Georgia's Folly

 

 

GEORGIA'S FOLLY

Deborah Chase

 

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GENRE:  split time historical fiction

 

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BLURB:

 

For fans of "Antiques Roadshow" and "American Pickers" - this is the one for you!

 

Beginning at a cluttered flea market and ending at a glittering art auction, Georgia’s Follytells the compelling story that blends past and present and the search for a valuable and illusive antique. Chloe Bishop grew up in foster care. She loves shopping at flea markets, picking up family heirlooms like old pottery or vintage furniture to fill in for the family and home she never had. As Chloe walks through the Brooklyn Flea Market, she stumbles upon the diary of Miss Georgia Potter, a young woman who had lived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania during the Civil War. The yellowed pages reveal the impact of the war on daily life and spotlights the role of women including Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton and Louisa May Alcott. Like Chloe, Georgia Potter was a passionate collector and her diary lists her collection of valuable antiques—including the Holy Grail of 18th century furniture—a Chippendale settee. Well versed in antiques, Chloe is aware that There are only five known examples and a sixth settee would be worth more than $4 million.

 

Chloe immediately contacts Ben Thompson, the man who sold her the diary. Ben is a picker who drives his RV across America, searching for collectibles to sell to dealers. He is estranged from his wealthy, prominent family who cringe at his chosen career. Ben agrees to take her along to search for the valuable and iconic settee. As Ben and Chloe head to Gettysburg, they are unaware that Gregor Petrov, a shady antiques dealer and Harrison Kent, a respected but unscrupulous art expert are trailing them.

 

The search for the settee takes Chloe and Ben on fast paced journey from the Gettysburg battlefields to the 18th century street of artisans in Philadelphia to a historic mansion on the banks of the Hudson River. Traveling together in the small RV, Ben and Chloe draw closer. In the confines of the RV, embroiled in an unimaginable quest, Chloe confides that she is also in search for the father she never knew while Ben struggles to explain his complicated family to a woman who never had one.

 

In a thrilling ending, the rare Chippendale settee is not Chloe’s only valuable discovery.

 

 

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Excerpt:

 

 

The Diary of Miss Georgia Potter

March 4, 1861

 

Today is my birthday and I am now officially an old maid at age twenty-five. Mama was horrified that Uncle Joshua gave me a large, golden eagle that once hung over the fireplace in Lord Dumfries’ home in Bath. According to Uncle, it was a gift from George III in 1776. But I loved the eagle, as I do all of Uncle’s gifts.  Mama rolls her eyes when Uncle brings me a new treasure. She calls it Georgia’s Folly.

 

After dinner I went to the kitchen to thank Annie for the birthday feast. Liam was leaning against the kitchen table.  Pushing back a shock of black hair, he flashed a smile and handed me a small package wrapped in brown paper.  Inside was a heart shaped charm on a silver chain that had belonged to his mother. Liam explained that it was a Celtic knot that symbolized everlasting love. Someday I will be able to wear it but for now it is tucked deep into this diary.

 

This year I share my birthday week with the Inauguration of President Lincoln. Uncle is pleased that Lincoln was elected, but he is still worried about the talk of secession. Most of the customers for Potter carriages are in the South, especially Virginia and Georgia.  The weather in Gettysburg is far too cold and wet to ride in the Potter carriages, but in the South, our Phaeton carriages are famous.

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

I grew up in a family filled with art and antiques.  On the high end, my uncle, William Lincer, lead violist at the New York Philharmonic, was an art lover whose collection was sold at Sotheby’s. On the low end, her father, writer Allen Chase took me to flea markets and estate sales.  He sparked a lifelong fascination with tales of lost treasures that ranged from plundered Egyptian tombs to trainloads of art stolen by the Nazis.  It was this love of history and antiques that inspired my first novel, Georgia’s Folly

 

I was a founding editor of the Berkeley Wellness Newsletter and the author of 12 books including The Medically Based No-Nonsense Beauty Book (Alfred Knopf), Extend Your Life Diet (Pocket Books), Fruit Acids for Fabulous Skin (St Martin’s Press), Every Bride is Beautiful ( Morrow), and with her husband Dr Neil Schachter co-author of Life and Breath  (Doubleday) and  The Good Doctor’s Guide to  Colds and Flu (Harper).  The books have been a selection of the Book of the Month Club and my articles have appeared in Ladies Home Journal, Self, Glamour, Redbook, Family Circle, Parents and Good Housekeeping.

 

I am a graduate of Bronx High School of Science and a winner of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. A graduate of New York University I earned a degree with a duel major in journalism and history.  

 

A native New Yorker, I like to spend my weekends at an upstate home where a big kitchen and an endless supply of estate sales indulge my duel passions for cooking and collecting.

