The Reading Radar 5/23/2015 @GillPaulAUTHOR @readingthepast @_secondstory @sbkslandmark

What's the Reading Radar? It's just a list of books that caught my interest in the last week, why they caught my interest, and HOW. Having been an author myself once upon a time, I was always curious about how to reach readers. I type this up every week to share with readers books they may be interested as well and to let the authors know how they're being "discovered".

Discovered on Netgalley and promptly requested: No Place for a Lady by Gill Paul. (I love Victoria Hislop and I will be recording Poldark. Hm.)

1854. England is in the grip of a gruesome war.

Lucy Harvington, ill-educated beyond how to be a wife, has travelled to the Crimea with her handsome and impetuous officer husband Charlie.
As the day of battle dawns she can only pray her husband survives. If he doesn’t, what will become of her?

Dorothea Gray, volunteer nurse at the Westminster Hospital, is determined to follow her little sister Lucy to the front and to serve her country alongside her heroine Florence Nightingale and the pioneering nurses already risking their lives.

But neither sister could possibly have known the horrors they are about to witness – the courage, the cowardice, the danger – and the excitement – nor could they have guessed the risks they must take, the passion they will taste, and the simple fact that they may never see one another again …

If you love POLDARK, Gone With The Wind or the storytelling of Victoria Hislop, this is the perfect summer escape for you.

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Spotted on one of my favorite blogs, Reading the Past by Sarah Johnson, the upcoming Canadian title hit the wishlist: The Farmerettes by Gisela Tobien Sherman.

A diverse group of young women just out of high school live together during the summer of 1943 on a farm as part of the Farm Services - tending the fields and the livestock - doing the work of the men who are off fighting the war in Europe. We follow the stories of Helene, who sends her wages home to support her single mother; Peggy, a flirt with a secret she is desperate to keep; Binxie, whose rich family doesn't approve of her; Isabel, who pines over her fiance who is off fighting; the mysterious "X", who of all the girls feels most out of place; and Jean, whose family farm has been taken over by this group of "farmerettes." As the Second World War rages across the ocean, friendship, romance, hardship, and heartbreak shape their summer, and no one will be left unchanged.

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Spotted on Edelweiss. I've read about this empress before and this one sounds like a more intriguing twist. The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel. Almost a year wait for this one.

The gripping story of one woman's rise to royalty as China's first and only female emperor.

After her father's death, Mei finds herself in the impossible position of supporting her poverty-stricken family. But a prophecy once predicted that Mei could have the power to do the unthinkable—to become the first female ruler of China. And when an edict summons Mei to the emperor's palace to serve as one of his concubines, the prophecy no longer seems so far-fetched.

In the heart of the emperor's city, Mei faces a thousand other women, all vying for the emperor's favor. She manages to deftly manuever around the plots of wily courtiers and ambitious princes fighting for power. Then, just as she is in a position to seduce the emperor, she falls in love with his son instead. Now Mei must fight not only to gain favor with the emperor, but also to protect the man she loves.