Welcoming Amy Maroney and her book - Sea of Shadows - to my blog

Today I'm welcoming Amy Maroney and her book - Sea of Shadows (Sea and Stone Chronicles book 2) - to my blog as part of the blog tour hosted by The Coffee Pot Book Club (founded by Mary Anne Yarde)

I am delighted to share an excerpt with you all, but first I will introduce the book.

Sea of Shadows

1459. A gifted woman artist. A ruthless Scottish privateer. And an audacious plan that throws them together—with dangerous consequences. 

No one on the Greek island of Rhodes suspects Anica is responsible for her Venetian father’s exquisite portraits, least of all her wealthy fiancé. But her father’s vision is failing, and with every passing day it’s more difficult to conceal the truth.

When their secret is discovered by a powerful knight of the Order of St. John, Anica must act quickly to salvage her father’s honor and her own future. Desperate, she enlists the help of a fierce Scottish privateer named Drummond. Together, they craft a daring plan to restore her father’s sight.

There’s only one problem—she never imagined falling in love with her accomplice.

Before their plan can unfold, a shocking scandal involving the knights puts Anica’s entire family at risk. Her only hope is to turn to Drummond once again, defying her parents, her betrothed, even the Grand Master of the Knights himself. But can she survive the consequences?

With this captivating tale of passion, courage, and loyalty, Amy Maroney brings a lost, dazzling world to vivid life.

Sea of Shadows is Book 2 in a series of stand-alone historical novels packed with
adventure and romance.

Publication Date: 12th April 2022

Publisher: Artelan Press

Page Length: 396 Pages

Genre: Historical suspense/romance

You can purchase a copy of the book via -

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09T3M2HM3

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09T3M2HM3

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09T3M2HM3

Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Sea-Shadows-Stone-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B09T3M2HM3/

Now for the excerpt -

Summer, 1459

Rhodes Town

A man appeared at Émile de Chambonac’s elbow, dressed in a long tunic of burnt-orange silk. Drummond recognized him as the agent who had taken the gold from him at the harbor. The man smiled, revealing small, widely spaced teeth.

“Our supper awaits,” he said smoothly. “Lord de Milly has promised me the Scotsman’s ear, and I’m eager to take my place at his side.”

Drummond studied him. “And you are . . . ?”

“Guillaume Lopic, at your service. Servant of the Order.”

Servant? The man was dressed like a noble. Gold rings adorned nearly every finger on his hands. His short brown beard was painstakingly oiled.

“I’m surprised we haven’t already met,” Drummond said. “I’d never clapped eyes on you before that day at the harbor.”

“I’ve been living in Genoa these past few years, representing the Order and protecting its interests with our allies. Please, Master Fordun, follow me. The grand master desires us both to sit at the high table with him.”

The young knight made to follow them, but Monsieur Lopic put up a hand. “Émile, I believe you’ll find a place on a bench at that table over there, with the other novice knights.”

The man frowned, his lower lip thrust out in a display of petulance that nearly forced a laugh from Drummond, and slunk away.

Drummond took his seat in a heavy oak chair at the head table. A servant poured a long stream of wine into his cup. He began to guzzle it, then stopped himself.

Steady, man. You’ve got to keep a few wits about you tonight.

Before him lay a knife, a spoon, and a two-pronged silver instrument with a long mother-of-pearl handle he recognized as a fork, an item common on tables in Alexandria and Damascus but something he rarely saw anywhere else. The knights’ vow of poverty—it, too, was merely a guideline, Sir Peter always said with a wink.

The musicians strolled into the center of the room, playing their courtly tunes. Shoveling in a spoonful of roasted peacock mixed with saffron-scented rice, Drummond relaxed a little. He might as well enjoy the feast itself.

“So, Master Drummond,” Guillaume Lopic said. “The Mamluk peace holds, thanks to you. A fragile peace indeed, all too easily frayed.”

“I just do my job and follow orders. I don’t know much about the Mamluks or peace accords.”

This wasn’t entirely true. Drummond did know that the Mamluks were descended from elite Turkish slaves who had been taken from their families and raised to be ruthless warriors. They’d turned their fate around when they overthrew the Egyptian Sultanate, making them the rulers of Egypt to this day. What he had little knowledge of was the patchwork of diplomatic arrangements between the Mamluks and various other powers in this part of the world, including the Order. And quite honestly, he didn’t care to learn all the details.

