From the award-winning author of A Rose for the Crown, Daughter of York, and The King’s Grace comes another masterful historical novel—the story of Cecily of York, mother of two kings and the heroine of one of history’s greatest love stories. Anne Easter Smith’s novels are beloved by readers for their ability “to grab you, sweep you along with the story, and make you fall in love with the characters.” * In Cecily Neville, duchess of York and ancestor of every English monarch to the present day, she has found her most engrossing character yet.

History remembers Cecily of York standing on the steps of the Market Cross at Ludlow, facing an attacking army while holding the hands of her two young sons. Queen by Right reveals how she came to step into her destiny, beginning with her marriage to Richard, duke of York, whom she meets when she is nine and he is thirteen. Raised together in her father’s household, they become a true love match and together face personal tragedies, pivotal events of history, and deadly political intrigue. All of England knows that Richard has a clear claim to the throne, and when King Henry VI becomes unfit to rule, Cecily must put aside her hopes and fears and help her husband decide what is right for their family and their country. Queen by Right marks Anne Easter Smith’s greatest achievement, a book that every fan of sweeping, exquisitely detailed historical fiction will devour.

I have long been fascinated with the War of the Roses. So after reading the King’s Grace I leapt head first into reading Queen by Right written by Anne Easter Smith and what a journey it was. We follow the story from the very beginning with Cecily Neville and her husband Richard Duke of York. Arguably the War of the Roses started when Edward the Black Prince of Wales died before taking the crown his Father died but a year after leaving Young Richard II as King with his Uncle John of Gaunt as regent but I digress.

Anne Easter Smith takes us on a journey from the time that the young couple meets when Richard Duke of York becomes the ward of Cecily’s Father. While the couple is told they will marry as was the custom at the time they fell deeply in love with one another and their love story is one of the ages. I positively loved following along on each turn in their life that we are guided through by Anne Easter Smith’s masterful writing. From a surprising time in France where Cecily is to come in contact with Joan of Arc before she is burned at the stake to their time in Ireland.

If you know your history you know their love ends in a tragic way but it leads to somewhat more positive things. This time period is when the War of the Roses truly did reach its height even when there was a strong King on the throne nothing was guaranteed. Any fan of historical fiction will enjoy this book immensely. It is packed full of facts so that you do not feel as if you are reading a fiction so much as living events that happened. Queen by right is simply a masterful piece of work by Anne Easter Smith.

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While the mothers in Siberia wait for their soldier sons to return from the war in the west in 1945, the eight year old Eduard secretly jumps on board the trains heading in the opposite direction, heading west, towards Leningrad. Placed in a Siberian orphanage as a child because his parents were arrested as public enemies there is only one thing he wants: to go back home to Leningrad and to find his mother again. It is not only his desperate courage and his youthful agility that ensure his survival, it is also his artistic talent. With his agile fingers the boy is able to bend wire in the shape of profiles of Lenin and Stalin, as if in silhouette. He uses them to cheer up the invalid war veterans on the train stations returning from the front, who then give him a piece of bread, a bowl of soup and who, in a spirit of comradeship, warn him of the railway police and the secret service henchmen wanting to send the runaway back to the orphanage.

Eduard spends more than six years on the run, experiencing close encounters with post-war Russia where life and fate have become synonyms. He encounters other stowaways, professional beggars, soldiers returning from the war and wartime profiteers, the mothers of soldiers and war invalids, Chinese from the Ural, Cossacks dealing in hashish, Bashkir Estonians, Russian penal colony escapees and, time and again, orphanage directors. In order to survive the winter he often registered himself voluntarily in the next orphanage, each one always a little closer to the West, running away again before the servants of the Stalinist state are able to send him back to Siberia.

The memoirs of an old man who, as a boy, learned to find his way between extortionate state control and marauding banditry, the two poles that characterize Russia to this day. A story about the awakening of artistic talent under highly unusual Russian circumstances.

I was given the opportunity to read Christened with Crosses by Eduard Kochergin for a blog tour and I must say I feel honored to have been selected to read this book. This story is so gripping and emotional you cannot help but to be drawn into it. There were times I swore I could feel the nip of the Siberian Winter at my feet.


One of the main reasons you feel such a connection to this story is that it is Eduard Kochergin’s story told how he lived it. Spending part of his life in an orphanage in Siberia you can imagine that he had some rough times. Once he escapes from the orphanage he flees to St. Petersburg in hopes to find his Mother.


I have always enjoyed reading about Russian History and this time of upheaval is one that I have studied. However despite my knowledge of things I was left somewhat unprepared for this story of someone who actually lived the hardness that war torn times in Russia offered. I don’t want to give to many secrets away from Christened with Crosses because you really need to read it yourself to appreciate the story. I found it made me look back and rethink some of the things in my life that I complain about and realize perhaps they really are not that bad.


