SplendeurCaisseBooks

  Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the  New York Times  bestselling author of  Mexican Gothic . “Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales. In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel,  The Vanishing , was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances. As Min...

  A young woman wins the role of a lifetime in a film about a legendary heroine — but the real drama is behind the scenes in this sumptuous historical epic from the author of  Mexican Gothic . 1950s Hollywood: Every actress wants to play Salome, the star-making role in a big-budget movie about the legendary woman whose story has inspired artists since ancient times. So when the film’s mercurial director casts Vera Larios, an unknown Mexican ingenue, in the lead role, she quickly becomes the talk of the town. Vera also becomes an object of envy for Nancy Hartley, a bit player whose career has stalled and who will do anything to win the fame she believes she richly deserves. Two actresses, both determined to make it to the top in Golden Age Hollywood—a city overflowing with gossip, scandal, and intrigue—make for a sizzling combination. But this is the tale of three women, for it is also the story of the princess Salome herself, consumed with desire for the fiery prophet who fore...

 Another review from the First to Read program: A sweeping, breath-taking story of love and betrayal from the Number One  Sunday Times  bestselling author of  The Tea Planter's Wife. Ceylon, 1935. Louisa Reeve, the daughter of a successful British gem trader, and her husband Elliot, a charming, thrill-seeking businessman, seem like the couple who have it all. Except what they long for more than anything: a child. While Louisa struggles with miscarriages, Elliot is increasingly absent, spending much of his time at a nearby cinnamon plantation, overlooking the Indian ocean. After his sudden death, Louisa is left alone to solve the mystery he left behind. Revisiting the plantation at Cinnamon Hills, she finds herself unexpectedly drawn towards the owner Leo, a rugged outdoors man with a chequered past. The plantation casts a spell, but all is not as it seems. And when Elliot's shocking betrayal is revealed, Louisa has only Leo to turn to... My review was short but I sti...

 Another First To Read from the archives. A witty and inherently feminist novel about passion and marriage, based on a true story of an unstoppable woman ahead of her time in Victorian London. In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest of three daughters of a middle-class military family, growing up in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed “the peasant countess” by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Becoming Belle is the story of the four years in between, of Belle’s rapid ascent and the people that tried to tear her down. With only her talent, charm, and determination, Isabel moves to London alone at age nineteen, changes her name to Belle, and takes the city by storm, facing unthinkable hardships as she rises to fame. A true bohemian and the star of a dancing double act she performs with her sister, she reigns over The Empire Theatre and The Corinthian Club, where only select society entertains. It is there she falls passionately in love...

  Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she’ll have to fight to keep herself—and the woman she loves—safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale  The Selkie Wife. When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, already drenched to the bone in the freezing cold and barely able to speak a word of English. Although Jean is the only midwife in the village and for miles around, she’s at a loss as to who this woman is or where she’s from; Jean can only assume she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. And when Tobias does indeed arrive at her cabin in search of his wife, Muirin, Jean’s questions continue to grow. Why has he kept his wife’s pregnancy a secret? And why does Muirin’s open demeanor change ...

  From the author of  Wildwood Whispers  comes a spellbinding novel of magic and self-discovery when a woman escapes her abusive husband and finds shelter in a magical orchard. Virginia, 1959. Raised in a children's home run by religious zealots, Rachel never forgot the wildwood orchard she turned to for refuge as a young girl. When she discovers her reverend husband is more violent than she ever imagined, she flees to protect her unborn child. In a society aiming for the moon, yet still held back by men and women constrained by their fear of change, she discovers a forward-thinking community of wise folk with ancient roots hidden within the greater community of Morgan's Gap. But when Rachel's husband appears as a self-proclaimed prophet with a repurposed circus tent and a fanatical coterie to wage war against the secluded town that's sheltered her, she will have to tap into her true power to protect everyone. For more from Willa Reece, check out  Wildwood Whispers ....

  From the  New York Times  bestselling author of  The Daughter of Doctor Moreau  and  Mexican Gothic  comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers. Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood. Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed. Now the director wants...

  In this twisty new Victorian detective thriller from the author of The Darwin Affair , Inspector Charles Field hunts a serial killer with a sinister signature targeting Florence Nightingale’s nurses in Crimea and women in London. Who is stalking Florence Nightingale and her nurses? Is it the legendary Beast of the Crimean, or someone closer to home? In 1855, Britain and France are fighting to keep the Russians from snatching the Crimean Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, and Nightingale, a wealthy young society woman, has made it her mission to improve the wretched conditions in the British military hospitals in Turkey—despite fierce objections from the male doctors around her. When young women start turning up dead, their mouths sewn shut with embroidered fabric roses, Inspector Charles Field (the real-life inspiration for Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket in Bleak House) is sent from England to find the killer among the doctors, military men, journalists, and others swarming T...

Of Manners and Murder is the first in the delightful new Dear Miss Hermione mystery series from Anastasia Hastings . "Evokes the shocking revelations of Wilkie Collins, the social acuity of Jane Austen and the comic melodrama of Oscar Wilde."― Wall Street Journal 1885: London, England. When Violet's Aunt Adelia decides to abscond with her newest paramour, she leaves behind her role as the most popular Agony Aunt in London, "Miss Hermione," in Violet's hands. And of course, the first letter Violet receives is full, not of prissy pondering, but of portent. Ivy Armstrong is in need of help and fears for her life. But when Violet visits the village where the letters were posted, she finds that Ivy is already dead. She'll quickly discover that when you represent the best-loved Agony Aunt in Britain, both marauding husbands and murder are par for the course. My Review Of Manners and Murder by Anastasia Hastings My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed this, but it...

