Posts tagged ‘Historical fiction’

Book giveaways: Loving Modigliani. And Katherine’s Wish, by Linda Lappin #parisinjuly2023

Loving Modigliani

Loving Modigliani:
The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne,
by
Linda Lappin

(historical fiction)

 Published December 15, 2020
at Serving House Books

350 pages

***

On Goodreads

Buy it here:
Amazon / Bookshop 
Apple / Barnes & Noble

SYNOPSIS

PARIS 1920
Dying just 48 hours after Modigliani, artist Jeanne Hébuterne, his wife and muse, haunts their shared studio, watching as her legacy is erased.
Decades later, Jeanne’s lost diary comes to light and an art history student travels across Europe to rescue Jeanne’s artwork from obscurity.

“Brilliantly researched, imaginative cross-genre historical fiction…The book’s inventive afterlife is as vividly drawn as the streets of Paris.”– Kirkus

“The zeitgeist is superbly captured… the protagonists lovingly sketched…a fine tribute to an artist forgotten for 100 years.” – Historical Novel Society Review

“Singularly unique and intensely ambitious and an utter joyride.” — Indie Reader

“Eloquent, finely fashioned, deftly crafted…especially recommended addition to community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections.” – Midwest Book Review

“Loving Modigliani brings alive the streets and cafés of Montparnasse in full multi-sensory detail… If you are a supporter of the under-appreciated women artists of their time, you will applaud Lappin’s choice of subject and you’ll love the novel’s ending. “ BonjourParis.com

Loving Modigliani
won the Women’s Fiction Prize in the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, 2021.
It was shortlisted for the Daphne DuMaurier Award in 2021,
and shortlisted for the Montaigne Medal for Books of Distinction in 2022.
It was a book pick for the Da Vinci Art Alliance Book Club in 2021.

Eiffel Tower OrangeEiffel Tower OrangeEiffel Tower Orange
 Giveaway:
1 US/UK participant will receive a paperback copy of this book

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

Eiffel Tower Orange 

Katherine's Wish

Katherine’s Wish
by
Linda Lappin

(historical fiction/biographical fiction)

 Published July 2008
at Wordcraft of Oregon

228 pages

***

On Goodreads

Buy it here:
Amazon / Bookshop 
Barnes & Noble

Eiffel Tower Orange

SYNOPSIS

In “Katherine’s Wish,” author Linda Lappin delves into the final years of renowned New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, offering a fictionalized account of her life and the events leading up to her encounter with P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff.

Lappin meticulously researches Mansfield’s world, crafting a vivid and evocative narrative that transports readers back in time. Drawing from Mansfield’s own journals, letters, and diaries, Lappin weaves together a mosaic of themes and motifs, mirroring Mansfield’s unique writing style.

The novel has garnered praise from Mansfield scholars for its blend of creative storytelling and scholarly accuracy.
Set against a backdrop of Mansfield’s nomadic lifestyle, which takes her from London to the South of France, Italy, Switzerland, and eventually Fontainebleau, searching a cure for her tuberculosis, Lappin explores Mansfield’s relationships with Ida Baker, her companion, and John Middleton Murry, her husband, as well as with writers and intimate friends, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.
Incorporating modernist techniques employed by Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, the novel grapples with tragic elements while ultimately celebrating Mansfield’s profound love of life. It conveys a powerful message of joy and fulfillment in the face of adversity.

Katherine’s Wish” has garnered recognition and acclaim, including being a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Award in fiction and winning the IPPY Gold medal in historical fiction.
It has also received honorable mentions from the Hoffer Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Next Generation Indie Awards.

Katherine’s Wish is first and foremost the compelling story of an artist fighting against time. Long after the last page, thoughts of her linger like an exotic scent, as if, anticipating other guests, she simply stepped from the room to display a vase of flowers or a platter’s mounded figs. –Joyce J. Townsend, Rain Taxi

“The more Katherine Mansfield approaches death, the more she comes to life in Linda Lappin’s Katherine’s Wish. Lappin’s achievement is to succeed where medicine failed and, through her words, give Katherine Mansfield ongoing life. ” –Walter Cummins, The Literary Review

Eiffel Tower Orange

A radio play adapted from the book dealing with Mansfield’s friendship with Virginia Woolf
is available on all podcast platforms

Eiffel Tower Orange

 Giveaway:
1 US/UK participant will receive a paperback copy of this book

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Linda Lappin

Linda Lappin
is the prize-winning author of four novels:
The Etruscan (Wynkin deWorde, 2004),
Katherine’s Wish (Wordcraft, 2008),
dealing with the last five years of Katherine Mansfield’s life,
Signatures in Stone: A Bomarzo Mystery (Pleasureboat Studio, 2013),
and Loving Modigliani: The Afterlife of Jeanne Hébuterne (Serving House Books, 2020). Signatures in Stone was the overall winner of the Daphne DuMaurier prize for best mystery novel of 2013.
She is also the author of The Soul of Place: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci, (Travelers Tales, 2015), which won a Nautilus Award in the category of creativity in 2015.
A former Fulbright scholar to Italy, she has lived mainly in Rome for over thirty years.
Her website is www.lindalappin.net

