Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Wish List Wednesday

I've added a couple of really great books to my wish list this week, one fiction and one non-fiction:

The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley (synopsis from chapters.indigo.ca):

When Eva's film star sister Catrina dies, she leaves California and returns to Trelowarth, Cornwall, where they spent their childhood summers, to scatter Catrina''s ashes and thus return her to the place where she belongs. But in doing so Eva must confront ghosts from her own past, as well as those from a time long before her own. For the house where she so often stayed as a child is home not only to her old friends the Hallets, but also to the people who had lived there in the eighteenth century. Eva finds herself able to see and talk to these people, and she falls for Daniel Butler, a man who lived and died long before she herself was born.  Eva begins to question her place in the present, and in laying her sister to rest, comes to realise that she too must decide where she really belongs, choosing between the life she knows and the past she feels so drawn towards.

Release date: 15 April 2011 in Canada and 11 May 2011 in the US and UK

Susanna Kearsley is one of my favourite authors, and I can't wait for the release of this one!

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Henry II by D.L. Warren (Synopsis from chapters.indigo.ca):

Henry II was an enigma to contemporaries, and has excited widely divergent judgments ever since. Dramatic incidents of his reign, such as his quarrel with Archbishop Becket and his troubled relations with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his sons, have attracted the attention of historical novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers, but with no unanimity of interpretation. That he was a great king there can be no doubt. Yet his motives and intentions are not easy to divine, and it is Professor Warren''s contention that concentration on the great crises of the reign can lead to distortion. This book is therefore a comprehensive reappraisal of the reign based, with rare understanding, on contemporary sources; it provides a coherent and persuasive revaluation of the man and the king, and is, in itself an eloquent and impressive achievement.

I've heard great things about this account of Henry II, a monarch who I've always been quite fascinated with - even more so since finishing Sharon Kay Penman's novel Devil's Brood.   I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this one seems worth checking out.  
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What did you add to your wish list this week?