Ok, it’s a big one this month. 16 books! One of them I received from Harper Collins and another I actually bought in May but as it was the only book I bought in May I decided to haul it now. Everything else I ordered from thebookshop.ie second-hand online store. 10 books for me and 4 books for himself.

A Tapestry of Treason by Anne O’Brien

Her actions could make history – but at what price? 

1399: Constance of York, Lady Despenser, proves herself more than a mere observer in the devious intrigues of her magnificently dysfunctional family, The House of York.

Surrounded by power-hungry men, including her aggressively self-centred husband Thomas and ruthless siblings Edward and Richard, Constance places herself at the heart of two treasonous plots against King Henry IV.  Will it be possible for this Plantagenet family to safeguard its own political power by restoring either King Richard II to the throne, or the precarious Mortimer claimant?

Although the execution of these conspiracies will place them all in jeopardy, Constance is not deterred, even when the cost of her ambition threatens to overwhelm her.  Even when it endangers her new-found happiness.

With treason, tragedy, heartbreak and betrayal, this is the story of a woman ahead of her time, fighting for herself and what she believes to be right in a world of men.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

The story of the charming, volatile and ambitious Hardy Cates, who is determined to carry out his private revenge against the Travis family. Haven is the rebellious Travis daughter who struggles against her overpowering attraction to the most dangerous man in town.

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Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town is set during the time of social unrest prior to the first Reform Bill of 1832. It is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lygate and includes a host of other paradigm characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Henry James described Middlemarch as a ‘treasure-house of detail’ while Virginia Woolf famously endorsed George Eliot’s masterpiece as ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’.

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The Duchess by Amanda Foreman

Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth duke of Devonshire, one of England’s richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time. But Georgiana’s public success concealed an unhappy marriage, a gambling addiction, drinking, drug-taking, and rampant love affairs with the leading politicians of the day. With penetrating insight, Amanda Foreman reveals a fascinating woman whose struggle against her own weaknesses, whose great beauty and flamboyance, and whose determination to play a part in the affairs of the world make her a vibrant, astonishingly contemporary figure.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

First published in 1813, “Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners – one of the most popular novels of all time – tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bennet’s five unmarried daughters after the rich and eligible Mr Bingley and his status-conscious friend, Mr Darcy, have moved into their neighbourhood. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins the novel, that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

Six people – five women and a man – meet once a month in California’s Central Valley to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy, but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable – under the guiding eye of Jane Austen a couple of them even fall in love.

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…

Working as a lady’s companion, the heroine of Rebecca learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a handsome widower whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory of his dead wife Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers…

Not since Jane Eyre has a heroine faced such difficulty with the Other Woman. An international bestseller that has never gone out of print, Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are alike in appearance, different in character and in love with the same woman. In the midst of the French Revolution, Darnay, who has fled to London to escape the cruelty of the French nobility, must return to Paris to rescue his servant from death. But he endangers his own life and is captured. Carton may be able to help, but will his resemblance be enough to save Darnay’s life? With an enticing introduction by bestselling author, Roddy Doyle.

Lover Awakened by J.R. Ward

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there’s a deadly war raging between vampires and their slayers. And there exists a secret band of brothers like no other – six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Of these, Zsadist is the most terrifying member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

A former blood slave, the vampire Zsadist still bears the scars from a past filled with suffering and humiliation. Renowned for his unquenchable fury and sinister deeds, he is a savage feared by humans and vampires alike. Anger is his only companion, and terror is his only passion—until he rescues a beautiful aristocrat from the evil Lessening Society.

Bella is instantly entranced by the seething power Zsadist possesses. But even as their desire for one another begins to overtake them both, Zsadist’s thirst for vengeance against Bella’s tormentors drives him to the brink of madness. Now, Bella must help her lover overcome the wounds of his tortured past, and find a future with her…

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Lovers by Padraig Standun

Tom Connor arrives home from Dublin he has been lobbying the government to provide work for the islanders he represents to be told by his housekeeper, Marion Warde, that she is pregnant with his child. This would be a blow for any man but it is especially disastrous because Tom is the local parish priest. Because he is a man of strong conscience and no believer in clerical celibacy he determines to tell his people the truth. The resolution of his dilemma makes for dramatic and heartbreaking reading.Lovers is the author’s own translation of Suil le Breith, the classic Irish-language bestseller first published in 1983. Bob Quinn’s award-winning film, Budawanny, was based on this novel. Padraig Standun was born in 1946 and ordained to the priesthood in 1971. He hopes to continue with his twin vocations of priest and writer. “Gaeltacht’s answer to The Thorn Birds. ” Sunday Tribune

Moll Flanders by Daniel Dafoe

The story of a woman born and bred in the murky world of seventeenth-century London. Daniel Defoe created a female character-narrator who recounts, from a woman’s point of view, her life and adventures, portraying critically the society in which she lived.

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The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

As Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin prepare to take over as acting managers of the Opera House, they discover their predecessors have bequeathed them the ‘Opera Ghost’. A separate memorandum book has been set aside for his various whims, including extravagant financial needs. Heedless of numerous warnings to comply with these strange demands the managers shrug it all of as a practical joke taken too far. Then a sequence of eerie coincidences and tragic events follow, culminating in the sudden disappearance of the beautiful Prima Donna Christine Daae in the middle of a performance.

Tortured by pangs of unrequited love, the mysterious figure living beneath the Opera House has been awaiting his chance to strike- and once he does, he is deadly…

Synopsis and book cover from Goodreads. Photos from my Instagram @elainehowlin_