Scandalous Women

The winner of Leanna Renee Hieber's ETERNA AND OMEGA is Brenda Fletcher Congratulations!

Hello everyone! I know it has been a long time since I have blogged but I have an exciting giveaway that I couldn't wait to share with you. ETERNA AND OMEGA, the 2nd book in Leanna Renee Hieber's exciting new series from TOR. It seemed only fitting since Halloween is just around the corner.  If you love the novels of the Brontes and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, if Northanger Abbey, Frankenstein, and Dracula are your jam, then you will love Leanna Renee Hieber. From the back cover: Leanna Renee Hieber's gaslamp fantasy series continues and the action ramps up in Eterna and Omega. In New York City, fearing the dangers of the Eterna Compound--supposedly the key to immortality--Clara Templeton buries information vital to its creation. The ghost of her clandestine lover is desperate to tell her she is wrong, but though she is a clairvoyant, she cannot hear him. In London, Harold Spire plans to send his team of assassins, magicians, mediums, and other rogue talents to New York City, ...

Leanna Renee Hieber's gaslamp fantasy series continues and the action ramps up in Eterna and Omega. In New York City, fearing the dangers of the Eterna Compound--supposedly the key to immortality--Clara Templeton buries information vital to its creation. The ghost of her clandestine lover is desperate to tell her she is wrong, but though she is a clairvoyant, she cannot hear him. In London, Harold Spire plans to send his team of assassins, magicians, mediums, and other rogue talents to New York City, in an attempt to obtain Eterna for Her Royal Majesty, Queen Victoria. He stays behind to help Scotland Yard track down a network of body snatchers and occultists, but he'll miss his second-in-command, Rose Everhart, whose gentle exterior masks a steel spine. Rose's skepticism about the supernatural has been shattered since she joined Spire's Omega Branch. Meeting Clara is like looking into a strange mirror: both women are orphans, each is concealing a paranormal ability, an...

The next few months mark the 72 nd  anniversary of the liberation of France by Allied troops, which makes it a perfect time to be talking about Lucie Aubrac and other members of the French resistance who fought their Nazi occupiers for years until the Allies arrived.  As one of the founders and leaders of Libération-Sud, Aubrac not only helped to distribute the underground newspaper  Libération  during World War II but also served as a courier, arms carrier, and saboteur. Her time under the Vichy regime was like something from a John Le Carré novel, involving disguises, swapped suitcases, and clues left in crosswords. Aubrac, working under the last name Montet, even managed to fool SS officer Klaus Barbie, infamously known as the “Butcher of Lyon,” to help her husband skirt certain death. British and American propaganda turned her exploits into the stuff of legend, and she was revered in her country for decades, but it all nearly ended in 1983, when she and her husba...

The nineteenth century was a fantastic decade for scandalous women, as more and more strong-minded, early feminists were stepping out of their male counterpart’s shadows to make their own names on the world’s stage. In literature, this decade saw Mary Shelly galvanize readers with her controversial thriller, “Frankenstein,” and the Bronte sisters tear at the heartstrings of many—albeit not under their own names. However, one female writer from the 1800s overstepped so many of her assigned gender roles at the time that publishing under her own name was probably one of the least controversial of her actions. Isabella Bird was one of the most outspoken and daring adventuresses of her time, and although her first book was published anonymously, her age-old classic “A Ladies Life In the Rocky Mountains” proudly bore her birth name in all its feminine glory. Early Outcry Born Isabella Lucy Bird in 1831 to a devout Reverend in a small town in Yorkshire, she was known from an early age as hav...

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome author Mary Sharratt to the blog today to talk about  Aemilia Bassano Lanier,  the heroine of her new novel The Dark Lady's Mask,  Born in 1569, Aemilia Bassano Lanier (also spelled Lanyer) was the highly cultured daughter of an Italian court musician—a man thought to have been a Marrano, a secret Jew living under the guise of a Christian convert. After her father’s death, seven-year-old Aemilia was fostered by Susan Bertie, the Dowager Countess of Kent, who gave her young charge the kind of humanist education generally reserved for boys in that era. Later, after Bertie remarried and moved to the Netherlands, Aemilia became the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth. As Carey’s paramour, Aemilia Bassano enjoyed a few years of glory in the royal court—an idyll that came to an abrupt and inglorious end when she found herself pregnant with Carey’s child. She was then shunted off into an unhappy arranged marriage w...

I know I have been neglecting this blog shamelessly. This summer, I hope to endeavor to do better. In my defense, I have been working on multiple writing projects, several non-fiction proposals that I’m hoping to sell as well as some fiction.  Nothing concrete, meaning nothing has been signed, but it has been occupying a great deal of my time.  I’ve also had a difficult job situation this year, I’ve had to leave a job that I loved, since my new boss decided she needed someone with more experience and fundraising, and my boss at my new temp assignment just quit. So 2016 has been a bitch so far, not to mention losing Prince, David Bowie, Ken Howard and Alan Rickman. I dread picking up the paper to see who else we have lost. In my few hours of down time, I have been reading a great deal of historical fiction lately, and I have two books that I absolutely have to recommend. Rivals of Versailles – Sally Christie Published by:  Atria Books Pub Date:  April 5, 2016 How Acq...