Do you ever dream of going to Paris? That was my dream from the time I was a small child living in Texas. When some neighbors returned from a trip to Europe and their daughter, who was about my age, talked about what she’d seen, I developed an incurable urge to see the Eiffel Tower. Is it any wonder that I gave Catherine, the heroine of my new release A Borrowed Dream, a similar dream? Admittedly, Catherine doesn’t dream of the Eiffel Tower, because it hadn’t been constructed in 1881, but images of the City of Light fill her dreams. I’ve been fortunate. My dream came true when I was in college majoring in – what else? – French, and then again when my husband and I lived in Germany compliments of the U.S. Army. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to return to Paris several more times and wanted to share ten things I highly recommend you do when you’re in the French capital. Of course you won’t want to miss Paris’s iconic landmark, the Eiffel Tower. Built in 1889, the tower itself hasn’t changed over the years, but the surrounding area has. The peace wall, which includes…

There’s something about the cold and gloom of winter that makes it the perfect time to snuggle up by the fire or the heater with a hot beverage and a novel about “the Dark Ages.” Far enough from the present to be wrapped in myth and mystery, the extent record of events sketchy enough to allow inventive novelists much room to spin stories, the medieval period is full of fascinating, larger-than-life characters. Along with a queen, the A-named heroines of the books we’ll look at today are lesser figures who play their parts on the same grand stage as their more famous contemporaries. We begin with THE CANTERBURY PAPERS by Judith Koll Healey. Our heroine is well-known to followers of the Eleanor of Aquitaine/Henry II saga–Alaïs, sister of the king of France who is sent to England as a child as Eleanor’s ward, intended to become the bride of the Prince of Wales—but becoming instead the mistress of Eleanor’s husband, King Henry. This novel skips over that well-known triangle to pick up Alais’s story years later, after she has returned to the court of France. She receives an unexpected summons from Aquitaine, where the aging former Queen of England has…