Engaged by proxy to a man she’s never met, Lady Daintry Tarrant is dismayed when the war hero returns, introducing himself as her fiancé, Lord Penthorpe. She cherishes her independence and has turned away many suitors, but this one she must marry. Penthorpe is completely captivated by Lady Daintry—but he’s not who he claims to be.
Penthorpe and Lord Gideon Deverill fought together at the battle of Waterloo, and when Penthorpe fell, Gideon assumed his identity in order to see the beautiful Lady Daintry. Gideon knows there’s bad blood between Lady Daintry’s family and his own, but he’s smitten with Daintry and determined to reunite the bitterly feuding clans. When a ghost from Gideon’s past appears, he could lose everything—including Daintry’s love.Publication Date: March 26, 2013
Open Road Media
eBook; 344p
ASIN: B00BPJOC40
As Mary, Queen of Scots, languishes in the Tower of London as a prisoner of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, war tears Scotland apart. To save her beloved homeland, a proud Highland beauty named Mary Kate MacPherson must wage her own battle when she’s forced into wedlock with a knight, Sir Adam Douglas, from the barbaric borderland of Tornary.
Even as she succumbs to her seductive husband’s sensual demands, Mary Kate vows never to give him her heart. She will belong to no man. But Adam burns with something deeper than desire. Sworn to carry out a long-awaited revenge, he won’t rest until he has vanquished his enemies. Accused of treason, the last thing he expects is to lose his heart to the woman he’s determined to tame but never to love: his own wife.
Publication Date: March 26, 2013
Open Road Media
eBook; 344p
ASIN: B00BPJOBT6
Scotland, 1750. In the aftermath of the Jacobite rebellion, Maggie MacDrumin vows to keep fighting to liberate her people. But the intrepid Scotswoman is risking her life for a dangerous cause. When her latest mission lands her in a London courtroom on a trumped-up larceny charge, she has only one hope of survival. Enlisting the aid of Edward Carsley, the powerful fourth Earl of Rothwell, is a two-edged sword. The seductive aristocrat who awakens treacherous desire is her clan’s mortal enemy—a man she can never trust.
Edward will do whatever it takes to quell another bloody uprising. But how can he fight his passion for the rebellious Highland beauty in his safekeeping? As their lives come under siege, Maggie lays claim to the one thing Edward vowed never to surrender: his heart.
Publication Date: March 26, 2013
Open Road Media
eBook; 421p
ABOUT THE AUTHOR :
A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.
For more information on Amanda Scott’s novels, please visit the official website.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW !!!
A Bookish Libraria is proud to include the following interview with Amanda Scott today. What an accomplished author and inspiring woman she is. Thank you for joining us, Amanda!
1) Tell us something about yourself, please. How do most people describe you?
I'm a native Californian, fourth generation. I was born in Salinas, so I'm a northern Californian. I attended elementary through high school in the same town that my parents did. I also spent time on my paternal grandfather's ranch in Ukiah and at our cabin in the High Sierras near Tahoe. I was a solitary child, because my father fought in World War II (Silver Star) and then went to law school, so there is a four to eight-year gap between me and my three siblings. My imagination, even as a child, was fertile, so I peopled our house in Salinas and our apartment in San Francisco, where my dad went to law school, with three imaginary friends – Aloysius, MacGillicuddy, and one who shall remain nameless, because my cousin and I (at ages three and two, respectively) named him after a rooster that my uncle had shouted at when said rooster got under the fence into my grandmother's 'victory garden.'
I have a master's degree in History, specialized in British History with an emphasis on Scotland, England, and Wales. I'm married, have a son and two delightfully mischievous grandchildren, and I write full time. Twelve of my older books are now available as ebooks: Dangerous Illusions, Dangerous Games, Dangerous Angels, Dangerous Lady, Highland Fling, Highland Secrets, Highland Treasure, Highland Spirits, Border Bride, Border Fire, Border Storm, and The Bawdy Bride. The three books in my current Lairds of the Loch trilogy are my 58th, 59th, and 60th books published. The first one, The Laird's Choice, is out now. The other two are finished and in production. The Knight's Temptresswill come out in August, The Warrior's Bride in early 2014. A more extensive bio is on my website: www.amandascottauthor.com
I don't know how most people describe me. It's not something I think much about. Reviewers have been kind enough to call me brilliant, a master of the genre, knowledgeable, and many other very nice things. They have also said that I make readers feel as if they are right there, wherever my characters are, which I certainly work hard to do.
Library Journal credited me with inventing the Scottish historical romance, although it did take a long time to find a publisher for Border Bride. Editors kept saying they loved it but, because of the humor in the book, I should turn it into a Regency. I couldn't do that, because I had based the story on Scottish laws pertaining to women that didn't exist in England. When an editor at Dell finally bought it, the book flew off the shelves and did seem to start a new craze for Scottish tales (Diana Gabaldon's Outlandercame out from Dell the following year). Nevertheless, I loved Jan Westcott's and Dorothy Dunnett's books long before I wrote anything publishable, so I'm not sure that that one will stick.
For whatever it's worth, I asked my husband and son to suggest words they would use to describe me. These are my husband's: "intelligent, thorough, dedicated, detail oriented, demanding (of herself), tenacious; and my son's: "Does 'my bad-ass mom', work?"; so I suggested printable words and got "imaginative, fierce, loyal, and a softy."
