Tag Archives: Cover Attraction

Library Loot / Cover Attraction

September 16, 2009 By in Library Talk Tags: , 5 Comments

I have just the one piece of Library Loot this week, and it was definitely a Cover Attraction. I was on my way out of the library when I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and I just had to turn back.

Here it is:

The Best of Men

The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia

“It is 1642, and Laurence Beaumont has just returned to England after six long years fighting – and avoiding fighting – in the European Wars. Having fled his homeland to escape the responsibilities of his noble birthright, he has been a lowly infantryman, a spy, and a cardsharp in a Dutch brothel. He has seen the worst inhumanities visited on men, women and children by enemy and neighbour alike, and he no longer has faith in God, in causes, or much in humankind itself. Yet as the clashes between King Charles I and his mutinous Parliament come to a crisis and England is thrown into civil war, Beaumont is drawn back into the world of warfare and intrigue when he discovers coded letters outlining a plot to assassinate the king. Soon the conspirators – one of whom is among the most powerful men in the kingdom – are in hot pursuit, and he must find proof of their identities before they overtake him. Pressed into service by the Secretary of State’s ruthless spymaster, Beaumont finds himself threatened on all sides, facing the possibility of imprisonment, torture or worse if he makes a single wrong step. The ravishing Isabella Savage, a practised seductress, is interested in helping, but may only lead him deeper into the conspiracies within the king’s camp. And all the while, Beaumont is haunted by a prophecy and by the memory of a love betrayed.”

Doesn’t that look wonderful? It’s a debut novel ten years in the making!

Do visit Marg, who will corral your Libray Loot.

And Marcia, who brings together wonderful Cover Attractions.

Library Loot / Cover Attraction

August 12, 2009 By in Library Talk Tags: , , 10 Comments

I have two pieces of Library Loot this week and both definitely qualify as Cover Attractions. I wasn’t seeking them out but I spotted them with covers facing out from the new book shelf and I was drawn in.

Here they are:

The Alchemy of Murder

The Alchemy of Murder by Carol McLeary

“Nellie Bly – reporter, feminist and amateur detective – is in Paris for the World’s Fair in 1889 and she is on the trail of an enigmatic killer. The city is a dangerous place: an epidemic of Black Fever rages, anarchists plot to overthrow the government and a murderer preys on the prostitutes who haunt the streets of Montmartre. But it is also a city of culture, a magnet for artists and men of science and letters. Can the combined genius of Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne and Louis Pasteur help Nellie prove a match for Jack the Ripper?”

A perfectly balanced cover. Striking enough to draw me in but with enough detail and subtlety to keep me looking. And isn’t it nice to see the heroine of a historical novel without her head or other parts of the body cut off?!

It looks like an entertaining mystery. I didn’t really want another big book. I was just going to note the details to look for it again, but I read the first few pages and I was hooked. So it had to come home.

Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales: a Retelling by Peter Ackroyd

“Famous for its ingenuity and wit, The Canterbury Tales is a major part of England’s literary heritage. From the exuberant Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend to the Miller’s worldly, ribald farce, these tales can be taken as a mirror of fourteenth century London and medieval society. Incorporating every style of Medieval narrative – bawdy anecdote, allegorical fable and courtly romance – the tales encompass the blend of universal human themes and individual personal detail that have fascinated readers for over 600 years. Here they are retold in full by Peter Ackroyd.”

The wonderful sky blue background made this book stand out. And then the figures processing along the bottom of the cover drew me in.

In many ways I feel I should read the Canterbury Tales in their original verse form, but I’ve looked at them and it just seems like too much hard work. So I thought I’d see how I get on with a modern translation and then hopefully go back to the original one day with an idea of what’s going on. We’ll see!

Have you seen a lovely cover this week? Then do share your Cover Attraction here.

And have you found any great books in the library? Share your Library Loot here.

Library Loot / Cover Attraction

May 27, 2009 By in Library Talk Tags: , 7 Comments

Just one library book this week, but it’s gem. It’s also very beautiful and so it is doing double duty as both Library Loot and a Cover Attraction.

Here it is:

The Spy Game

The Spy Game by Georgina Harding

‘If you were a sleeper, how long do you think it would take before you forgot who you really were? If you were living undercover for years and years. Which person would be you?’ On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna’s mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna’s cheek, a rumble of exhaust and a blurred wave through an icy windscreen, and her mother is gone. Looking back, Anna will wish that she could have paid more attention to the facts of that day. The adult world shrouds the loss in silence, tidies the issue of death away along with the things that her mother left behind. And her memories will drift and settle like the fog that covers the car. That same morning a spy case breaks in the news – the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the Cold War, and of the Second World War which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults about them, Anna’s brother Peter begins to construct a theory that their mother, a refugee from eastern Germany, was a spy working undercover and might even still be alive. As life returns to normal, Anna struggles to sort between fact and fantasy. Did her mother have a secret life? And how do you know who a person was once she is dead?

Have you seen a lovely cover this week? Then do share your Cover Attraction here.

And have you found any great books in the library? Share your Library Loot here.

Cover Attraction

March 25, 2009 By in This & That Tags: 3 Comments

This is hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page each Wednesday.

She writes:

“I love beautiful, and interesting, cover art so every Wednesday I post my ‘Cover Attraction’ for the week along with a synopsis of the book. Everyone is welcome to stop by and, if they’d like, post a link to their favorite weekly book cover.”

Here is the cover that I was really taken by this week:

decca1

Isn’t it striking?

“In a profile of J.K. Rowling, The Daily Telegraph (UK), said, “Her favorite drink is gin and tonic, her least favorite food, trip. Her heroine is Jessica Mitford.”

“Decca” Mitford lived a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy—one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters—she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill’s nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic). She was a celebrated wit, a charmer, and throughout her life a prolific and passionate writer of letters—now gathered here.

Decca’s correspondence crackles with irreverent humor and mischief, and with acute insight into human behavior (and misbehavior) that attests to her generous experience of the worlds of politics, the arts, journalism, publishing, and high and low society. Here is correspondence with everyone from Katharine Graham and George Jackson, Betty Friedan, Miss Manners, Julie Andrews, Maya Angelou, Harry Truman, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Decca’s sisters the Duchess of Devonshire and the novelist Nancy Mitford, her parents, her husbands, her children, and her grandchildren.”

A wonderful find in a charity shop!

Cover Attraction

March 11, 2009 By in This & That Tags: 2 Comments

This is a New Event hosted by Marcia of The Printed Page each Wednesday.

She writes:

“I love beautiful, and interesting, cover art so every Wednesday I post my ‘Cover Attraction’ for the week along with a synopsis of the book. Everyone is welcome to stop by and, if they’d like, post a link to their favorite weekly book cover.”

What a lovely idea! Here is the cover that I was really taken by this week:

the-paris-enigma

The Paris Enigma by Pablo de Santis.

Introducing…

the twelve detectives. the greatest sleuths in the world gathered together for the first time at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris.

See..

the wonderful new work of engineering genius Gustave Eiffel!

Marvel…

at Buffalo Bill’s world-famous Wild West show!

Witness…

the savage tribes of france’s colonies gathered here for the first time!

But beware…

a killer is at large who will test the genius of the Twelve to their limits. Secret societies, strange puzzles and seemingly impossible crimes await within these pages.

The cover reeled me in and then I was hooked!