By Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson, Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland, Lauren Willig, Marci Jefferson, and Heather Webb
Publication Date: March 1, 2016 William Morrow Paperback & eBook; 368 PagesGenre: Historical Fiction/Anthology
Top voices in historical fiction deliver an unforgettable collection of short stories set in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month... November 11, 1918. After four long, dark years of fighting, the Great War ends at last, and the world is forever changed. For soldiers, loved ones, and survivors the years ahead stretch with new promise, even as their hearts are marked by all those who have been lost. As families come back together, lovers reunite, and strangers take solace in each other, everyone has a story to tell. In this moving anthology, nine authors share stories of love, strength, and renewal as hope takes root in a fall of poppies.
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About the Authors
Jessica Brockmole is the author of the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, an epistolary love story spanning an ocean and two wars. Named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2013, Letters From Skye has been published in seventeen countries.Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home and A Memory of Violets. She writes regularly for the national press, magazines, and websites in Ireland and the UK.
Evangeline Holland is the founder and editor of Edwardian Promenade, the number one blog for lovers of World War I, the Gilded Age, and Belle Époque France with nearly forty thousand unique viewers a month. In addition, she blogs at Modern Belles of History. Her fiction includes An Ideal Duchess and its sequel, crafted in the tradition of Edith Warton. Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart, which Publisher’s Weekly called “intoxicating.” Her second novel, The Enchantress of Paris, will release in Spring 2015 from Thomas Dunne Books.
Kate Kerrigan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island trilogy. In addition, she has written for the Irish Tatler, a Dublin-based newspaper, as well as The Irish Mail and an RTE radio show, Sunday Miscellany.
Jennifer Robson is the USA Today and international bestselling author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. She holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jennifer lives in Toronto with her husband and young children.
Heather Webb is an author, freelance editor, and blogger at award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. Heather is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and she may also be found teaching craft-based courses at a local college.
Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and A Hundred Summers. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons. She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. William Morrow will publish her forthcoming hardcover, A Certain Age, in the summer of 2016.
Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best, and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.
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My Thoughts
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month November 1918...signified the end of the war in Europe. A devasting war where so many lives were lost.
Poppies are often used for remembrance, particularly from WWI so the title of this book is particularly poignant.
The Fall of Poppies is a book comprising of nine different authors, coming together to tell the stories of love, hope and starting over.
The Daughter of Belgium by Marci Jefferson, about a young woman whose family is gone, killed in the war, who lives in the hospital, afraid to leave and is tasked with taking care of an enemy soldier when the rest of the patients and nurses move to a new hospital.
The Record Set Right by Lauren Willig tells the story of an elderly woman in 1980 who is asked to visit a lost love from WWI who is dying. The story takes the reader back and forth during these two eras to tell the story of two people separated because of a scandal and to set the story straight.
All for the Love of You by Jennifer Robson. Another story of lost and found love dating between 1918 and 1925. A young woman works with an artist who creates masks for men who have received facial injuries in the war. She meets a man, falls in love but is separated from him when he returns to the US. Her father, in trying to protect her hides letters feeling that this young man was not good enough for his daughter. Will they ever meet again?
After You've Gone by Evangeline Holland. A young woman has lost her husband in the war. Her best friends husband was also killed and could not cope and committed suicide. She is was a dancer but has not done anything since she lost her husband. When fate sets in, she meets a young American and she is enlisted in taking him and his mother on a tour of Paris.
Something Worth Landing For by Jessica Brockmole. A young man meets a woman outside of a medical department in tears. They form a friendship and because of her scandalous 'condition,' they get married. He wants her to have his name and pension in case his plane crashes. He is scheduled to fly a mission. They make a pact that she will write to him but he is not to respond.
Hour of the Bells by Heather Webb. A middle-aged woman who's husband died in The Great War and she gets a notification that her son may also have been killed. Despondent, she vows to get whoever killed her son. She is a German living in France so she must go over the border of Germany to get justice.
An American Airman in Paris by Beatriz Williams. A young pilot who hangs onto a photograph. He survives a mission but is confronted by Germans and almost killed. Saved by a young girl but in a German hospital. To him, his war is over, he heals but stays in Paris.
The Photograph by Kate Kerrigan. Takes place in Dublin 2016, a hundred years after the 1916 uprising in Ireland. An Irish family will find that there are some secrets that need to surface.
Hush by Hazel Gaynor. 1918 and a baby is born lifeless and a young man in the midst of a bloody battle. Can they both survive? Even though the war is over, nothing is normal again.
I really enjoyed this anthology of stories, each told with compassion when stories such as these can be heartbreaking and the characters long for what was lost and shows each author's talent for a great historical fiction story. As they say, "War is Hell".
Blog Tour Schedule
Tuesday, March 1
Review at Let Them Read Books
Thursday, March 3
Review at Just One More Chapter
Saturday, March 5
Review at 100 Pages a Day
Monday, March 7
Review at Bookish
Review at CelticLady's Reviews
Tuesday, March 8
Review at Ageless Pages Reviews
Friday, March 11
Review at Creating Herstory
Giveaway
To win one of three copies of Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War please enter the giveaway via the GLEAM form below.Rules – Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on March 11th. You must be 18 or older to enter. – Giveaway is open to US residents only. – Only one entry per household. – All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion – Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.
Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War