I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in history and living.

 

My Gemstone Rating:

The bestselling author of A Rose for the Crown and Daughter of York takes a young woman that history noticed only once and sets her on a quest for the truth about the murder of two boys and a man who claims to be king.

All that history knows of Grace Plantagenet is that she was an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and one of two attendants aboard the funeral barge of his widowed queen. Thus, she was half sister of the famous young princes, who — when this story begins in 1485 — had been housed in the Tower by their uncle, Richard III, and are presumed dead.

But in the 1490s, a young man appears at the courts of Europe claiming to be Richard, duke of York, the younger of the boys, and seeking to claim his rightful throne from England’s first Tudor king, Henry VII. But is this man who he says he is? Or is he Perkin Warbeck, a puppet of Margaret of York, duchess of Burgundy, who is determined to regain the crown for her York family? Grace Plantagenet finds herself in the midst of one of English history’s greatest mysteries. If she can discover the fate of the princes and the true identity of Perkin Warbeck, perhaps she will find her own place in her family.

Grace was a real person, but only mentioned once, in passing, in one official record. Therefore, this is not the sort of historical fiction where it’s based on the template of a well known historical figure’s documented life. However, i read the whole almost 600 page thing, so you know it had to be good. This book tries to tackle the mystery of the princes in the tower, through the point of view of their half (illegitimate) sister, Grace. I’m always hearing about henry viii, so it was interesting to be reading about his parents and grandparents for a change. the writing style was engaging, and well done enough so that i flipped in and out of liking the main character; she wasn’t one dimensional. I’m about to tackle another super long book by Smith, hopefully it’s as good. The worst thing about reading this is lugging a heavy enormous book with you everywhere. If you can get over that, and the fact that not everything happened exactly as written (but really, that’s how most historical fiction is) you can learn a lot about the time period and the politics that were going on at the time.

My Gemstone Rating:

Acclaimed and beloved historical novelist Norah Lofts brings to life the danger, romance, and intrigue of the Tudor court that forever altered the course of English history.

The king first noticed Anne Boleyn as a heartbroken sixteen-year-old, sullen and beautiful after a thwarted romance with the son of the Earl of Northumberland. “All eyes and hair,” a courtier had said disparagingly of her, but when King Henry VIII fell for young Anne, nothing could keep him from what he desired. Against common sense and the urgings of his most trusted advisers, Henry defied all, blindly following his passion for Anne, using the power he held over the bodies and souls of all who reside in his realm and beyond. Anne’s ascent to the throne elevates her from lady-in-waiting to the highest position a woman could attain, but her life spirals out of control when Henry is driven to desperate acts of betrayal and violence. The consequences of Anne’s rise to power and eventual demise are felt well beyond the inner circle of the court. Loyalties, to church, to queen, to country, are tested, and — in the wake of the king’s volatile passions — can be an unpredictable matter of life and death.

First published in 1963 and adored by readers for generations, Lofts’ lush and moving portrayal of the ambitious and doomed Anne Boleyn will continue to reign as a classic retelling of this epic chapter of history vividly brought to life.

The book is very well done, despite the fact it has a slightly dated feel to it – the kind of stale whiff you get from historical fiction written in the early to mid twentieth century. Still, Lofts did her research, showing off the Tudor court and characters with the precession and brilliance of a master jeweler. However, she did so much research that she likes to show it off by quoting either a primary or secondary source at the beginning of each chapter.

Yes, it’s good to know she followed the facts rather than just making it up and as she went along but a lot of the facts she quotes would have been great scenes themselves – she should have developed the quoted text into scenes rather than just having the facts quoted act as scene bridges as she jumps from one year to the next.

The characters were great. They weren’t quite believable – they all just, just fell short of true complexity, and their motivations are often painted in broad strokes that makes all their actions combined hard to follow. She makes excellent progress in showing a deep psychological portrait of her main characters, but doesn’t quite pull it off – though I am happy to admit she comes close.

She does amazing work putting Henry on the couch and doing a Freudian analysis of his actions, yet she still has him and a lot of other characters bluntly spelling out actions and motivations with the subtly of an anvil. Meanwhile, the character of Anne Boleyn is not quite real sounding. Her maid keeps dosing her with poppy juice to help her sleep, and she drifts through the whole book as if drugged. All of the known characteristic – the humor, wit, and temper – are told rather than shown, making her a very unbelievable Anne Boleyn. However, for the past 500 years people have talked about how Anne Boleyn had something about her that was indescribable, so it’s understandable that yet another writer was unable to pin down just what is was about this woman that caused so much to happen.

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