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It is such an honor to bring you an interview with the talented and delightful Sandra Worth , author of the new (and phenomenal) book Pale Rose of England ! A huge thanks to Sandra for taking time out of her busy schedule to spend some time with us! She has also graciously offered up a copy of Pale Rose of England to one of you lucky readers, so make sure you enter the giveaway at the end of the interview! All of your books are set during the time of the War of the Roses, what is it about this time in history that compels you to write about it? Amy, thank you for having me on Passages to the Past! The Wars of the Roses is rich in the universal themes of love, hate, greed, justice, vengeance, idealism, friendship and heroism, and it impacted our modern age in dramatic ways, both culturally and politically. Human nature good and bad is writ large on the stage that was the Wars of the Roses, making it a very colorful era. To me, it has an Arthurian feel, maybe because Sir Thomas Malory ...

Another Monday, Another Mailbox!! This is a feature where we all share with each other the yummy books that showed up at our doors! WARNING: Mailbox Mondays can lead to extreme envy and GINORMOUS wishlists!! Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page , but for the month of December MM is on tour and hosted by Rose City Reader . Yours truly will be the MM host for April! Hey all! I hope you are all doing fabulously! I only have one addition to my TBR mountain to report, but it's a good one! I won a copy of Stephanie Dray's Lily of the Nile from my girl Liz at Historically Obsessed and I received it this weekend and it was sweetly signed by the author! Thanks Liz and Stephanie, I'm really looking forward to reading it! Lily of the Nile by Stephanie Dray Publication Date: January 4, 2011 SYNOPSIS With her parents dead, the daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony is left atthe mercy of her Roman captors. Heir to one empire and prisoner of another,Pri...

Extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy reveals twists and turns in the fraught lead-up to the publication of US embassy cables Buy WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy here Three men were in the Belgian hotel courtyard cafe, ordering coffee after coffee. They had been arguing for six hours through the summer afternoon, with a break to eat a little pasta, and evening had fallen. Eventually, the tallest of the three picked up a cheap yellow napkin, laid it on the flimsy modern cafe table and started to scribble. Ian Traynor, the Guardian's European editor, recalls: "Julian [Assange] whipped out this mini-laptop, opened it up and did something on his computer. He picked up a napkin and said, 'OK you've got it.' "We said: 'Got what?' "He said: 'You've got the whole file. The password is this napkin.'" Traynor adds: "I was stunned. We were expecting further, very long negotiations and ...

Bloomsbury, 16.99 A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. You don't allow them to have any friends, you stop them from playing sport or watching TV and you waterboard them if they get less than an A* in every subject. Sophia is our first born. At three months old, I left her for days on her own to learn Poincare's conjecture while I rewrote the US constitution, and by the time she was three she could speak seven languages, play Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and had never so much as smiled. She was the ideal Chinese Tiger Mother's daughter. My second child, Lulu, was more of a handful. Even though she, too, was far more talented than the second-rate children of decadent American parents, she tried to resist my will at every turn. At the age of two, she refused to do more than 10 hours of maths homework a night and deliberately played wrong notes in the Mendelssohn Violin ...

Biggest literary event in the Arab literary world pulled as Egypt convulsed by protests Literature has been caught up in the protests that have now entered their seventh day in Egypt. The annual Cairo book fair , due to have been held this week, has been abandoned, with many foreign exhibitors left stranded after failing to secure flights to take them out of the country. The fair the largest and oldest in the Arab world, usually attracting two million visitors and a host of authors was due to be opened on Saturday 28 January by President Hosni Mubarak, who has hitherto raised the curtain each year. But with protesters demonstrating on the streets against his rule, and curfews imposed across the city, the event was summarily abandoned. The guest of honour, China, withdrew its delegation on the eve of the scheduled opening. Salwa Gaspard, director of small independent publisher Saqi Books which has offices in both London and Beirut, said: "There was no official announcement by fa...

Andrea Levy explains to the book club that the motivation driving Small Island was a wish to better understand both her parents' generation her father being among the generation of West Indians who arrived in England on the Empire Windrush and the experience of the white English getting used to their new neighbours. She says that during the research for the book, she was very struck by the differences between the reception met in wartime Britain by black American and Caribbean soldiers: how the former, living in segregated barracks, were met with immediate hostility; while the Caribbeans only began to encounter discrimination in the late 40s as the Windrush generation settled in England. The novelist also talks about Small Island's structure, which moves backwards and forwards in time around the pivot of 1948 (and how only American reviewers were able to get the hang of this). The structure, she explains, was only constructed after she had finished writing the book, weaving t...

