Worderella Writes

Book: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Eloise Kelly is a PhD student chasing after the elusive Pink Carnation, a British spy during the Napoleonic Wars. Trekking across the Atlantic in search of primary sources to discover the identity of the Pink Carnation, Eloise discovers the biggest scoop of all time, one that the “finest historians” have missed–the secret history of the Pink Carnation. While reading journals of those involved, she stumbles upon a heady romance that leaves her aching for a little of her own. As from the front flap, “How did the Pink Carnation save England? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?”

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Book: The Grand Sophy

The Ombersley house is in a turmoil. Cousin Sophy Stanton-Lacy has been left by her father, Sir Horace, to find a husband…the problem is, Sophy cannot do any such thing until the house has been put to rights. After all, cousin Cecilia is in love with a foppish poet who has no concept of reality, cousin Charles is about to marry a prosy prig, and no one is doing anything about it! That is, not until Sophy walked through the door…

Read this book to see how an author can make a manipulative character the hero, keep the pacing fast, give each character definition, and write a snappy love story where the two main characters don’t fawn over one another (they actually argue the entire book).

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Book: The Moon is Down

Written during the height of Nazi Germany’s power, this book is about the invasion and betrayal of a small European town. A mechanized army, working on a time table and having no concept of defeat, walks into the town and takes control with little-to-no conflict. This book shares the events that happens after the takeover.

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Book: A Mankind Witch

Cair Aiden, one of the Redbeard Raider brothers, a pair of corsair seacaptains, has washed ashore in Norseland and made a thrall (slave) of the Telemark kingdom. This is a new phenomenon for him–Cair has always been master of his own fate, and just because he is now a thrall doesn’t make him believe differently. Studying his surroundings and the internal politics of this little kingdom of Telemark, set in the 16th Century, Cair manipulates his way into being the personal thrall of the Princess Signy, who is unknowingly at the center of an immense plot to throw the Christian oath-bearers out of the country and allow dark magics to reign supreme.

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Book: Once Upon a Marigold

The hook on the front cover of this book reads Part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. This book is actually a young adult fantasy, and I didn’t realize that until I found the book in that section of my local library, but hey. I have loved Ferris ever since I read her Rosie & Raider trilogy (Into the Wind, Song of the Sea, and Weather the Storm). …I can’t believe I remembered the characters and titles without looking them up. Seriously, I read these books when I was thirteen. Anyway, Once Upon a Marigold is about Christian, a little boy who runs away to live with a forest troll, and spends his developmental years roaming the forest and reading every book he can “borrow.” All the while, Christian uses his foster father’s telescope to watch the goings-on in the royal castle across the river, and subsequently, falls in love with the “ugly duckling” Princess Marigold. This is a time when p-mail (aka pidgeon-mail) is modern, when Queen Mab of toothfairy fame is losing control of her business, and when a curse may not be a curse after all.

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Book: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

This is technically two separate stories about two cocky young men who use their wits to get what they want. The thing is, one is a Hungarian folktale about Csucskari, a young gypsy who puts the sun, the moon, and the stars back where they belong. The other story is a contemporary first-person narrative about Greg, a student painter who dropped out of his junior year of college three years ago to work in a studio with four of his artist friends. There aren’t really chapters, just a series of vignettes, and the vignettes switch between the contemporary narrative and the folktale.

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Book: Green Rider

Karigan G’ladheon has been unfairly kicked from school because she, the daughter of a mere (if rich) merchan, insulted a spoiled heir in a sword fight. Instead of facing the suspension board, Karigan decides to run away from school and make her way home. Seems like a good plan, until a rider dressed in green with two black arrows in his back blocks her path and asks that she finish his mission by sending an important message to the king. Being the spontaneous girl she is, Karigan accepts, and thus begins the typical fantasy story about the journey from being an innocent, ignorant, yet fiesty, schoolgirl to an experienced warrior who may not know what her future holds, but at least knows she has the strength to withstand just about anything.

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Book: The Slightest Provocation

In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Mary Penley and Kit Stansell of the Regency feuding Penley and Stansell families elope, after nourishing a secret friendship from their early teens. Their first year of marriage is one long honeymoon night, if you get my drift, but when Kit is teased by his club friends for only lusting after his wife (how provincial!!), he dallies with an actress and catches a disease such that he can’t go to bed with Mary for a year. This doesn’t stop him from going to other actresses, however, and to get back at him, Mary allows Kit’s best friend to seduce her. Of course, Kit walks in on them, and that’s just the backstory.

When the book actually starts, Kit and Mary have been separated for nine years, during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon is finally defeated, and Kit and Mary are returning to England, worried by rumors that there is an insurgency threatening their homeland.

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Book: St. Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb

So. This book is interesting. St Ursula’s Girls Against the Atomic Bomb by Valerie Hurley is about Raine Rassaby, a free-spirited high school girl who is determined to be a heroine and save the world from nuclear missiles and other dangerous horrible things like the military. Her mother is a concert violinist and her father is a famous astrologist; her late grandmother converted to Judaism so she thinks she’s Jewish even though both of her parents are Catholic. She’s in love with the Slovakian Jewish gardener, and her Catholic school guidance teacher, who has his own problems, lives next door. The book starts crazy, and it doesn’t seem to come to any sort of real resolution, in the way that a typical romance would, which is why I’ve labeled this book as simply fiction, it almost asks to be literary fiction.

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Book: A Hole in the Earth

A Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch is a first-person narrative about “the summer” as described by Henry Porter, the narrator and main character. A middle school history teacher with a penchant for gambling, Porter is a divorce who has not seen his daughter Nicole in five years, which makes her about seventeen. The school year has just ended, and Porter is on his way out the door to the race track to make a couple bucks when Nicole shows up at his door with her friend, Sam. That same day, Porter’s girlfriend of three years Elizabeth begins to act strangely, and she soon reveals that she is pregnant. What starts out as a series of unexpected events leads to the inner-workings of a quiet man; Porter’s narrative tells us everything he cannot or does not say, and how that can make or break his relationships with the people around him.

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