2) Where is your favorite place to write? Any special gimmicks, writing tools or keepsakes that you keep near you when you write…I hear authors can be superstitious!
In general, I write in my office at the computer or longhand at my son's old student desk in our spare room. In the summertime, my favorite place to write is on the porch of our old family lake cabin in the Sierras near Tahoe. The cabin lacks most amenities, including a road, sewer, electricity, and the Internet. We use a boat to get there, it's peaceful, and my companions are jays, squirrels, and the occasional drop-in neighbor. My grandparents bought the cabin when I was three, and I love it there.
I have a solar panel on the roof so I can use my laptop there, and at home I simply connect the laptop to a large monitor, a mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals. My office has two desks, the leather-top one that my husband bought me when I began writing and a computer desk.
Three walls contain bookshelves. The one in front of my computer is all bulletin board and has contained a wall size map of the city of London in Regency times and now has pictures of settings I'm using, a cartoon of my grandfather when he was in court, trying a case, and various other mementos. I spend most of my time reading, or staring at the computer screen, so my biggest enemy in my office is clutter that accumulates while I'm working.
I don't have any gimmicks that I can think of. My favorite writing tool is any pen that writes smoothly and without much pressure applied to it. I am not superstitious, but I am claustrophobic, so I walk every day outside on a wetland trail with birds (including egrets, pheasant, quail, and great blue herons), beasts including the occasional deer, wild turkeys, the odd bobcat or river otter), and waterfowl.
3) Which contemporary authors do you most admire?
I read constantly, voraciously, probably four or five books a week if you count research. I read everything, from political, legal, and medical thrillers to romance, mysteries, science fiction, and more literary books for our book group, also plays and poetry, as well as Scottish history.
Some of my favorite authors are Lee Child, Brad Thor, Janet Evanovich, Tess Gerritson, Stephen J Cannell, Alex Kava, James Grippando, Vince Flynn, John Sandford, Lisa Scottoline, Stuart Woods, Kate Wilhelm, Thomas Perry, Steve Berry, Dana Stabenow, Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, Robert B. Parker, Daniel Silva, Elizabeth Peters, Greg Iles, Kay Hooper, Deborah Crombie, John Nance…I could go on, but these are the first ones that come to mind, so you probably get the idea.
4) Which are your favorite classical authors?
Just off the top of my head, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Zane Grey, and I tend to think of Georgette Heyer, Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, and Jan Westcott as classical authors, although all of them wrote in the twentieth century.
5) Jump into any book—which character would you be?
I'm always at a loss when people ask me this question. If you mean one of my own books, I can't imagine. I'm in them, of course – at least, my mind is – when I write them, but I would not want to live in any century but the present one. Spending my summers in a rustic cabin, as I do, is enough historical living for me. I like libraries, iced mochas, and driving fast cars. Living in a drafty, smoky castle might be interesting for a sennight or so, and I love good haggis, but after that … nae, moran taing! (no, thanks.)
If you meant my being any character in any book, I'm still at a loss, because I simply don't think of myself as anyone else. One identifies with most characters in books as one is reading, but I don't want to live a thriller, just to read them for pleasure. Nor do I want to live anywhere else, although I love reading travel books and books set in exotic places.
6) Are you working on a new book?
Always. I just finished The Warrior's Bride, which is book 3 in my Lairds of the Loch (Loch Lomond) trilogy, so I'm working on the outline for a new trilogy and a new contract. Having just done two trilogies set in the Highlands (Scottish Knightsand Lairds of the Loch), I'm ready to return to the Borders for a while and perhaps continue using Scott and Douglas history for the background. I tend to move forward chronologically with the history, so I'll set the three books around 1426-1430 in James I's reign (Jamie Stewart).
Clan Scott and Clan Douglas figure prominently in my own heritage, so they are naturals for me. I also have connections to a number of other clans, including Jamison, Logan, and Ferguson. Once again, I plan to use real people for my two main characters, but we'll see what my editors think about that. My plan is to use the grandson of the Sir Walter Scott in Border Wedding.
The rub is that the Scotts seem to have used very few names for the men of our clan beyond Robert, Walter, and William. Every other generation from the beginning seems to have had a Walter Scott, right down to my grandfather, who was Russell Walter Scott and had been named after his grandfather, Walter Ferguson Scott. The Walter I have my eye on now was known in his youth as WalterKirkurd but eventually became Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch and Rankilburn. Also, like his grandfather, he married a woman named Margaret. She's easier to do than he is, because her last name was Cockburn (COE burn) and I can call her Molly (the earlier one was known as Muckle-Mouth Meg, and not only did I write about her but Sir Walter Scott the poet wrote a ballad about her).
Thank you for this very telling and lively interview, Amanda. I'm working my way through your books and enjoying them thoroughly. I'm a Scottish Hendrix (or Hendricks) who mixed with the English Riggs before coming over on one of the Plymouth Colony treks. You can see where my love of historical fiction comes from. It's been a pleasure to have you here today!
This tour was brought to you by Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours where you can find more reviews, interviews and guest posts on these books and Amanda Scott by following this link:
http://www.hfvirtualbooktours.com
Thank you for stopping, and try Amazon for a copy of "Highland Fling" to start reading today...
Deborah/TheBookishDame
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