Guide to DNA Testing - Richard Hill ~ Great beginning how to..

Excellent and clearly readable small book which is concise and enjoyable! I will be recommending this to beginners. Would be 5 stars except that AncestryDNA was not tested or really covered and that would have been helpful. 

The Last Runaway - Tracy Chevalier ~ Absorbing!

This book really took hold for me, not sure why but perhaps it was the immigrant experience and the idea of the strangeness of America. I think that Tracy Chevalier portrayed the "otherworldly" sense of coming to a new world in a superb fashion, and was able to slowly allow Honor to "feel" like she belonged at the ending.

The Underground Railroad experience was informational for me and was perhaps an "inside look"? I will try to do some more research on that as well as continue to read Chevalier's work, many of which I had read.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a historical tale

The Claiming by Octavia Randolph ~ On to the Next Episode ~

A great beginning and happy ending should bode well for the sequel. Gotland in the Baltic will begin the next episode and I shall read that one also. I am hoping for Ceridwen's sake that life is a bit easier in the future - is happily ever after too much to ask for? 

Cor Rotto - A Novel of Catherine Carey ~ Very fine first novel~ by Adrienne Dillard

A thoroughly enjoyable book on a very fascinating family line who have always been a bit mysterious in their paternal origins. Were Catherine and Henry Carey offspring of Henry VIII or was that even known at the time has been conjectured for centuries? 

This author and historian has a very good premise and follows that forward in a very engrossing and extremely readable fashion. Perhaps a bit more depth to their characters could have worked but Catherine and Francis were courtiers, after all, and kept their emotions in check.

I read it straight through and will look forward to the next offering by Adrienne Dillard. An excellent first novel, by a fine historian, about this important family whose history helps define the Tudor period.

Murder in the Queen's Wardrobe- Kathy Lynn Emerson ~ Preorder Now!

An Elizabethan spy thriller by a master mystery writer, Kathy Lynn Emerson. Preorder links are up now! A fast paced and complex mystery in multiple locations will hold your attention. If you love Tudor novels and mysteries then this one is for you. Recommended highly!

From the Publisher:
"London, 1582: Mistress Rosamond Jaffrey, a talented and well-educated woman of independent means, is recruited by Queen Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, to be lady-in-waiting to Lady Mary, a cousin of the queen. With her talent in languages and knowledge of ciphers and codes, she will be integral to the spymaster as an intelligence gatherer, being able to get close to Lady Mary just at the time when she is being courted by Russia’s Ivan the Terrible. However, there are some nobles at court who will do anything they can to thwart such an alliance; and Rosamond soon realises the extent of the danger, when a prominent official is murdered and then an attempt is made on both her and Lady Mary’s lives. In her quest to protect her ward – and her estranged husband – Rosamond must put herself in mortal peril." 

The Light in the Labyrinth - Wendy J. Dunn - Refreshing and poignant

 A really great read which did not seem like a young adult novel to me at all, it was full of detail and quite lively. The family of Mary Boleyn has always fascinated me and this one did as well. More books on this subject would be ideal and needed, I will look for Wendy Dunn's other one now.

Enough historians agree that Catherine Carey was in the Tower with Anne Boleyn at this period and surely Anne charged those she loved with allegiance to Elizabeth. The author's notes about her age and other details are relevant also.

This book is recommended for Tudor fans for another aspect of this saga, as well as historical fictions lovers.Very fine!