And the Winners Are ....

Christina and Sea Star! Please email me at janeaustensworld at gmail dot com and provide a mailing address. The first person to contact me will have first choice between Georgette Heyer's Faro's Daughter or An Infamous Army. The books have been graciously donated by SourceBooks. Our readers provided an interesting and varied summer reading list with many classics. Here it is:

• Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (2 recommendations)
• Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
• World Without End, Ken Follett
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
• The Senator's Wife, Sue Miller
• Change of Heart, Jodi Picoult
• The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
• Breath, Tim Winton.
• A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
• Middlemarch, George Elliot
• War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
• All of Jane Austen
• Playing the Jack, Mary Brown
• Secrets of a Lady, Tracy Grant, and its sequel, Beneath a Silent Moon.
• God of Small Things, Arunduti Roy
• Rebecca, Daphne DuMaurier
• Rachel's Holiday, Marian Keyes, and any books by her
• Gods in Alabama, Joshilyn Jackson
• Summer By the Sea, Susan Wiggs.
• The Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon (2 recommendations)

An Infamous Army Book Contest: Another Opportunity to Win a Georgette Heyer Novel

What joy! Just as one book giveaway is over, another one has begun! On May 23rd NPR announced its summer book recommendations, and on June 20th it highlighted Georgette Heyer's An Infamous Army, which comes highly recommended by Nancy Pearl, the “rock star librarian” and book commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition. She will make an announcement about her choices some time this week.

An Infamous Army is a novel of Wellington, Waterloo, love and war. In the summer of 1815, with Napoleon Bonaparte marching down from the north, Brussels is a whirlwind of parties, balls and soirees. In the swirling social scene surrounding the Duke of Wellington and his noble aides de camp, no one attracts more attention than the beautiful, outrageous young widow Lady Barbara Childe. On their first meeting, dashing Colonel Charles Audley proposes to her, but even their betrothal doesn't calm her wild behavior. Finally, with the Battle of Waterloo raging just miles away, civilians fleeing and the wounded pouring back into the town, Lady Barbara discovers where her heart really lies, and like a true noblewoman, she rises to the occasion, and to the demands of love, life and war...

The Battle of Waterloo in all its glorious and horrifying detail then becomes the center around which the book's characters orbit. Definitely a romance for the historically minded reader, there is no fluff here. As the conflict rages, Lady Barbara helps to nurse the wounded men who wander back into the city, learning much about life, death, and love in the process. No magical happy endings occur, just the contentment of two people who have grown into their love for one another. - Library Journal

The Contest Rules are Simple
In honor of the novel's inclusion on Nancy Pearl's list, Source Books is giving away two free Georgette Heyer books! If you did not win one last month, now is your opportunity to try for another one. If you would like a copy of An Infamous Army or Faro's Daughter, please recommend a summer book for others to read. That's all you have to do! Contest ends on July 14th, midnight, EST. As always, I will draw your names randomly out of a hat.

More links:

• Jane Austen's World review of a Royal Escape, another Heyer historical novel.

• Margaret Drabble, a huge Georgette Heyer fan, discusses the author in this BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour podcast. Click here to listen.

Posted by Ms. Place