The Sunday Salon~ Events and Links! Mark your Calendars!

The Sunday Salon is a virtual reading room.. click the pic to find links to all the participating 'Sunday Saloners' and see what they are reading and talking about this week!

The Brothers of Gwynedd: The Legend of the First True Prince of Wales coming May 1st 2010

Sourcebooks is sponsoring a blog chat party aka Summer Reading Group.. for the first time EVER and I am so excited to be a part of it along with my fellow Round Table member Amy. This first reading group will begin with The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet: Comprising of Sunrise in the West, The Dragon at Noonday, The Hounds of Sunset, Afterglow and Nightfall by Edith Pargeter. The actual original book is 822 pages long, so the 4 sections of the book will be discussed in the Summer Reading Group at four separate dates, spread a month apart. The schedule so far is as follows:

Story One: Sunrise in the West—hosted by Amy of Passages of the Past
Blog Chat Night: Monday, May 24 7pm EST

Story Two: The Dragon at Noonday—hosted by Jennifer of The Literate Housewife
Blog Chat Night: Monday, June 28 7pm EST

Story Three: The Hounds of Sunset—hosted by Marie of The Burton Review Blog Chat Night: Monday, July 26 7pm EST

Story Four: Afterglow and Nightfall—hosted by Sumana of I Read…
Blog Chat Night: Monday, August 30 7pm EST

I would love for you to join in the discussion! Sourcebooks is republishing this book from 1990, which you can purchase when it's reissued in May here, or you can get the original work in used condition for pretty cheap, check it out here.
Also, Amazon has secondary sellers who selling it. Check that here:
The Synopsis from goodreads for the original is:

 "The story of Llewelyn, first true Prince of Wales, is the history of medieval Wales in dramatic and epic form. Llewelyn's burning vision is of one Wales, united against the threat of the English. But before he can achieve his dream, he must first tackle enemies nearer home. All three of his brothers hamper his efforts to create an independent state. The best-loved of the three, David, brought up throughout his childhood at the English court, restless, charming, torn between two loyalties, is fated to be his brother's undoing. Despite the support of his beloved wife Eleanor, Llewelyn finds himself trapped in a situation where the only solution is his own downfall and a tragic death..."

Time warp from Medieval Wales on over to Jane Austen's England!
 Visit Austenprose during the week of March 15-March 21 for their Fourth Jane Austen Novel Event. RSVP there by March 14:  "Included in the event will be a group read of Sanditon, discussion, guest blogs on the history of the Regency-era seaside resorts, bathing rituals and fashions, and great giveaways."

There is also some more information as far as where to find Sandition and what the reading schedule is at Austenprose, here. I am joining in, I hope to see you there! The book edition I own is (shown) Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, the Watsons, Sanditon: Lady Susan ; The Watsons ; Sanditon and Sanditon is about 60 pages long, so it won't be too tough to fit it into those busy reading schedules like mine.

Our HFBRT February event has wrapped up, which spotlighted The Secret of The Glass by Donna Russo Morin. The Historical Novel Review has also spotlighted a favorite excerpt, which you can read here.

Here at The Burton Review, I posted a review and I ran a giveaway for the ARC and a bookmark. The winner.... is..... BECCA! Congratulations!!!!!!!!

Another giveaway I am hosting is for the ARC of 31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan, enter here by March 27.

If you didn't win The Secret of The Glass but wanted to.. then run off to Susie's blog at All Things Royal and enter to win her ARC copy. Her contest ends March 16.

Coming up pretty fast is the March Event for Elizabeth Chadwick's The Scarlet Lion, we'll have some more fancy creative posts regarding William Marshal and his family. So even though you will already be seeing reviews for The Scarlet Lion elsewhere on many blogs, you'll have to stop by and learn all you can about more behind the scenes stuff!! We'll have everything from artwork to Ireland to author guest posts, and I am excited about it.

Have you seen my recent review of The Stolen Crown by Susan Higginbotham? I published that this past week along with the review for the awesome suspense novel mixed with historical fiction tendencies 31 Bond Street. (GIVEAWAY!) by Ellen Horan.

Anyway, Susan Higginbotham has created a group on Goodreads which is really easy to use, where you can ask her questions all about the book and the history behind The Stolen Crown. Visit the group here. Also stay tuned to The Burton Review as Susan stops off here with a guest post as part of her blog tour, Tuesday, March 9. For those enjoying medieval trivia, the laughter continues at Susan Higginbotham's site this week as she posts round two of the Facebook War of The Roses on her blog. Very funny for those who know the era. Tongue in cheek status updates such as "Edward of Lancaster, Prince of Wales, is really looking forward to chopping off some Yorkist heads" will have you rolling.

Coming up on Monday I have my review of Margaret Irwin's Young Bess, which was reissued by Sourcebooks this month. This is the first novel in a trilogy surrounding Queen Elizabeth I, and this installement concerns the period of her childhood and living with Catherine Parr and her husband Thomas Seymour, with insight into her young mind.

This week I just finished reading Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff (March 30, 2010), and I really enjoyed it. It was like a slice of life portrait of a single life changing moment, which gave me cause for reflection.

With all the busy-ness of the blog events and reviews going on, the review for this will post sometime next week. I am now reading Within the Hollow Crown by Margaret Campbell Barnes, yet another fantastic historical reissue courtesy of Sourcebooks. This one is focused on King Richard II, a king who suppressed a peasant revolt in his youth. He was the son of Edward, The Black Prince, and Richard was deposed and murdered at age 22 in 1399, bringing his cousin Henry Bolingbroke the crown.

Some interesting linkage for you. Pasted from a technical guru site makeuseof.com that I love to read the new gadgets in the world. This is a fun site to browse around..

"Do you know about Project Gutenberg? Named after one of the inventors of the moveable type printing press, this amazing site features over 30,000 public domain books. In fact, most of the books you could have found in a university library 100 years ago can now be downloaded here, free of charge.

From Plato to Mark Twain to Sir Issac Newton to Sun Tzu to Shakespeare, Project Gutenberg is an amazing resource featuring knowledge, beauty and wisdom handed down through the ages. Pretty much any text you can think of older than 100 years can be downloaded here." See the original post here from makeuseof.com.

Hope you TiVo'ed Emma or Persuasion or The 39 Steps, because we shall have to wait a few weeks for the next Masterpiece Theater on PBS. The shows continue with Sharpe's Challenge starring Sean Bean as the ruggishly sexy British soldier Richard Sharpe on Sunday, March 28th.

Whew.. busy post.. and before I totally lose you.. I shall leave you with a pic of the aforementioned sexy Sean Bean...

mmmmmmmmmmm...