Wish List Wednesday...

I had intended to make Wish List Wednesday a weekly meme, but I generally buy books almost as soon as I decide I want to read them...even if I don't read them for ages after I receive them...so books I add to my wish list one week are probably on my shelves or on order the next :-)   I did, however, add a couple of books to my wish list in the last week and, surprisingly, have yet to purchase them.   What does this mean?  It means I once again have a couple of books to post about in my Wish List Wednesday meme!   So, without further ado, here are the books I added to my wish list this week:

The Devil's Consort by Anne O'Brien  (I believe this one will be released in North America as Queen Defiant later this year)

Synopsis from Amazon.co.uk:

ENGLAND'S MOST RUTHLESS QUEEN. Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, is a determined woman who plots and schemes an astonishing path between two equally powerful men in twelfth century Europe, a woman who can manoeuvre and manipulate to safeguard her own lands as effectively as any power-grasping lord. Eleanor is single-minded in her struggle to keep her inheritance intact, leading her to reject one husband and take another who will fulfil her desires. Eleanor intends to reign as Queen and is prepared to bring scandal down upon herself in pursuit of her ultimate prize. Hers is a story of power, political intrigue, passion and love. 

 
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Before Versailles by Karleen Koen

Synopsis from Amazon.com:

Louis XIV is one of the best-known monarchs ever to grace the French throne. But what was he like as a young man—the man before Versailles?

After the death of his prime minister, Cardinal Mazarin, twenty-two-year-old Louis steps into governing France. He’s still a young man, but one who, as king, willfully takes everything he can get—including his brother’s wife. As the love affair between Louis and Princess Henriette burns, it sets the kingdom on the road toward unmistakable scandal and conflict with the Vatican. Every woman wants him. He must face what he is willing to sacrifice for love.

But there are other problems lurking outside the chateau of Fontainebleau: a boy in an iron mask has been seen in the woods, and the king’s finance minister, Nicolas Fouquet, has proven to be more powerful than Louis ever thought—a man who could make a great ally or become a dangerous foe . . .

Meticulously researched and vividly brought to life by the gorgeous prose of Karleen Koen, Before Versailles dares to explore the forces that shaped an iconic king and determined the fate of an empire. 

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Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers

Synopsis from Chapters.indigo.ca:


Laure Beausejour has grown up in a dormitory in Paris surrounded by prostitutes, the insane, and other forgotten women. She dreams with her best friend, Madeleine, of using her needlework skills to become a seamstress and one day marry a nobleman. But in 1669, Laure is sent across the Atlantic to New France with Madeleine as filles du roi. The girls know little of the place they are being sent to, except for stories of ferocious winters and Indians who eat the hearts of French priests. To be banished to Canada is a punishment worse than death.

Bride of New France explores the challenges Laure faces coming into womanhood in a brutal time and place. From the moment she arrives in Ville-Marie (Montreal) she is expected to marry and produce children with a brutish French soldier who himself can barely survive the harsh conditions of his forest cabin. But through her clandestine relationship with Deskaheh, an allied Iroquois, Laure finds a sense of the possibilities in this New World.

What happens to a woman who attempts to make her own life choices in such authoritative times?