Teaser Tuesday/First Chapter First Paragraph

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Agincourt Bride by Joanna Hickson tells the story of Catherine of Valois, a Princess of France who eventually married Henry V of England.  Catherine was as much a pawn as a princess, to be used to further the cause of France.  One of the queen's lovers, the powerful Duke of Burgundy, was busy solidifying his position by marrying off the princes and princesses to relatives of his.  But his designs on Catherine were of a more sinister nature.

I invite you to return to the back porch tomorrow for my review of this book.

There was no other interaction between them, for Catherine's way of preserving her sanity was to withhold all communication ... Somehow while the devil was with her, she managed to keep control but, afterwards, anguish flowed from her like wine from a split barrel.

~~~oOo~~~

Every Tuesday, Bibliophile by the Sea hosts the First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where readers share the first paragraph or (a few) of a book s/he is reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us?

In Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy:  Four Women Undercover in the Civil War, Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies.

I'll be reviewing this book a week from Wednesday, on October 10, 2014.

In the town of Martinsburg (VA) on the lower tip of the (Shenandoah) Valley, a seventeen-year-old rebel named Belle Boyd sat by the windows of her wood-frame home, waiting for the war to come to her.  It was July 4 and the war was still new, only two and a half months old, but Belle - known by one young rival as "the fastest girl in Virginia or anywhere else for that matter" - had long been accustomed to things operating on her schedule, and at her whim.

~~~oOo~~~

These books both tell stories about actual historical events, but are eminently readable.