Crowvus Book Blog

   This week, I'm delighted to be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club to host Ellen Read's fabulous new book  The Feathered Nest  on the #HistFicThursdays blog! But, enough from me... let's meet the book: Murder comes to Norfolk Island, but is the killer after Alexandra Archer’s Tahitian black pearl or a lost illustration of the rare Green Parrot? The Thorntons, along with a small team of people, mount an expedition to Norfolk Island, a small island in the South Pacific, to study the Green Parrot and set up research programmes to help protect it and other endangered birds. As a birthday surprise, Alexandra’s father tells her she is to be the official photographer for the expedition. Her father gives her a black pearl brooch that Alexandra’s great-grandfather had bought off a merchant in Hong Kong in the 1850s. The pearls are Tahitian black pearls. Before they depart Melbourne, they learn that Norfolk Island has had its first murder. It sends ripples of unease th...

   This week, I'm delighted to be hosting  The Virgin of the Wind Rose  on the #HistFicThursdays blog! This is an exciting thriller from award winning author Glen Craney, and I excited to be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club to host him and his book! But, enough from me... let's meet the book: A Templar cryptogram has confounded scholars for centuries. Is it a ticking cipher bomb just hours away from detonating a global war? Rookie State Department lawyer Jaqueline Quartermane was never much good at puzzles. But now, assigned to investigate a ritual murder of an American in Ethiopia, she and a shady stolen-art hunter must solve the world's oldest palindrome—the infamous SATOR Square—to thwart a religious conspiracy that reaches back to the Age of Discovery and an arcane monastic order of Portuguese sea explorers. Separated by half a millennium, two espionage plots dovetail in this breakneck thriller, driven by history's most elusive mystery.... ... the shockin...

 This week, I'm thrilled to be hosting The Last King on the #HistFicThursdays blog! M J Porter not only writes amazing books, but also shares my love of Orkney! It is great to be hosting this book today! But, enough from me... let's meet the book: From author MJ Porter comes a thrilling new hero. They sent three hundred warriors to kill one man. It wasn’t enough. Mercia lies broken but not beaten, her alliance with Wessex in tatters. Coelwulf, a fierce and bloody warrior, hears whispers that Mercia has been betrayed from his home in the west. He fears no man, especially not the Vikings sent to hunt him down. To discover the truth of the rumours he hears, Coelwulf must travel to the heart of Mercia, and what he finds there will determine the fate of Mercia, as well as his own. You can buy The Last King  from:  Amazon UK  -  Amazon US  - Amazon CA  - Amazon AU  - Waterstones  - Audio  - This novel is available on #KindleUnlimited Or read ...

 A couple of weeks ago, I shared my book review for Simon Elliott's book Alexander the Great versus Julius Caesar . Since then, as I mentioned in the review, I have completed the first draft of a short story set in 46BC-45BC which, now needs some serious editing before it can go out there... But it will be appearing later this year! It was about Caesar and he featured as a character, although he's not the main character. So, having spent so much time writing about him and his time period, it's only fair I redress the balance and today look at Alexander the Great... I feel like I know a lot more about him than I did when I started watching this song. He's a character from history who speaks to us all in our youth, because he is the epitome of the youthful adventurer. We all imagine we can do immeasurable things, although hopefully not as brutally as Alexander did them! His story, though, was not one of rags to riches, but riches to glory. He took a great nation across th...

 We're always growing as authors. When I go back and look at my first book, Day's Dying Glory , I can see how my writing has evolved - and certainly my books have grown, by some 10,000 words! This year, my historical fiction journey is taking quite a nerve-racking turn as Autumn will see the publication of my first book for children... This is something which is scary for a couple of reasons. Firstly, most of my books feature the sort of events I wouldn't want children reading! The continued debate about trigger-warnings on books rages on and, while I do not write about these things graphically or gratuitously, those dark events are as much a part of my books as they are of history. You can't shy away from them, and they are what give the characters that push into becoming who their destiny - and the story! - demands. We can't delve into some of these events in a children's book. But neither can we ignore the dark events which happened - eeek! Dilemma! Secondly,...