 

Website: Deborahchase.com

Facebook: @Deborahchase

Instagram:@writinglife2

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Georgias-Folly-Deborah-Chase-ebook/dp/B0DGWF6J7G

 

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

 

The author will be awarding a $50 Visa card to a randomly drawn winner.

 

Enter here:

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f5030

Follow the tour: 

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Hidden Treasures

  

 

HIDDEN TREASURES

Kathleen Buckley

 

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GENRE:  Sweet Historical Romance

 

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BLURB:

 

Allan Everard, an earl's illegitimate son, is dismissed from his employment at his father’s death but inherits a former coaching inn. Needing to make a new life in London, he begins by leasing the inn to a charity.

 

Unexpectedly orphaned, Rosabel Stanbury and her younger sister are made wards of a distant, unknown cousin. Fearing his secretive ways and his intentions for them, Rosabel and Oriana flee to London where they are taken in by a women’s charity.

 

Drawn into Rosabel's problems, with his inn under surveillance by criminals, Allan has only a handful of unlikely allies, including an elderly general, a burglar, and an old lady who knows criminal slang. A traditional romance.

 

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Excerpt:

 

Despite his active night, Higgs came in with hot water as Allan opened his eyes.

 

“Eight o’ the clock and a fine summer’s day,” his rascal announced, “if you happen to like the country, which I do. I’d move back to the fields and hedgerows of my youth if it wasn’t so pestilent hard to make a living there. If you’re meaning to stay more than another day, I’ll see about having your shirts and neckcloths washed,” he added inconsequentially. 

 

“I need to speak to one of the Stanburys’ neighbors. With luck, we’ll leave tomorrow. How will you occupy yourself today?” 

 

“I’ll have a quiet talk with Phelps. He spent yesterday listening to the folk around here. Grooms and stable-hands mostly, but a few others as well. I’ll write down what he learned. Don’t forget to lock what you don’t want to lose in your portmanteau. Countryside’s not as wicked as town, but there’s ding-boys everywhere.”

 

“Says the Ding-boy General.” 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Kathleen Buckley writes traditional historical romance (i.e. no explicit sex). There are fewer ballrooms and aristocratic courting rituals in her books and more problems than does-he-love-me/does-he-not. Sometimes there’s humor. Kathleen wanted to write from the time she learned to read and pursued this passion through a Master’s Degree in English, followed by the kind of jobs one might expect: light bookkeeping, security officer, paralegal. She did sell two stories to the late Robert Bloch, author of Psycho. And no, he wasn’t late at the time.

 

After moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, she wrote her first historical romance, striving for Georgette Heyer’s style, followed by nine more.    

 

In Kathleen’s gentle romances, the characters tend to slide into love rather than fall in lust. Their stories are often set against the background of family relationships, crime, and legal issues, probably because of her work in a law firm. 

 

When she’s not writing or reading, she enjoys cooking dishes from eighteenth century cookbooks. Those dishes and more appear in her stories. Udder and root vegetables, anyone? 

 

Kathleen Buckley’s current work in progress is her first historical mystery, tentatively titled A Murder of Convenience. 

 

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/kathleen_buckley

Website: https://18thcenturyromance.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18thcenturyromance/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kathleen-Buckley/author/B072J2GPZ3

 

 

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Topic: Pros and cons of writing in your genre

 

I set out to write historical romance, as Georgette Heyer’s Georgian and Regency novels are my gold standard. However, the romance genre requires that the love interest be the overriding element of the story. To me, that feels a bit confining. My books have always had much more going on (as Georgette Heyer’s also did). This may mean they’re actually historical fiction with a romance subplot. 

Historical fiction’s genre expectations are lengthier than those of romance. They boil down to this: a feeling of authenticity of time, place, the way the characters act, speak, think, and the problems they face. At the same time the characters must be understandable to modern readers. 

The plus side of writing historical romance or historical fiction is that the setting is exotic: another time with a different way of life at the very least, interesting background, and different problems. The genre is also reliably popular.  

For some writers, the necessity of doing research (intensive research in the case of historical fiction) is a drawback. For me it’s a positive: I was the nerdy student who prayed for a juicy term paper assignment. For my stories I’ve read up on legal issues, watched hours of flintlock pistols being fired and have dozens of 18^th century books on my Google Play. These include cookbooks, parliamentary history, an English/French dictionary, a manual used by magistrates, the Gentleman’s Magazine, and books on English dialects, among others. Sometimes I have to buy an old book that’s not available otherwise (like a book on riding sidesaddle or on flintlock firearms). The last two were essential for my ninth book, By Sword and Fan, in which the female character might need to dismount and remount. An unusual pistol also featured in the story.

