Today for #HistFicThursdays, I am delighted to once again be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club , this time to share an excerpt from SP Somtow 's fantastic new book Nero and Sporus ! First of all, let's meet the book... Finally available in one volume! The decadence of Imperial Rome comes to life in S.P. Somtow's Literary Titan Award-winning novel about one of ancient history's wildest characters. The historian Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero emasculated and married his slave Sporus, the spitting image of murdered Empress Poppaea. But history has more tidbits about Sporus, who went from "puer delicatus" to Empress to one Emperor and concubine to another, and ended up being sentenced to play the Earth-Goddess in the arena. Nero and Sporus is available on #KindleUnlimited via this link . And here's an excerpt to whet your appetite: I suppose we were anxious to see who the surprise competitor would be, but no one was as surprise...
This week for #HistFicThursdays, I'm delighted to once again be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club for author Ally Stirling 's blog tour! Today, I'm sharing an excerpt from her fabulous new book, The Sight of Heather ! First of all, let's meet the book... For centuries, the fae folk and spae women of Scotland were feared ā and persecuted. Life in the 1800s countryside, with its unforgiving climate, was both magnificent and harsh ā testing cultures, beliefs and the loyalties of crofters. The first in this series, The Sight of Heather , begins a journey of allegiance, sacrifice, and fortitude in a land of bold, resilient women. Jessieās ideal life spirals when she learns she is a first daughter in a biological line of āspaesā endowed with unique gifts of spiritual sight and healing, aided by powerful ancestral stones. Backed by a vindictive priest intent on charging Jessie with murder and witchcraft, the new owner of the Cruachan Manor plots to rou...