The Witch of Blackbird Pond is a Newberry Medal Award winner about a 17th century girl from Barbados, forced to move to Connecticut with her Aunt and Uncle. Though she has two female cousins close to her age, Kit finds the homespun, laborious Puritan life completely frigid compared to her childhood of warm beaches, endless…
Category: Historic Fiction
“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier Book Discussion and Blackberry Victoria Sponge Cupcakes
“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again…” Rebecca is perhaps the greatest and most haunting Gothic novel, the one to which all others written since have been compared. (Image of “Manderley” created with ChatGPT) Set in the English countryside in the 1920’s, in a mansion by the sea, Maxim de Winter lives with…
“Redeeming Love” Book Discussion and Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes with Vanilla Coffee Frosting Recipe
Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers What frontier man, in need of a sturdy, homemaking wife, would ever consider marrying the most expensive prostitute in town? Certainly not a resolute, guileless farmer who’s been saving himself for his future wife. But Michael Hosea, despite living in the hard frontier time of the California gold rush, is…
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Buried deep in the woods in Cornwall, England, is a home that hasn’t been inhabited in 40 years. The house by the lake, Loeanneth, is stumbled upon by a young detective named Sadie. She is on a forced holiday from work for becoming obsessed with a case of an abandoned toddler, which holds more of…
“Little Women” Book Discussion and Easy Orange Cupcakes Recipe
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Little Women begins with four young women trying to make the most of their Christmas in New England while their father is away fighting in the Civil War. Too poor for any presents, the girls use creative, convicting generosity to overcome not only this, but other testing circumstances, aided…
“The Thirteenth Tale” Book Discussion and Orange Ginger Spiced Cupcakes Recipe
A bibliophile named Margaret works in her father’s antique bookshop, also writing small biographies about obscure people long gone. Content in her life, she shockingly receives a letter from one of the most brilliant writers of her time, Miss Vida Winter, notorious for tormenting readers (with her unpublished Thirteenth Tale in a volume of only…
“The Distant Hours” Book Discussion and Mini Pear Pound Cakes
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton From the first pages of The Distant Hours, imaginations are captured, like Edie’s, by the dark tale of the Mud Man, a haunting fictional book within this one: “Can you hear him? The trees can. They are the first to hear him coming…It is moonless when the Mud Man comes.”…
“The Swan Thieves” Book Discussion and Strawberry Pie Bites Recipe
“The Swan Thieves” by Elizabeth Kostova Robert Oliver, a divorced, middle aged painter who tries to stab a painting of “Leda and the Swan” at the National Gallery of Art. Andrew Marlow, his new psychiatrist, who can learn nothing of Robert’s past from the silent man himself, leaving the doctor to question Robert’s ex-wife Kate,…