What to Read? … What to Read?

Thank you Amazon for the picture

“It wasn’t chance. There wasn’t any part of it that happened

just by chance.

I learnt this later; though the realisation, when it came, was

hard for me to grasp because I’d always had a firm belief in

self-determination. My life so far had seemed to bear this out

– I’d chosen certain paths and they had led to certain ends, all

good, and any minor bumps that I had met along the way I

could accept as not bad luck, but simply products of my own

imperfect judgement. If I’d had to choose a creed, it would

have been the poet William Henley’s bravely ringing lines: I

am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

A new book! Have I ever told you I love new books? Well O.K. I love all books. Susanna Kearsley’s newest book The Winter Sea is to be released on May 31, 2008 and it looks to be a promising new read.

This latest offering from Susanna Kearsley is a uniquely plotted tale of love and intrigue that spans history/time. Her dual story line reminds one of a “Barbara Erskine” novel, but Kearsley makes the plot all her own.

History has all but forgotten the spring of 1708, when an invasion fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown. Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors, and starts to write. But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory…making her the only living person who can know the truth of what did happen all those years ago - a tale of love and loyalty and ultimate betrayal.

Historical author Carrie Mclelland travels to Scotland to visit her agent only to be lured by the solitary beauty of Slains Castle. When she finds her muse has taken on a new persona in the shape of a young women from her familial past, she finds a new direction for her work-in-progress in Scotland not France. As the story Carrie had intended to write unfolds in this new way she can’t explain the hold the history of the area and the people has on her. What’s even weirder she quickly learns (after the fact of writing it) that what she writes from her imagination has strong elements of the actual facts that are disclosed by those around her. Fearing she might be insane, she wonders if maybe this is genetic memory shared from her ancestor Sophia Paterson, the protagonist narrator of her book.

When she meets the Keith brothers she finds that maybe what is happening in the present is somehow linked with her ancestor of the past and until the final pages of her story are written she won’t know her own future?

I know what I’m reading over the weekend. Do you?

Happy Reading

Sarah