Last night, Alexandre Trudeau was in town to promote his new book Barbarian Lost. The event took place at Library and Archives Canada during the Ottawa International Writers Festival. The author first read an excerpt and then was interviewed by Adrian Harewood. Alexandre Trudeau has always been fascinated by China and attracted to its people, history and culture. It all started when his father, late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, came back from a…
Tag: history
My Sister’s Mother by Donna Urbikas
The following is a guest post by Donna Urbikas, author of My Sister’s Mother: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin’s Siberia. A couple of years ago I took myself on a cross-country tour of writers’ conferences where I could pitch my newly finished manuscript, My Sister’s Mother: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Stalin’s Siberia. Reception was great except that I am not famous, so who would care? Fortunately, the…
The Best Book I (Almost) Never Wrote
The following is a guest post by Jackie Minniti, author of Jacqueline. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com. I’m a firm believer that nothing important happens by chance. This belief has been validated many times as I’ve traveled through the sixty-seven years of my life, but never more than a recent experience that shed a new light on…
Spirit of Lost Angels by Liza Perrat
Victoire Charpentier is a young woman living in Lucie-sur-Vionne, France, at the end of the 18th century. When her father dies in a coach accident and her mother is drowned for witchcraft, she has no choice but to go to Paris to work as a scullery maid for a noble family. Overwhelmed by the big city and abused by the Marquis who employs her, life doesn’t get any easier for…
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
Lilliet Berne is a famous opera singer in 1882 Paris when an author approaches her to ask her to star in an opera he has just finished writing. When she reads it, she realizes that the story relates her own secret past. As she tries to discover the person who betrayed her confidence, she remembers her humble beginnings as an orphan from Ohio, her travels in Europe with a circus and her…
Giveaway! The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Win a hardcover copy of The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier! Please leave a comment below, and we’ll draw a name at random (Open to legal residents of Canada and the US, 18 years or older. Contest ends 15 February 2016 at 11:59 pm EST). From the book jacket: Ohio 1850. For a modest English Quaker stranded far from home, life is a trial. Untethered from the moment she leaves England,…
The Witches by Stacy Schiff
In 1692, 14 women, 5 men and 2 dogs were executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. It started in January of that year when two girls experienced strange symptoms, twitching and contorting with pain. In the course of 9 months, dozens of people were affected by this strange epidemic, and hundreds were accused of witchcraft. Daughters pointed fingers at mothers, neighbors implicated each other. A minister was accused of being…
What Does a Ghost Hunter’s Guide Look Like, Anyway?
The following is a guest post by Daniel Diehl, co-author of Apparition Atlas: The Ghost Hunter’s Travel Guide to Haunted America with Mark Donnelly. If you would like to write a guest post on my blog, please send me an e-mail at contact@cecilesune.com. It’s a little difficult to explain to our readers exactly what we mean when we say that our latest non-fiction book, Apparition Atlas is a Ghost Hunter’s…
A Twist of Fortune by Mike Martin
At the beginning of A Twist of Fortune, Sergeant Winston Windflower watches in dismay as his girlfriend, Sheila, gets arrested during an illegal protest at the local fish plant. Then a snowstorm hits Grand Bank, Newfoundland, and a pharmacist dies in a car accident on the highway. What seems to be a straightforward investigation turns out to be a lot more when a body is discovered in the trunk of the…
Wolfsangel by Liza Perrat
The novel starts in 1943, when the German army is occupying France. In Lucie-sur-Vionne, a small village near Lyon, the enemy has requisitioned everything that can be of use or that can make a profit. Because her father has been sent to a work camp in Germany, Céleste Roussel wants to be more involved in the Resistance, especially as her sister, her brother and his best friend are active members….