“I find it confusing myself,” Lopic said, spearing a morsel of peacock with his fork. “No sooner is a truce arranged than it falls apart again.”

He was clearly no stranger to the utensil in his hand. Drummond, for his part, had no intention of handling his own spindly little fork, especially not when he was sitting at the high table during a lavish feast. Why invite embarrassment to an already charged moment?

“As long as we rule the seas, the Mamluks will continue to negotiate with us,” his companion went on. “So a man like yourself—well, your service to the knights is equal in value to my own, though our work is quite different.”

“What is it you do, then?” Drummond asked, eyeing him sideways.

“I began as a notary, and my skill with languages launched me to the highest ranks of the Order’s servants. I help smooth over diplomatic tangles for the knights, usually by wielding a quill and an inkpot, unlike you with your swords and crossbows.”

“Ah.” Drummond helped himself to a pile of grilled octopus from a platter offered by a servant. He’d been slow to warm up to this popular treat when he first arrived in Rhodes, but now he eagerly consumed it every time he had the chance.

“Of course, as a Frenchman, my loyalties are twofold: to the Order and to my kingdom.”

“Naturally.” Drummond reached for a piece of flatbread glistening with olive oil, wondering how many slices he could consume without looking like a complete glutton. He had not eaten this well in months.

Lopic put down his cup. “Tonight, I have a delicate matter to address, something that encompasses both loyalties at once.”

Drummond swallowed an enormous mouthful of bread and stifled a belch. “Is that so?”

“Yes. I’ve been instructed to find a suitable protector for a newcomer to the Order, someone whose life is very precious indeed. Someone who needs a bit of extra guidance in the art of war.”

A sinking feeling struck Drummond in the gut. “Who do you speak of?”

Lopic took up his cup again and gestured to one of the lower tables. “Émile de Chambonac. His father is Lord de Milly’s cousin, and a generous benefactor to the Order.”

“Has he seen any action at all?” Drummond asked bluntly.

Lopic smiled. “Only at the hands of his sword masters. Of course, he’s got enthusiasm and the courage of youth. But he needs seasoning. Lord de Milly will send him out on a mission or two, to please him and his father, but only under the strictest surveillance of a trusted man. You would be the ideal candidate for such a role. Despite the risks, the great danger of the seas, you and your men return alive from every mission, against all odds. There’s no one better suited to take De Chambonac under his wing.”

A slow burn of uneasiness crept up Drummond’s throat. He watched the young knight regale his seat mates with some story, then sulk peevishly when their attention was diverted elsewhere. He was barely more than a child. A spoiled, daft child. One who’d made sport of killing a lone fisherman at sea. And Drummond was supposed to invite him onto his vessel? Be a mother hen to a strutting little cockerel?

He turned and looked Lopic full in the face. “I’m guessing I don’t have the option to refuse,” he said. “But know this. When I’m on the seas, it’s as an agent of the Order. If a knight joins my crew and puts all of us in danger, he will be breaking the one vow that has any teeth in this organization—the vow of obedience. If that boy—forgive me, man—does not follow my commands at sea, I’ll have no choice but to return him to Rhodes. Have I made myself clear?”

Lopic nodded, his shrewd brown eyes never leaving Drummond’s. “Perfectly.”

Drummond raised his cup and drained it dry.

Amy Maroney

Amy Maroney studied English Literature at Boston University and worked for many years as a writer and editor of nonfiction. She lives in Oregon, U.S.A. with her family. When she’s not diving down research rabbit holes, she enjoys hiking, dancing, traveling, and reading. Amy is the author of The Miramonde Series, an award-winning historical fiction trilogy about a Renaissance-era female artist and the modern-day scholar on her trail. Her new historical suspense/romance series, Sea and Stone Chronicles, is set in medieval Rhodes and Cyprus.

