Freebie Friday: Giveaway Bonanza!

Need help filling up your shelf? You've come to the right place! I think it was last month I started somewhat of a flurry of reviews that came one after the other, many of which have giveaways attached. Typically I hold drawings one to two weeks out, but this time Thanksgiving and upcoming Christmas kind of …

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Book Review: Child of the Northern Spring (Plus Giveaway)

Update: Drawing referenced below will be held December 16 (see link here) I no longer recall how it was I came into contact with Persia Woolley, though I do remember it was on Facebook we first spoke. Perhaps I messaged her with the same words of adoration she'd heard a thousand times before, something like, "I …

Book Excerpt: Half Sick of Shadows, Audio/Text (Richard Abbott) (Plus Giveaway)

Half Sick of Shadows - Audio Excerpt by Richard Abbott  Like Audio Excerpts A and  B & C, for author Richard Abbott's second sci-fi novel, Timing,  the excerpt below, from his historical fantasy, Half Sick of Shadows, is powered by Amazon’s Polly software, which is enabled for text-to-speech in multiple accents and intonations. There sometimes are …

Book Review: Half Sick of Shadows (With Giveaway)

Half Sick of Shadows: A Historical Fantasy by Richard Abbott See below for details about winning a free paperback copy of Half Sick of Shadows Update: Drawing will be held December 16 (see link here) In the first half of the twentieth century, Victorian poetry began to be marginalized by the developing field of scholarly …

Poetry in Bloom: “The Lady of Shalott”

Today we start our New Year’s resolution a mite early with a series-in-development, one that gives us a space here at Before the Second Sleep to advance more deeply into the realm of poetry, territory we’ve not had much previous occasion to explore. Given our love of poetry and the enormous opportunities one has as …

Image of the Week: The Hollow Hills (Book Cover)

This week’s “Image of the Week” entails a mixture of sorts: between a “Cover Crush” and look back in time, as well as my own experience of how an image can lead to something that touches one much more deeply. For it is the cover of Mary Stewart’s The Hollow Hills that initially beckoned to …

Month of Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave

September 17, 1916 Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mary Stewart, beloved author of such blockbusters as Madam, Will You Talk? and Nine Coaches Waiting. With the "Month of Mary Stewart" series we honor the novelist and mark her fantastic presence in our lives, noting some of the special gifts she has …

Image of the Week: The Beguiling of Merlin

Image of the Week: The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne-Jones "Then she saw me watching her. For perhaps two seconds our eyes met and held. I knew then why the ancients armed the cruellest god with arrows; I felt the shock of it right through my body."—Merlin, The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart O, …

Book Review: The Dragon’s Harp

Era of Dragons: The Lost Tales of Gwenhwyfar Book One: The Dragon’s Harp By Rachael Pruitt Growing up, Arthurian legends were practically part of who I was, having been told them at my mother’s knees; later she began to expose me to written accounts, which I greedily consumed. I’ve lost track of how many or …