Grace's Mosaic Moments


Saturday, August 24, 2024

99¢ Sale on 4 Blair Books

 UPDATE:  Friday, August 30, 2024

I am happy to announce that all vendors serviced by Draft2Digital are now included in the Four-book Sale that has been on Amazon for the past week. Warning: if I read the D2D's message correctly, the price change does not apply to foreign countries. (Hopefully, I can figure that out for the next time around.)

Amusing side note:  I had a TERRIBLE time finding my books on D2D. Their "My Books" list is gorgeously laid out, BUT all books are alphabetized in a system that considers "A" and "The" part of the alphabetization. Really weird. I thought I'd never find Rebel Princess!

Below, my "On Sale" Post from 8/24/24:

I tend to keep my head down and write and write and write. How else would I have produced 50+ books since the mid-90s? Which means I don't remember to do things like put books on sale. So, having just finished The Abandoned Daughter, it  seemed a good time to take a moment to offer some bargains. I've chosen the first books in four different series to offer at 99¢ on Amazon, now through the end of September. I guarantee that the first one, The Sometime Bride, is the best bargain you'll find:  140,000+ words for 99¢!

Regency Warrior Series

The Sometime Bride is the first book in The Regency Warrior series. Except for Jack Harding (introduced in Book 2, Tarleton's Wife), there is minimal character cross-over between books, but all involve very strong heros and heroines, although in the case of The Sometime Bride, it takes our young heroine a while to get there.

 

 A very young bride finds herself married to an enigmatic British spy "for her safety." And is plunged into a seven-year, highly personal view of the Peninsular War—ending, after years of blind devotion, in discovering a betrayal of her trust so immense she can only wonder: Is she the sometime bride of a man who never existed? A discarded mistress? Or a beloved wife whose only rival is her husband's expediency in a time of war?

Author's Note:
In addition to being a saga of young lovers caught up in a war, The Sometime Bride is the history of the Peninsular War, Britain's fight against Napoleon in Portugal and Spain. The story moves from France's invasion of Portugal and British troops being driven into the sea at La Coruña to the return of British troops under General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the fortified lines at Torres Vedras, and the gradual push of French troops across Spain and back to France. Plus the chaotic times in Paris after Napoleon's surrender and the Emperor's triumph as he gathers up his old troops, only to be stopped in one of the most famous and bloody battles in history—Waterloo. 

Regency Gothic Series

Brides of Falconfell was my first venture into writing a Gothic novel set in the Regency period. I discovered I loved this special sub-genre of Romance, and my readers soon made my Gothics my personal most popular genre. Eleven more would follow. (As I checked my Inventory for this blog, I discovered The Abandoned Daughter was Gothic # 12, not 11, as previously stated.) Each of my Gothic novels is a stand-alone book with no cross-over characters from book to book.


Miss Serena Farnsworth, spinster, is a managing female, the crutch for her extended family, for whom she functions as nurse, companion, and household organizer. In short, she lives a life of service, devoid of romance. Until she is invited to attend an invalid at a gloomy Gothic-style estate in Northumberland, where she encounters two suspicious deaths, personal animosity, a needy child, and even needier father. Add witchcraft, shake (sink) holes, Mid-summer Eve revels, and a variety of odd characters, as well as the certainty someone is trying to killer her, and Serena finds herself surrounded by a miasma of evil. The lord of the manor should be of help, but he, alas, is a prime suspect in the murder of the Brides of Falconfell.

Author's Note:
Brides of Falconfell is a tribute to the great era of Gothic novels, written by Victoria Holt, Jane Aiken Hodge, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, and other talented authors of that time. The books—more "Jane Eyre" and "Rebecca" than "Pride and Prejudice"—have several common elements: they are told in first person, as both heroine and reader must be isolated, unable to know what the other characters are thinking. Frequently, the heroines are married and begin to suspect their husbands of murder. There is often a child, usually the hero's from a previous marriage. A large, gloomy mansion is a must, where murder, madness, and evil abound, with the heroine escaping death by the skin of her teeth. I have put all these conventions in Brides of Falconfell and chosen an isolated location at the very "top" of England as a setting. I hope you will enjoy my personal attempt at "Gothic Revival." Blair Bancroft
 

The Matthew Wolfe Series

The three light-hearted novellas in The Matthew Wolfe Series were written in the dark days of the Covid epidemic in an attempt to provide a small distraction from those dire times. Not only do I love Matthew, who is first introduced in The Regency Warrior series, but these books brought back Jack Harding who has appeared in far more books than any of my other characters. Matthew and Jack—"Birds of a feather," as the saying goes.                

 


Matthew Wolfe, born and raised in the squalor of London's inner city, should be a nobody, forever destined to obscurity, or the hangman. But wait . . . he can read and write, is a whiz at math, can speak like a gentleman, even knows more than a bit of French. And when the boy from London ends up on a hops farm in Kent, surrounded by the remnants of the Royal 10th Hussars and a passel of children, what will this fish out of water do? Retired military and their ladies, children, dogs, a regal cat, neighbors in need, and a determined twelve-year-old—all assist Matthew on his journey toward the person he is meant to be.
 

The Blue Moon Rising Series

Blair's alter ego writes SciFi Fantasy. This was supposed to be a one-off, but it took four long books for our rebels to take back their small portion of the galaxy. There is also a spin-off book, The Crucible Kingdom, about one of the nasty Emperor's starships that managed to escape from the final battle, their captain becoming a warrior in the battle against a Curse that plagues a planet with Nature's most violent phenomena—earthquakes, volancoes, tsunamis, etc. (There are cross-over characters from the earlier books, including the Rebel Princess's decidedly odd younger brother.)


 
The Princess Royal of a pacifist planet, whose people have spent a thousand years developing their powers of the mind, stages a personal rebellion, joining the space academy of a planet that has spent a millennium developing its military might. This odd pairing goes well until her senior year when her new "friends" turn on her. Only the swift action of an honorable huntership captain saves her from rape and possible medical experimentation. As a very special prisoner of war, she spends four years in solitary confinement, where she dreams of her rescuer but has no idea she has inadvertently sparked a rebellion against the military planet's vast Empire.

When the princess-in-disguise is finally freed and tossed into the middle of the Rebellion, she discovers there is a sharp contrast between her fantasy version of the man who rescued her and the flesh and blood starship captain leading the rebellion. She must also cope with his followers who fear her psychic powers, a fey younger brother who speaks only through illusions, royal parents with strict belief in non-violence, and a fiancé who happens to be a sorcerer. It would appear the hope of toppling the Empire is a dim light at the end of a very long tunnel.
 

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Please don't forget Blair's latest GothicThe Abandoned Daughter 

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 For a link to Blair's websiteclick here. 

Blair's Facebook Author Page, click here.*
*with new posts 

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Thanks for stopping by,

Grace (Blair Bancroft)    

 

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