You can connect with Amy Maroney via these platforms -

Website: 

https://www.amymaroney.com/

Twitter: 

twitter.com/wilaroney

Facebook: 

www.facebook.com/amymaroneyauthor

Instagram: 

www.instagram.com/amymaroneywrites/

Pinterest: 

pinterest.com/amyloveshistory/

BookBub:

www.bookbub.com/profile/amy-maroney

Amazon Author Page: 

author.to/AmyMaroneyAmazonPage

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15831603.Amy_Maroney

You can learn more about the book and the author by visiting the other blogs on the tour. 

https://maryanneyarde.blogspot.com/2022/03/blog-tour-sea-of-shadows-sea-and-stone.html

That's it for now.

Till the next time.

Take care Zoe.

Welcoming Deborah Swift and her book - The Poison Keeper - to my blog

Today I'm welcoming Deborah Swift and her book - The Poison Keeper - to my blog as part of the blog tour hosted by The Coffee Pot Book Club (founded by Mary Anne Yarde)

So today I am sharing an excerpt with you all, but first I'll introduce the book.

The Poison Keeper

Naples 1633

Aqua Tofana – One drop to heal. Three drops to kill.

Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell Giulia the hidden keys to her success. When Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade.

Giulia must run for her life, and escapes to Naples, under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, to the home of her Aunt Isabetta, a famous courtesan. But when Giulia hears that her mother has been executed, and the cruel manner of her death, she swears she will wreak revenge on the Duke de Verdi.

The trouble is, Naples is in the grip of Domenico, the Duke’s brother, who controls the city with the ‘Camorra’, the mafia. Worse, her Aunt Isabetta, under Domenico’s thrall, insists that she should be consort to him – the brother of the man she has vowed to kill.

Based on the legendary life of Giulia Tofana, this is a story of hidden family secrets, and how even the darkest desires can be vanquished by courage and love.

‘Her characters so real they linger in the mind long after the book is back on the shelf’ Historical Novel Society.

Publication Date: 18^th May 2021

Publisher: Quire Books

Page Length: 394 Pages

Genre: Historical Fiction

You can purchase a copy of the book via -

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0928WPHMH

AmazonUS: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0928WPHMH

AmazonCA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0928WPHMH

AmazonAU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0928WPHMH

This book is also available on Kindle Unlimited.

Now for the excerpt -

Chapter 5

Duke de Verdi’s palazzo, Palermo

Antonio, the Duke de Verdi, levered himself up from the pillows. His arms were as fragile as straw and the push as feeble. He hated this, scrabbling for purchase on a pile of bolsters like an old man. He had been the strongest of all the men he knew, even the mercenaries, and this unlooked-for infirmity filled him with pent-up rage. The fact his body was too frail to vent it exhausted him.

He was not too weak to give orders though. His men had caught up with those witches, Theofania d’Adamo and Francesca La Sarda, as they headed for the port, and they were now incarcerated in the city gaol. There was a daughter too, who’d been a part of this vile travesty, but she had slipped their net. Not for long though.

‘Lucio!’ he yelled. His voice was cracked and hoarse, not the commanding voice he once had. She had brought him to this. That whimpering dishcloth of a wife. ‘Lucio!’

The manservant came running from his position behind the door.

Antonio dragged himself upright against the bedhead to catch his breath, though he felt sweat trickle in a trail from his hairline.

‘Have you found men to be tasters?’

‘Yes, Your Excellency. The famine drives them to desperation. A man and a boy are in the kitchens.’

‘Good. Make sure the boy tastes first. The poison will show more easily on a small body.’

An inclination of the head.

‘And bring my hag of a wife here. I will speak with her again.’

‘She’s out, Your Excellency—’

‘Out?’ The word would barely come. ‘You disobey my orders? I forbade them to let her go out. She only lives at all because of my favour.’

‘She’s making penance at church. Bruno and Alessandro are guarding her. You were sleeping. And they saw no harm in her confessing before God.’

‘No harm? You would give the witch the comfort of a stay in heaven? Fetch her back.’

‘They swore they wouldn’t be more than—’

‘Enough. Don’t try my patience.’ He had to try harder from this position to make his authority felt. It was impossible to feel assertive in a nightshirt. Before this cursed calamity had befallen him, Lucio would never have dared answer back. Antonio raised his voice. ‘Bring her now,’ he insisted, ‘not in three hours’ time.’

Lucio bowed, looking aggrieved, and went out as if it was a chore he could do without. Antonio slumped back, breathless from exertion, before making a renewed effort. He could do nothing lying here like an invalid. He must get out of bed. He willed himself to get stronger. The effects of the poison were abating, hour by hour, he told himself. They had to be.

