Fairytale Nerd

I'm happy to draw your attention to this new historical fiction title by author Tamar Anolic which is entitled Triumph of a Tsar It is available now to buy  for your kindle or in paperback. Book Description: Triumph of a Tsar is a work of alternate historical fiction in which the Russian Revolution of 1917 is averted, and the hemophiliac Alexei, son of Tsar Nicholas II, comes to the throne. In August, 1920, sixteen-year-old Alexei is enjoying his birthday celebrations when Nicholas dies suddenly. Overnight, Alexei becomes tsar of an empire that covers one-sixth of the world’s landmass. The Great War is over, but Russia is still suffering from the devastation and poverty that it brought. Communists such as Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky view the political situation as ripe for revolution, but they realize that the popular Alexei stands in their way. To make matters worse, Alexei’s hemophilia, the disease that has threatened him his whole life, returns to haunt him. With his life in const...

Oooh this book ticked all my boxes and I'm excited to read that movie rights are already in place, it will make a wonderful film if its done right. But me, I prefer to read the book first and this one didn't disappoint one bit, and isn't the cover beautiful? I must confess I am not overly familiar with the notorious true story of the hapless pioneering family known as the Donner party who set out along the California trail to Wyoming in a wagon trail and became beset by ill fortune and disaster although when I picked up the Hunger I realized that in the past I have read a very different account of this famous event which is very well documented. The Hunger is very much a work of fiction, though closely woven around a hard core of fact and many characters in the book and things which happened are very real. It is historical fiction with a creepy and insidious taint of horror. A large mismatched group of families set off together with their belongings and wagons, to travel ac...

My Review A very atmospheric and enthralling historical novel about a man who seeks to fill the emptiness in his life with wonder and beauty, which almost becomes his downfall. Jonah Hancock is a middle aged widower, an 18th century merchant and not taken to flights of fancy. He could be said to be staid and unimaginative. But when he is offered a chance to accrue riches beyond his dreams by gambling his fortunes on the ownership of a curiosity, a strange thing found on a fated sea voyage which he is assured is that mythical beast - a mermaid, he acts out of character and sets in motion a series of events which ARE about to change his life, just perhaps not in the way he could have imagined. Persuaded that the way to recoup any losses invested in this awful and frightening denizen of the deep is to display it in public, eventually brings onto his radar the beautiful and capricious Angelica, a courtesan of some repute, her shallowness and flightiness is the opposite of his dull, pondero...

My Review As soon as I saw this book on a friends tbr pile I knew it was exactly my kind of read. Historical literary fiction set in a bleak and harsh alien wilderness with its attendant dangers, brings the opportunity to step back in time and slip into someone else’s shoes and I wasn’t disappointed with the time travel experience this beautifully written, wonderful, haunting novel presented. Salt Creek begins in England in the 1870s where Hetty is reminiscing about the years she spent living in the Coorong Australia with her parents and siblings. Coorong is the absolute back of beyond and Salt creek is its armpit! A harsh, bleak and very lonely place, yet it haunts her very existence. Her intractable Papa is a feckless and reckless soul who never quite manages to make a success of any venture he tries yet he is full of big ideas and will never admit defeat. So in 1955 when his life in Adelaide begins to crumble he drags his unwilling family across the plains of Australia to live in a ...

Still Me - Jojo Moyes - My review: I was lucky enough to win a copy in advance of publication from Penguin books and here are my thoughts after diving in. I'm a die-hard Jojo Moyes enthusiast, she writes such readable, fully immersive books and even though I usually prefer stand alone books rather than series, I loved Me before You so very much that not reading Still me just wasn't an option. Yet like many readers I knew in my heart it was never going to better the first book in this series. "Do I need to read book 2 before reading this?" seems to be a common thread regarding this book, and I will say "Hell Yeah - why on earth wouldn't you?" The 3 books ARE a trilogy, written in chronological order and You'll make a better connection with Lou's adventures in this book, if you have followed her story from the start. I loved meeting up with Lou Clark yet again and following her to New York where she puts her caring nature to work and follows the ad...