Hotly anticipated translation of Japanese sensation will be published in a single, 1,000-page volume Great news for Haruki Murakami fans: the long-awaited English translation of 1Q84, the writer's epic novel in three volumes that has proved a huge hit in his native Japan, will be published in English in October. All three sections are to appear together in a single 1,000-page volume, translated by Harvard professor Jay Rubin. The news came in an exuberant Tweet from Knopf US publicity director Paul Bogaards. "Haruki Murakami's long-awaited magnum opus, 1Q84, out from Knopf 10/25," he told the world. "In one volume. Booyah! Midnight store openings for this one?" Harry Potter-style late-night bookshop openings may be pushing it, but such is the passion of Murakami's loyal readers that publication will certainly be an event. The appearance of the first volume of 1Q84 in Japan in 2008 was met with near-hysteria thanks to the five-year hiatus since the arriv...

Cargo containers being towed up the Manchester Ship Canal past Liverpool pierhead. Photograph: Christopher Thomond "Stowaways" by Lawrence Sail, from Waking Dreams: New and Selected Poems is one of a number of poems concerned in very different ways with seascapes, ships and voyages. "The cunning theatre of the sea," as Sail describes it another poem. "Notes for the Ship's Log," has always been a major fascination. "Protean, it is never the same as it was," he once wrote of the sea, attempting to pin down this fascination: "Look at it, then away and back, and already it has escaped the words you might have formed for it.Much of experience seems to have something of the same slipperiness, while also encouraging the urge to commute between it and meaning." Waking Dreams: New & Selected Poems byLawrence Sail Buy it from the Guardian bookshop Search the Guardian bookshop ...

Here's some advice to reporters that may not work too well in the digital age: "Take well-ground Indian ink as much as suffices and a camel hairbrush proportionate to the intersperse of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible. At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. May be a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah, and let it go and when thou hast done, repent not." The "tutor" was Rudyard Kipling , and the quote is taken from a feature in today's issue of the Indian newspaper, The Pioneer , to mark the 75th anniversary of the great man's death. In his early 20s, Kipling was an assistant editor at The Pioneer, and later worked as a (leisurely) correspondent for the paper. ...

To Serve a King by Donna Russo Morin Publication Date: January 25, 2011 Kensington Publishing 384p SYNOPSIS From her earliest days, Genevieve Gravois has known one fact above all: Francis I, king of France, is her enemy. Raised by her embittered aunt after her parents' deaths, Genevieve has been schooled in things no woman should know: how to decipher codes, how to use a dagger and a bow, and how to kill. For Henry VIII has a destiny in mind for the young girl--as his most powerful and dangerous spy. When the time is ripe, Genevieve enters the magnificent world of the French court. With grace to match her ambition, she becomes maid of honor to Anne de Pisseleau, King Francis's mistress. Yet neither the court--which teems with artistry and enlightenment as well as intrigue--nor Francis himself are at all what Genevieve expected. And with her mission, her life, and the fate of two kingdoms at stake, she will be forced to make deadly decisions about where her heart and...

The Libraries Act of 1850 empowered larger local authorities to add a halfpenny to the rate to run a free public library but not to buy books, or raise the capital to build it. So it was left to philanthropy to fill the gap. It is well known that Andrew Carnegie gave vast wealth to this purpose, as did Henry Tate. Millions will also have had cause to be grateful to John Passmore Edwards , born in 1823 into a working-class Cornish family. Through his own efforts he rose to become a newspaper and magazine proprietor and MP, and was active in many charitable societies. Between 1889 and 1904 he gave about 90% of his considerable wealth to the construction of benevolent institutions, mainly libraries, but also hospitals, art galleries and technical schools throughout Cornwall and the poorer areas of London. He also gave thousands of books to libraries across the country. His goal then was to defeat just those market forces which Philip Pullman fears today ( Market fanatics will kill what m...

And the awesome releases just keep coming!! Take a peek at what you can look forward to in February! <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fpasstothepast-20%2F8003%2Fd803d66f-937b-4477-9b8e-8b062198a924&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> HISTORICAL FICTION Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth (2.1.11) The Tudor Secret (Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles) by C.W. Gortner (2.1.11) The Irish Princess by Karen Harper (2.1.11) Heresy (Paperback) by S.J. Parris (2.1.11) The Creation of Eve (Paperback) by Lynn Cullen (2.1.11) The Postmistress (Paperback) by Sarah Blake (2.1.11) The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney (2.8.11) Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran (2.15.11) The Raven Queen by Jules Watson (2.22.11) HISTORY / NON-FICTION From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847-1929 by Julia ...