With effort, he pulled back the weight of the damask coverlet and stretched one leg out of the bed. He stared at it. He’d only been ill six weeks, and yet surely this was someone else’s limb – thin and white as raw pastry, blue veins crawling up the front of the bone. He eased himself to the edge of the bed and rested his weight gingerly on one bony bare foot. It held. A small triumph. Pressing his lips together in concentration, he dragged out the other foot and placed it on the cold marble.

He was weak, but not beaten. When Valentina had confessed, he sent the physicians away. Useless bunch of leeches, they’d sucked his purse dry, and never once suggested it could be poison. Mind you, he didn’t want them seeing his lack of control over his wife, it would be the talk of Palermo. So now, five days later, after fasting, and eating only food brought to him direct from the market and not from his own kitchen, he was improving.

But he must decide what to do with Valentina. It would do his reputation no good to have been brought so low by that worm of a woman. His housekeeper had been paid to leave him and keep silent, but in his position, he could not dispose of Valentina so easily, not without causing a scandal, and she knew it. Unlike his brother, Domenico, who had rid himself of one wife and had now found himself another.

Nauseous, he staggered to the basin, spat and then washed himself. In the stucco-framed glass, he saw his beard needed trimming and his skin was as grey as eel jelly. The sight of his own face, once strong-jawed but now jowly with loose skin, disgusted him. It fired his anger more. He wanted the old duke back. He struggled to the closet and dressed himself in a black leather doublet and matching breeches, though they hung loose over his wasted muscles. He could not drag on his high boots, but using a shoehorn, he prised on a pair of heeled shoes with red rosettes.

He was panting and rimed with sweat by the time he sank into the chair by the window, but he gripped the arms to heave himself more upright, braced his shoulders and took on a haughty expression.

Lucio returned shortly afterwards, but he stopped short when he saw him upright in the chair.

‘I am stronger than I look, Lucio,’ Antonio said. ‘The will is stronger than the flesh, is that not so? What’s more, I remember all those who slighted me when I was ill. Those who couldn’t wait for me to die. Were you one of them, eh?’ He fixed him with a cold gaze.

‘No, Your Excellency. Of course not.’ Lucio’s face flamed red. ‘Your wife waits below; shall I send her up?’

‘Not yet. Bring me some fortifying wine.’

Lucio went back downstairs, and after a while he appeared, bringing the tray with a decanter and a glass containing a red wine, dark as garnets.

‘Has it been tested? The boy?’

‘A nod.’

‘Has she tried it?’ he asked. His faithless wife, Valentina. The thought of her made him want to retch.

‘Yes.’

‘The same glass?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you drink,’ he said, gesturing to Lucio to try it. Lucio wrinkled his nose, but then obliged before wiping the rim with a napkin and passing it to him.

‘Like communion wine,’ he said, giving a coarse chuckle, the first in weeks. ‘Now, fetch my wife up.’ He was wary of anything that passed his lips now, but he needed the strength. He downed the sweet cloying liquid and its heat rushed into his throat. He could always hold his liquor before, but now, since sickening, he had become overly attuned to the changes in his humours that such spirits brought. His head swam, but he felt something of his old vigour returning.

The door opened and his two bodyguards, Bruno and Alessandro, big-handed men, their faces scarred by fighting, parted to let Valentina come through.

Deborah Swift

Deborah Swift lives in the north of England and is a USA Today bestselling author who has written fourteen historical novels to date. Her first novel, The Lady’s Slipper, set in 17th Century England, was shortlisted for the Impress Prize, and her WW2 novel Past Encounters was a BookViral Millennium Award winner.

Deborah enjoys writing about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, and most of her novels have been published in reading group editions. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a mentor with The History Quill.

You can connect with Deborah Swift via these platforms -

Website: www.deborahswift.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/swiftstory

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordeborahswift/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deborahswiftauthor

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/deborahswift1/

Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/deborah-swift

Amazon Author Page: http://author.to/DeborahSwift

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3297217.Deborah_Swift

You can also learn more about the book and the author by visiting the other blogs on this tour.

That's it for now.

Till the next time.

Take care Zoe.