  It is 1912, and for the last seventy years magic has all but disappeared from the world. Yet magic is all Biddy has ever known. Orphaned in a shipwreck as a baby, Biddy grew up on Hy-Brasil, a legendary island off the coast of Ireland hidden by magic and glimpsed by rare travelers who return with stories of wild black rabbits and a lone magician in a castle. To Biddy, the island is her home, a place of ancient trees and sea-salt air and mysteries, and the magician, Rowan, is her guardian. She loves both, but as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she is stifled by her solitude and frustrated by Rowan’s refusal to let her leave. He himself leaves almost every night, transforming into a raven and flying to the mainland, and never tells her where or why he goes. One night, Rowan fails to come home from his mysterious travels. When Biddy ventures into his nightmares to rescue him, she learns not only where he goes every night, but the terrible things that happened in the last days o...

  USA TODAY bestselling author Eva Leigh continues her Last Chance Scoundrels series with a steamy romance between two opposites--a rogue with a taste for wagers and a bookish wallflower--who marry for convenience... but neither bet on falling in love. Finn Ransome is an expert on Lady Luck, which is why he refuses to take a chance on love. Experience has taught him that he's happier at a gaming table than around people he will, inevitably, disappoint. However, the clock is ticking on his father's matrimonial demands. But the only woman to catch his eye is a bluestocking who would never consider a rogue like him. After a disastrous first Season, Tabitha Seaton decided to focus on books instead of ballrooms. She hopes to join the Sterling Society, a collective of the most brilliant, influential minds in London. Except, they will never admit an unmarried lady. Now Tabitha needs a husband, and a notorious, handsome gambler may be her best bet. Finn and Tabitha are opposites who ha...

  Emmeline and William Pershing have enjoyed a perfectly convenient marriage for eight years. Their relationship is a seamless blend of their talents and goals. They’ve settled into separate, well-ordered lives beneath the same roof, and are content to stay that way—or so Emmeline thinks. And if William has secretly longed for a bit more from the woman he adores, he’s managed to be content with her supreme skills as a hostess and planner, which has helped him advance his career. Then when Emmeline’s grandfather, the reclusive Duke of Welshire, summons them both for his birthday celebration and demands they bring their two little angelic children, William is stunned to discover that his very proper wife invented not one, but two heirs to fulfill the agreement for living at Winnover. But surely if Emmeline and William team up and borrow two cherubs to call their own, what could go wrong? Enter George, age 8, and Rose, 5—the two most unruly orphans in Britain. As the insanity unfolds,...

  As far as William Easton―the Duke of Blackheath―is concerned, love can go to the devil. Why would a man need passion when he has wealth, a stately home, and work to occupy his mind? But no one warned the duke that a fiery and frustratingly strong-willed activist like Lady Beatrice Haven can also be a stunning, dark-haired siren who tempts a man’s mind, body, and soul. Lady Beatrice is determined to never marry. Ever. She would much rather fight for the rights of women and provoke the darkly handsome Duke of Blackheath, even if he does claim to be forward-thinking. After all, dukes―even gorgeous ones―are the enemy. So why does she feel such enjoyment from their heated exchanges? But everything changes when Beatrice finds herself suddenly without fortune, a husband, or even a home. Now her future depends on the very man who sets her blood boiling. Because in order to protect his esteemed rival, the Duke of Blackheath has asked for Beatrice’s hand, inviting his once-enemy into his h...

  From the  New York Times,  bestselling author of  Mexican Gothic  and  Velvet Was the Night  comes a lavish historical drama reimagining of  The Island of Doctor Moreau  set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico. Carlota Moreau: a young woman, growing up in a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of either a genius or a madman. Montgomery Laughton: a melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his scientific experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers. The hybrids: the fruits of the Doctor’s labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities. All of them living in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, th...

  Once a Laird  by  Mary Jo Putney My rating:  4 of 5 stars  ⭐⭐⭐⭐ This was my first book from this author and it will not be my last. I really enjoyed her writing style and this story. FYI this is a slow burn. After years away and many adventures, Kai Ramsay is returning home to Scotland. The last letter he received from home informs him of his grandfather's impending death. Upon his return, he is shocked to see that Signy Matheson has blossomed into quite a beautiful woman. She's been the old laird's right hand. Though they have a complicated past she's promised to help Kai become accustomed to his new role as laird and work together for the people of Thorsay. View all my reviews

  In  GREAT SCOT by Suzanne Enoch , Jane Bansil knows she will never have a fairy-tale life. But even at three-and-thirty and well past marriageable age, though, she has to admit that the architect the MacTaggerts have hired could turn even a confirmed spinster’s head. In  CHRISTMAS AT DEWBERRY HOLLOW by Amelia Grey , Isabelle Reed has no plans to ever fall in love. Certainly not with Gate, a man who doesn’t live in Dewberry Hollow. She will fulfill her duty and help him keep his promise to have his ill grandfather back in London in time for Christmas dinner. The last thing Isabelle wants is for Gate to take her heart with him when he goes. In  MY MISTLETOE BEAU by Anna Bennett , Miss Eva Tiding is determined to cheer her widowed father with the perfect Christmas gift. Even if it means breaking into the home of the rakish earl who swindled Papa out of his pocket watch and pretending to date the earl for the Christmas season. Kissing Under the Mistletoe by Suzanne E...