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Julia Justiss | History ReFreshed: The Gift of Self – Extraordinary Women

December 18, 2019

Christmas—the time for exchanging gifts with those we love.  But sometimes, the greatest gift we can give is to ourselves, sorting through the clutter of everyday life and conventional expectations to discover who we really are—and having the courage to pursue that.  In this month’s selections, we look at four women who manage just that.

We begin chronologically with ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS by Jennifer Chiaverini.  Ada Byron Lovelace was the famed Romantic poet’s only legitimate child, who grew up estranged from the father her bitter mother thought deranged.  Because of her mother’s fears that she might inherit her father’s “insanity,” Ada was from childhood kept away from tales of fantasy and make-believe and led to pursue mathematical and scientific studies, subjects in which she excelled.  Though she debuts and makes the expected society marriage, she never gives up her intellectual pursuits, maintaining contacts with a number of leading scientists and philosophers. Through one of her former tutors, she meets inventor Charles Babbage and becomes fascinated by his “Difference Engine,” one of the earliest versions of a computer.  She will eventually write for Burbage’s machine an algorithm that some consider the first true computer program.  Before her tragic early death, she was the also first to predict that analytical machines, with their ability to analyze patterns, would be capable of many applications beyond simply performing mathematical calculations.  Chiavarini presents us with a woman as unique as the calculating machine she explored.

How far would you go to reclaim the life that should be yours?  Isabella Waverly must answer that question in Rhys Bowen’s ABOVE THE BAY OF ANGELS.  When Isabella stops to help a lady dying after an accident on a London Street, the woman gives her a letter—that contains an offer of employment in the Buckingham Palace kitchens.  Fate, it seems, has just granted this well-born girl who had been reduced to becoming a lowly maid an opportunity to rise—she need only present herself as “Helen Barton.”  In her new life, she achieves great success, her culinary creations so delighting Queen Victoria that she’s invited to accompany the royal retinue on a European trip.  But all she has accomplished is threatened by the prospect of blackmail and then murder, when a guest dies after eating a meal she prepared, with poison suspected.  With the inquest to follow bringing the possibility of being unmasked, forfeiting her position—and even her life, Isabella will have to uncover the culprit to prove her own innocence.  Full of period details about Queen Victoria and mouth-watering descriptions of culinary creations, Bowen’s novel is a tale of persistence, grit—and luscious detail.

Our next extraordinary woman walked upon an even grander stage in THE ROMANOV EMPRESS by C.W. Gortner.  Like her elder sister Alix, Danish princess Minnie knows her duty is to make a royal marriage.  While Alix weds the eldest son of Queen Victoria, Minnie—now known as Maria—is sent to Russia to marry Alexander, Romanov heir to the throne, later becoming his Empress.  Despite the tsar’s efforts to block them, Europe’s nineteenth-century winds of revolution blow through Russia, too.  When her husband’s death brings their son Nicholas to the throne, Maria tries to guide him to initiate reforms that will bring the country she now loves out of feudalism and into the modern world—and perhaps save the empire. From opulent palaces to World War I battlefields, from the entrenched blindness of aristocracy to the single-minded fervor of the Bolsheviks, Gortner’s novel paints a vivid portrait of a fascinating era—and an unforgettable empress.

In Belle Époque Vienna, our final extraordinary lady takes over the direction of her own life as she assumes the management of an elegant hotel across the street from the Vienna Opera.  In Rodica Doehnert’s HOTEL SACHER: A NOVEL, young widow Anna Sacher is determined to run her late husband’s enterprise, despite her father-in-law’s urging that she remain in a woman’s proper place and sell the property. Through turbulent times replete with mystery and dangerous intrigue, she guides the hotel and satisfies its clientele of royalty, aristocrats, opera and theater stars, business tycoons, and the maids, mistresses, and valets who serve them.  Spanning decades, with a large cast of interconnected characters, this epic presents the richness and complexity of late nineteenth-early twentieth-century Vienna as it enters the modern age—and the woman determined to master it.

Ready to delve into the lives of some amazing women?  Gift yourself with some Christmas reading time and begin!

BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE: 

ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS by Jennifer Chiaverini

Enchantress of Numbers

A Novel of Ada Lovelace

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer
Chiaverini illuminates the life of Ada Byron King, Countess
of Lovelace—Lord Byron’s daughter and the world’s first
computer programmer.

The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant,
revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was
destined for fame long before her birth. But her
mathematician mother, estranged from Ada’s infamous and
destructively passionate father, is determined to save her
only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy
tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada’s mother
provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in
mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of
imagination—or worse yet, passion or poetry—is promptly
extinguished. Or so her mother believes.

When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly
eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the
intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life.
Little does she realize how her exciting new friendship with
Charles Babbage—the brilliant, charming, and occasionally
curmudgeonly inventor of an extraordinary machine, the
Difference Engine—will define her destiny.

Enchantress of Numbers unveils the passions, dreams,
and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largely unheralded
pioneer in computing—a young woman who stepped out of her
father’s shadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the
new technology that would shape the future.

Historical [Dutton, On Sale: November 27, 2018, Trade Size / e-Book (reprint), ISBN: 9781101985212 / eISBN: 9781101985229]

***

ABOVE THE BAY OF ANGELS by Rhys Bowen

Above the Bay of Angels

A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria’s royal kitchen, setting off a suspenseful, historical mystery by the New York Times bestselling author of The Tuscan Child and The Victory Garden.

Isabella Waverly only means to comfort the woman felled on a London street. In her final dying moments, she thrusts a letter into Bella’s hand. It’s an offer of employment in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace, and everything the budding young chef desperately wants: an escape from the constrictions of her life as a lowly servant. In the stranger’s stead, Bella can spread her wings.

Arriving as Helen Barton from Yorkshire, she pursues her passion for creating culinary delights, served to the delighted Queen Victoria herself. Best of all, she’s been chosen to accompany the queen to Nice. What fortune! Until the threat of blackmail shadows Bella to the Riviera, and a member of the queen’s retinue falls ill and dies.

Having prepared the royal guest’s last meal, Bella is suspected of the poisonous crime. An investigation is sure to follow. Her charade will be over. And her new life will come crashing down—if it doesn’t send her to the gallows.

Historical | Mystery Historical [Lake Union Publishing, On Sale: February 12, 2019, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781542008259 / eISBN: 9781542008259]

***

ENCHANTRESS OF NUMBERS by Jennifer Chiaverini

Enchantress of Numbers

A Novel of Ada Lovelace

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer
Chiaverini illuminates the life of Ada Byron King, Countess
of Lovelace—Lord Byron’s daughter and the world’s first
computer programmer.

The only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the most brilliant,
revered, and scandalous of the Romantic poets, Ada was
destined for fame long before her birth. But her
mathematician mother, estranged from Ada’s infamous and
destructively passionate father, is determined to save her
only child from her perilous Byron heritage. Banishing fairy
tales and make-believe from the nursery, Ada’s mother
provides her daughter with a rigorous education grounded in
mathematics and science. Any troubling spark of
imagination—or worse yet, passion or poetry—is promptly
extinguished. Or so her mother believes.

When Ada is introduced into London society as a highly
eligible young heiress, she at last discovers the
intellectual and social circles she has craved all her life.
Little does she realize how her exciting new friendship with
Charles Babbage—the brilliant, charming, and occasionally
curmudgeonly inventor of an extraordinary machine, the
Difference Engine—will define her destiny.

Enchantress of Numbers unveils the passions, dreams,
and insatiable thirst for knowledge of a largely unheralded
pioneer in computing—a young woman who stepped out of her
father’s shadow to achieve her own laurels and champion the
new technology that would shape the future.

Historical [Dutton, On Sale: November 27, 2018, Trade Size / e-Book (reprint), ISBN: 9781101985212 / eISBN: 9781101985229]

***

THE ROMANOV EMPRESS by C.W. Gortner

The Romanov Empress

For readers of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir comes a dramatic novel of the beloved Empress Maria, the Danish princess who became the mother of the last Russian tsar.

