, Jay leads Ceola and Bunny to a stretch of woods where he found a dead woman, but when they arrive, the body is gone. They soon discover a local woman named Lily Vellum is missing and begin to piece together the threads of her murder, starting with the photograph Jay took of her abandoned body.

As Ceola gets swept up playing girl detective, Bunny becomes increasingly skeptical of Jay’s story about the photograph and begins her own investigation into Lily’s murder. A series of clues lead her to Washington, DC, where she must confront the truth about her dear friend—a revelation that triggers a brutal confrontation that will change all of them forever.

Inspired by the turmoil abroad and nationalistic unity at home that encapsulated post-World War II America, Copenhaver’s debut sheds light on the lives of those who were largely overlooked during this historically over-documented era: the LGBTQ community. 



Excerpt


Bunny Prescott, one of the two primary narrators, is coming over to Jay’s house to look at photos that he has taken of her 18th birthday party. She has a crush on him. He has just handed her the photos.

Bunny

I sipped my water, which he then gingerly lifted from my hands and placed on the tile floor beside his seat. I slipped my finger under the flap of the envelope and, being careful not to bend the photographs, slid them out. The first few were panoramic shots of the party before dusk. They were well composed, but not especially remarkable. We noted some of the bad dresses and laughed at the unfortunate facial expressions on several of the guests—eyes half shut, double chins, that sort of thing. There was a photograph of my mother and father dancing; my father’s eyes were a bit dim and my mother’s arms were loose around his neck. Her chestnut hair was pulled back carelessly, and her silver half-moon earrings reflected light onto her face, warming the hollow under her high cheeks and softening her jawline. They appeared tipsy, and their posture was a little inappropriate.

“I don’t like this one,” I said.

Jay removed the photo and flipped it face down beside him. He didn’t seem offended.

The photographs of me were at the bottom of the stack.

This is what I expected to see: A lovely young woman with rich, dark hair in a clean white cotton dress, posing playfully in front of the camera. There would be equal amounts of carelessness and caution to the image. The right arm stretched out, the left hand planted firmly on a hip, leaning forward a little, inviting the viewer, but gently, with grace—the same poise I had always admired in my mother. This young lady would be bright about the eyes, might even be thought flirtatious, but not indiscreet. She would approximate the perky Carole King dress models in Ladies’ Home Journal, or an elegant fashion model juxtaposed with a handsome military man in Life magazine.

Oh, what vanity.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a retrospective of Weegee’s work. His photographs of the underbelly of New York City during the 1940s—the winos, the prostitutes, the exotic dancers, the transvestites, the crooks, the dead bodies, his obsessive love for sensational grit—reminded me of these photographs.

These images were phantasmagoric, a sort of nightmare of myself. The background of each was inky darkness, and in the foreground, I glowed so white that the folds of my dress had disappeared and my skin shone pale gray, almost two-dimensional. My face, however, was distinct in each photograph. In one, the expression was exceedingly desperate, almost angry. In another, slack-jawed and empty-eyed, arms straight at my sides—graceless, even absurd. The last image had me bending forward, my cleavage luridly, if carelessly, accentuated. I looked to be folding in on myself, white enveloping white, a phantom preparing to vanish in a ripple of cold vapor.

I touched the surface of that final photo, leaving my fingerprint over my face. Jay caught my hand, gently moved it away, and said, “I dodged it in the darkroom to make that effect.”

I liked that he was touching me. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“I covered you with a piece of cardboard for a few seconds during exposure to create more contrast between you and the night sky. I wanted you to float in the darkness, like a white bird.”

I thought he was telling me my photos were beautiful, that the real me, the absurd, frightened, desperate me, was something extraordinary and desirable. If I had stripped down in front of him, I thought, it wouldn’t have been more intimate than those photographs.

Of course, that wasn’t the case. But I didn’t know it at the time, so I kissed him.

Pick up your copy of

Dodging and Burning

Amazon UKAmazon US 

Barnes and NobleBookshop


Add Dodging and Burning to your 'to-read' list on

Goodreads


John Copenhaver



John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Literary Award nominations. Copenhaver writes a crime fiction review column for Lambda Literary called “Blacklight,” and he is the six-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. His work has appeared in CrimeReads, Electric Lit, Glitterwolf, PANK, New York Journal of Books, Washington Independent Review of Books, and others. He grew up in the mountains of southwestern Virginia and currently lives in Washington, DC with his husband, artist Jeffery Paul (Herrity). 

Connect with John:

Website Twitter FacebookInstagram.


Publication Date: 10th September 2019

Publisher:  Pegasus

Print Length: 288 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction









Thursday 29 October 2020

Welcome to Day #9 of the blog tour for The Potential for Love: A Regency Novel by Catherine Kullmann #RegencyRomance #CoffeePotBookClub @CKullmannAuthor @BritonandDane

 

  

THE POTENTIAL FOR LOVE: A REGENCY NOVEL

BY CATHERINE KULLMANN



OCTOBER 19TH - OCTOBER 30TH 2020

AMAZON • WATERSTONES • BARNES AND NOBLE


Publication Date: 31 March 2020

Publisher: Willow Books

Print Length: 414 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/Historical Romance/Regency Romance/Historical Women’s Fiction


1816


For over six years, Thomas Ferraunt’s thoughts have been of war. Newly returned to England from occupied Paris, he must ask himself what his place is in this new world and what he wants from it. More and more, his thoughts turn to Arabella Malvin, but would Lord Malvin agree to such a mismatch for his daughter, especially when she is being courted by Lord Henry Danlow?


About to embark on her fourth Season, Arabella is tired of the life of a debutante, waiting in the wings for her real life to begin. She is ready to marry. But which of her suitors has the potential for love and who will agree to the type of marriage she wants?


As she struggles to make her choice, she is faced with danger from an unexpected quarter while Thomas is stunned by a new challenge. Will these events bring them together or drive them apart?


We are celebrating the release of the special hardback edition of The Potential for Love during this tour. With a beautiful dust jacket over an elegant laminated cover, it will enhance any library and is the perfect gift for lovers of historical women’s fiction and historical romance.


Head over to Let the words shine... where Catherine Kullmann is talking about the inspiration behind her fabulous book, The Potential for Love.


Click HERE!


Welcome to Day #2 of the blog tour for Bright Helm (The Byrhtnoth Chronicles: Book 4) by Christine Hancock #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @YoungByrhtnoth @CaigJamie @BritonandDane

BRIGHT HELM

(THE BYRHTNOTH CHRONICLES: BOOK 4)

BY CHRISTINE HANCOCK


OCTOBER 22ND – 24TH DECEMBER 2020

AMAZON UKAMAZON US


Separated by anger and unanswered questions, Byrhtnoth and Saewynn are brought together by a tragic death.


Re-united, they set out on an epic voyage to discover the final truth about his father. 

The journey takes them far to the north, to Orkney, swathed in the mists of treachery, and to Dublin’s slave markets where Byrhtnoth faces a fateful decision.


 How far will he go, to save those he cares for?


We are visiting two blogs on our tour today.


The first stop is over on The Whispering Bookworm with an exclusive author interview!


Click HERE!


Our second stop is also an interview over on Let the words shine...


Click HERE!