For me, the drawback comes at the writing of romance in historical fiction. What works in a contemporary romance can be jarringly anachronistic in earlier periods. Ladies in the eighteenth century (my period) usually had far less freedom than they do now, unless they were widows. Even easy companionship in public with a man could be censured. The kind of conversation we would consider normal and necessary for an unmarried man and a woman to get to know each other would paint a female as too free and easy.  As one conduct book for a lady’s instruction pointed out, men would take any lack of reserve as an invitation. Privacy with a man, except one’s husband or a close relative would be rare. 

Love—and sex—were far freer in the lower classes.The girls were less chaperoned and thus less protected both from predatory men and their own inclinations. Among agricultural workers in rural England, both premarital sex and pregnancy carried little stigma, as young people could seldom marry until they had saved enough money to set up their own household. But historical fiction seldom deals with the working classes: their lives were too limited and often too grim to be appealing to modern readers. But working twelve hours or more a day, six days a week, leaves little time for the sort of activities that make an entertaining story, so my novels are set among people who are at least gentlefolk, and occasionally titled.

Sometimes in historical romance novels the characters are assisted in gaining some acquaintance by   having them fall in lust at first sight. I’ve never encountered this phenomenon, myself. Men may first be attracted by a woman’s appearance but lust alone seems unlikely to lead to the required “happily ever after”. My characters generally meet in circumstances appropriate to the period. Their love grows slowly and with decent reserve, and without explicit sex. 

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION 

 

Kathleen Buckley will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

 

Enter here: 

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4922

Follow the tour:

https://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2024/06/nbtm-virtual-tour-hidden-treasures-by.html

The Cat Who Chased Ghosts review

 

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

In a sleepy little town, an ordinary-looking cat hides an extraordinary secret that will transform his owners' lives forever.

When the Thompson family inherits a dilapidated old house, their overprotected son Timmy forms a strong bond with Whiskers—a chronically lazy tabby who's not what he seems.

As Timmy explores the house's mysteries, a chilling discovery puts his courage to the test. With the help of Whiskers and some newfound friends, he must face supernatural forces beyond his imagination and rescue a soul in peril.

The Cat Who Chased Ghosts is a spine-tingling tale about bravery, loyalty, and the magical power of friendship (human and feline) that will thrill readers of all ages, reminding us that sometimes the most extraordinary heroes come in the most unlikely packages.

Read an Excerpt

He stood at the foot of the stairs for a good minute before summoning the courage to climb them. Pausing on the landing, he looked up. The light in the attic had gone off.

But the lightbulb was broken, he remembered. Someone left it on, and now it’s flickering, he told himself.

He knew he could not go to sleep until he saw for himself that he was right, so with a deep breath, he pushed himself to keep climbing. By the time he reached the top, the light was on again.

A cold sweat broke out along his hairline.

He walked inside. The room was large and monstrously cluttered, full of old furniture belonging to Aunt Willie, and scores of boxes the Thompsons had not had time to unpack yet. He glanced around the place, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

He stood still for a bit, listening intently. Finally, he heard something; soft, yet insistent tapping.

Bats, he remembered. But bats don’t tap. Do they?

“Is someone here?” he asked. He meant to sound calm, but his voice trembled.

At that very moment, to his horror, he heard it; a low, drawn-out whisper.

“Welcome.” A faint echo lingered in the air.

“Mom! Dad!” Timmy tried calling; all he could produce was a hoarse murmur.

“Come to me,” the breathy voice sighed, closer to his ear. He spun around, expecting to see someone, but only his own reflection stared back at him from the window. 

Review:  

This is a charming tale about a boy and his cat and a mystery. We start out the story when Timmy and his parents move into an old house in bad need of repairs. The family seems like your typical family. 

 

Timmy takes to the cat right away, but his parents give the feline away. This does not deter Timmy. As the boy goes about things concerning the cat, Whiskers, he runs into unusual occurrences. Timmy has his hands full with what happens next.

 

The Cat Who Chased Ghosts touches upon several themes, and the characters are written in a way to make us connect with them. There is a fair amount of suspense in this story with real danger ahead, and it is an easy and quick read, fun to read.

About the Author: Nic Minnella has worked in journalism for twenty-plus years. She's also a part-time translator and a full-time cat enthusiast. When she's not occupied with any of the above activities, she's often traveling to faraway places or daydreaming about them.

"The Cat Who Chased Ghosts" is her first published work of fiction, a middle grade supernatural mystery tale where a boy and his cat must confront ghosts and spirits to save their loved ones from the clutches of darkness.

Twitter: https://x.com/nicminnella
FREE TO READ ON KINDLE UNLIMITED: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7PS7Y4W

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