“This epic tale is captivating and beautifully told.”—Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

Barely nineteen, Minnie knows that her station in life as a Danish princess is to leave her family and enter into a royal marriage—as her older sister Alix has done, moving to  England to wed Queen Victoria’s eldest son. The winds of fortune bring Minnie to Russia, where she marries the Romanov heir, Alexander, and once he ascends the throne, becomes empress. When resistance to his reign strikes at the heart of her family and the tsar sets out to crush all who oppose him, Minnie—now called Maria—must tread a perilous path of compromise in a country she has come to love.

Her husband’s death leaves their son Nicholas as the inexperienced ruler of a deeply divided and crumbling empire. Determined to guide him to reforms that will bring Russia into the modern age, Maria faces implacable opposition from Nicholas’s strong-willed wife, Alexandra, whose fervor has led her into a disturbing relationship with a mystic named Rasputin. As the unstoppable wave of revolution rises anew to engulf Russia, Maria will face her most dangerous challenge and her greatest heartache.

From the opulent palaces of St. Petersburg and the intrigue-laced salons of the aristocracy to the World War I battlefields and the bloodied countryside occupied by the Bolsheviks, C. W. Gortner sweeps us into the anarchic fall of an empire and the complex, bold heart of the woman who tried to save it.

Historical [Ballantine Books, On Sale: July 2, 2019, Trade Size, ISBN: 9780425286180 / ]

***

HOTEL SACHER by Rodica Doehnert

Translated by Alison Layland

Hotel Sacher

One woman takes hold of her legacy in an epic tale of Viennese romance, deception, and danger.

Vienna, 1892. Against all odds, at the height of Belle Époque splendor, Anna Sacher has taken possession of her late husband’s hotel, across the street from the famous opera house. At a time when controlling such a business was an opportunity afforded only to men, Anna is as vigilant as she is relentless. Now, under her ownership, the Hotel Sacher thrives amid the tumult of a changing continent, even as intrigue follows in the shadows.

Through its opulent halls stride visitors from all walks of life, including some of the most glamorous figures of Viennese society—opera singers, princes, princesses—and the maids and manservants who wait on them.

Some guests will find romance. Some will unearth secrets. And some will discover much more than they expected…

Historical | Fiction [Amazon Crossing, On Sale: December 12, 2019, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781503904033 / eISBN: 9781503904033]

Buy HOTEL SACHER: Amazon.com | Kindle
| BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Ripped Bodice | Love’s Sweet Arrow | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR

***

ABOUT JULIA’S LATEST BOOK:

THE AWAKENING OF MISS HENLEY by Julia Justiss

The Cinderella Spinsters

The Awakening of Miss Henley

After five seasons…

She was still on the shelf!

Part of The Cinderella Spinsters. Miss Emma Henley knows she’s neither pretty nor rich enough to land a husband. Instead she’s thrown her passion into good causes. But this season she’s tempted by a flirtation with Lord Theo. The dashing rake is just as determined to stay unwed as she is. It’s scandalous…but if she’s never to marry, perhaps he can show her the pleasures of the marriage bed!

Romance Historical [Harlequin Historical Romance, On Sale: September 17, 2019, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781335635419 / eISBN: 9781488047565]

Character growth makes this sensuous and witty romance a balm for the soul

About Julia Justiss

Julia Justiss

Real, intense, passionate historical romance

After twelve years as a vagabond Navy wife, an adventure that took her from Virginia Beach, VA, to Monterrey, CA, to Tunis, Tunisia to Oslo, Norway and back, Julia Justiss followed her husband to his family’s East Texas homeland. On a hill above a pond with a view of pasture land, they built an English Georgian-style home. Sitting at her desk there, if she ignores the summer heat, she can almost imagine herself in Jane Austen’s Regency England.

In between teaching high school French and making jaunts to visit her three children (a Seabee in Gulfport, MS, a clothing buyer in Houston and a mechanical engineer in Austin, TX) she pursues her first love—writing historical fiction.

Regency Silk & Scandal | Hadley’s Hellions | Ransleigh Rogues | Whiskey River Christmas | Sisters of Scandal | Wellingfords | Cinderella Spinsters

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