The most exciting thing that happened this week is that my husband redeemed his frequent flier miles to buy tickets for us to go to Hawaii this summer. So far we know that we are going to spend a day or two on Oahu, and that we'll spend the rest of our time on one of the other islands. We've never been to Hawaii before, so we need to do a little research to try to figure out which of the other islands is the one we don't want to miss seeing. Any suggestions for which island to travel to? Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my husband and I had originally planned to go to Paris this month, but once again our plans fell through. (We had also planned to go a couple of summers ago.) Both of the trips to Paris would have been business trips for my husband and both fell through for different reasons (the first because of the economy, the second because of scheduling conflicts). But hey, I can't be that disappointed because we're planning our trip to Hawaii now, and how...

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Lew Wallace Published in 1880, it met with phenomenal success. The film did likewise, winning 11 Oscars. It combines events in the life of Jesus with those of Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jew. Ben-Hur is betrayed by his best friend, Messala, and sent to the galleys. During a sea battle, Ben-Hur saves the life of a commander who adopts him and helps him become a champion charioteer. He takes revenge on his old friend but finally learns to forgive. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell Won the Pulitzer in 1937 and the film won 10 Oscars. It is about the American Civil War and Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner. She survives the hardships of war and shows great spirit when the chips are down. The romance between Scarlett and the rakish Rhett Butler is compelling.

An amusing portrait of the baby-boomers is at heart a cautionary tale about the complacency of the hippie generation Stephen is born in LA to a Cuban-Polish immigrant family, a clever boy with ambition and a sense of adventure. His parents are kind, good, poor and, essentially, ignorant. His father's only idea of how his son might help himself is by encouraging him to join the merchant navy. So how does Stephen end up, 40 years later, with a fabulous career as a BBC producer, two (largely) successful children, a fairly solid, long-lived marriage and the most important bit, zeitgeist fans a 3m house in Islington? This is Grant's investigation of what happened to the baby-boomer generation. There are a few Grant hallmarks: the immigrant family, the beautiful woman in a fur coat, the strained parent-child relationships, all reminiscent of The Cast Iron Shore and Booker-shortlisted The Clothes on Their Backs. But in many ways, this novel takes a new, more ambitious direction: set...

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky below. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. All I ask is that you don't post random photos that you find online. The library in my town. I considered myself very fortunate that our small town opened their new library the week that we moved there. The previous library had been in use for almost a hundred years, and was basically a small house with shelves built into the walls all the way around the interior. Now it is the location of the library book sales. I'll have to see if I can remember to bring my camera to the next sale and get some pictures of it. This post 2011 At Home With Books . All Rights Reserved. If youre reading this on a site other than "http://athomewithboo...

We thank Ian McEwan for responding to our letter (Letters, 24 January), but we, the undersigned, must continue to express our profound disagreement with his decision to accept the Jerusalem prize. Courtesy does not oblige us to respect a decision that fails the Palestinian people by rejecting their call for an international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the Israeli state. BDS was launched by over 170 civil society organisations in 2005: after Susan Sontag and Arthur Miller received the prize.In reply to Ian McEwan's claim that literature transcends political considerations, we put three questions to him. First, as the prize is awarded by the Jerusalem municipality, isn't accepting it a fundamentally political action? Second, would he have accepted a prize funded by apartheid South Africa? And finally, isn't it now abundantly clear that the long slow process of "dialogue and engagement" with intransigent Israeli governments has only enabled...

It's a wonderful time for poetry. This week, for the second year running, a poet won the Costa book award, and thousands are crowding into readings. What is going on? In this bleak midwinter, with therecession and bad weather, poetry may be helping us to keep body and soul together. At a time when everything is being cut, closed down, diminished and discontinued, the forecast for poetry is surprisingly fair. This week, Jo Shapcott won the Costa award for her stunning book Of Mutability : a rare thing, an uplifting book about death and mortality "Look down these days to see your feet/ mistrust the pavement and your blood tests/ turn the doctor's expression grave/ Look up to catch eclipses, gold leaf, comets/ angels, chandeliers, out of the corner of your eye / Don't trouble, though, to head anywhere but the sky." It's the second year running that a poetry book has taken the Costa. Last year, it went to Christopher Reid's heartbreaking tribute to his wife,...

Hello all of my fabulous followers! Welcome to the first Follower Appreciation Giveaway !! I have some of the most amazing followers and I wanted to find a way to show you my appreciation and what better way to do than with a free book! For those of you who don't know, Passages to the Past has an Amazon store and whenever a book is purchased through one of the links on PTTP, I get a percentage which I will be using towards giveaways. The first book up for grabs is The Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy ! This was my first Jean Plaidy read and the book where my love of Charles II and his infamous mistresses was born and I think it's one every lover of historical fiction should read! SYNOPSIS From princesses to country girls to actressesthe loves of Charles II come to life. Ten years after Charles I was deposed and executed, his son, Charles II, regains the throne after many years in exile. Charles is determined not only to restore the monarchy but also to revive a society t...