Connect with her on Facebook  and Twitter
Subscribe to her Newsletter

Book giveaway: A Star for Mrs. Blake #parisinjuly2023

Star For Mrs Blake cover

A Star for Mrs. Blake,
by
April Smith

(historical fiction)

 Published September 23, 2014
at Penguin Random House

352 pages

***

On Goodreads

Buy it here
(Hardcover, paperback, ebook, audio)

SYNOPSIS

In this emotionally charged, brilliantly realized novel, April Smith tells the story of five courageous women who made the American Gold Star Mothers pilgrimage to France in 1929 to visit the graves of their sons who fought in WWI.
The U.S. government sponsored first class trips for 6,693 Gold Star Mothers from Paris to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery to say their final good-byes, officially honoring the sacrifice of women in war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

April SmithYes, I’m the same April Smith
who writes the FBI Special Agent Ana Grey Mystery/Thriller,
but I’ve taken a new direction into suspenseful historical fiction.
A STAR FOR MRS. BLAKE, set in the 1930s,
tells the untold true story of the Gold Star Mothers pilgrimages to Europe
to visit the graves of their loved ones killed during WWI.

My latest novel, HOME SWEET HOME, takes place in 1950s South Dakota,
where a family becomes the victim of a witch hunt during the McCarthy era.

Where do I get such wide-ranging ideas?
I grew up in the Bronx, New York, where the Kingsbridge Road Branch public library
was the center of my universe.
There it was safe and warm — the library was a tiny space above a dry cleaners —
and I was free to explore everything from science fiction to James Bond.
I moved to Los Angeles to write and produce TV shows
— most recently the miniseries, Mrs. America, starring Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly,
but I am still, firmly and forever, happy in the world of books.

Visit her website,
or connect with her on Facebook  and Twitter
You can also contact her here
Check her IMDb page!

Eiffel Tower OrangeEiffel Tower OrangeEiffel Tower Orange
 Giveaway:
1 participant will receive a signed copy of this book

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY

November 2021 Books of the month giveaway winners

November 2021 Books of the month
giveaway winners

Double Identity winners

Anne, Diana, and Nancy 
won an ecopy of

double-identity-new-cover

Double Identity

(Thriller)

 Release date: 1/7/2021
338 pages
Pulcheria Press

Goodreads

Deeply in love, a chic Parisian lifestyle before her. Now she’s facing prison for murder.

It’s three days since dual national Mel des Pittones threw in her job as an intelligence analyst with the French special forces to marry financial trader Gérard Rohlbert. But her dream turns to nightmare in London when she wakes to find him dead in bed beside her.
Her horror deepens when she’s accused of his murder. Met Police detective Jeff McCracken wants to pin Gérard’s death on her. Mel must track down the real killer, even if that means being forced to work with the obnoxious McCracken.
But as she unpicks her fiancé’s past, she discovers his shocking secret life. To get to the truth, she has to go undercover and finds almost everybody around her is hiding a second self.
Mel can trust nobody. Can she uncover the real killer before they stop her?
A stunning new thriller from the author of the award-winning Roma Nova series, fans of Daniel Silva, Stella Rimington and Chris Pavone will love Double Identity.

You can also request your free review copy
before December 31,
and review it in your own time!

Buy It Here:
Our Bookshop

Also Available In All These Places
(Paperback Or Ebook)

Eiffel Tower Orange
Katherine's Wish winners
Michael
won a print copy
Anne, Lilianne, and Tuscia
won an ecopy of
Katherine's Wish

Katherine’s Wish

(Historical fiction/fictional biography)

Officially released in 2008,
now re released in 2021
250 pages
Wordcraft of Oregon

Goodreads

In this dramatic, fictional retelling of New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield‘s final years, and of the events which led up to her meeting with P.D. Ouspensky and G. I Gurdjieff, novelist Linda Lappin transports the reader like a time traveler into Mansfield’s intimate world.
Scrupulously researched and richly evocative, the novel has been praised by Mansfield scholars as “creative scholarship.”
With vivid detail and beautiful language and style, Lappin has built on journals, letters, and diaries to fashion a true-to-life mosaic, using themes, motifs, and methods of Mansfield’s own writing.
Katherine’s Wish celebrates Mansfield’s deep love of life and its final message is a life-affirming one of joy and of wholeness achieved.

You can also request your free review copy
before December 31,
and review it in your own time!

Buy It Here:
Our Bookshop

Also Available From The Publisher / On Amazon

Eiffel Tower Orange

And be sure to enter our December giveaway
– 3 books to choose from!
Eiffel Tower Orange

Did you know France Book Tours offers a Book Box?
Perfect for an affordable and unique Christmas gift!
Click on the box to know more about it

French Book Box

Save

Save