NEW RELEASE - THE FALL OF LORD DRAYSON BY RACHEL ANDERSON + GIVEAWAY

The Fall of Lord Drayson by Rachael Anderson 

Who is he really? A high and mighty lord or a lowly servant? When Colin Cavendish, the new earl of Drayson, informs Lucy Beresford that she and her mother need to vacate the house they've called home for the past two years, Lucy is fit to be tied. They have no money, no relations they can turn to for help, and nowhere to go. 

How dare the earl break the promise his father had made to the Beresfords without so much as a twinge of conscience? Fate plays her hand when Lucy discovers the earl unconscious and injured in the middle of the road. When he awakens with no recollection of who he is, Lucy seizes the opportunity to teach the earl a much-needed lesson in humility and tells him that he is nothing more than a mere servant. 

Her servant, in fact. And thus begins the charming tale of a pompous lord and an impetuous young woman, caught together in a web so tangled that it begs the question: Will they ever get out?

ARE YOU A WRITER? HERE'S TOP BOOKS TO AMP UP YOUR WRITING SKILLS

(by guest blogger Rachel Bartee) If you want to be a successful writer, there’s no room for stagnation. You must continuously learn new stuff and improve your writing skills. Your style and the quality of your content is greatly influenced by how much time you put into your personal development. Every successful writer, no matter the writing genre, got to where he is now by consistently crafting his writing skills through various methods.

As a writer for Edugeeksclub, constantly having to improve myself in order to keep up with the requirements, I’ve figured out many techniques on how to improve myself and my writing.

One of the most efficient ways writers use in order to improve their quality of writing is quite simple. They read. There are so many helpful books that are written with one purpose in mind: educating and training novice writers. They’re extremely specific and they’re offering a lot of useful and on-topic information concerning writing styles, grammar, writing tricks, and so on. In today’s article, we’ll take a look at the top eight books that can take your writing to the next level:

#1 On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser                  

This book is dedicated to everyone who wants to improve their writing. It’s a collection of well-written essays, along with in-depth analytics and explanations. It is not a technical book which offers step-by-step processes!

It offers a lot of great tips and insights, shows you many mistakes that you’re currently doing, and gives you the necessary tools to correct and improve your writing. It’s more about non-fiction writing rather than other genres. If you’re looking for those small details that can do a lot, this is the book for you.

PERIOD & MORE PERIOD: POLDARK IS BACK - ARE YOU IN FOR SOME MORE CORNISH DELIGHTS AND BITTERSWEET DRAMA?

Autumn usually brings new series and new shows on TV.  Summer is going to end soon, this means we must get ready to some excitement. Are you waiting for anything in particular? Excited for any of the coming-soon shows? 

I'm writing about mine, ok? What about sharing yours in the comments section? Too many question marks here! To the point! 

What about Poldark series two? Isn't that something worth some enthusiasm? After the cliffhanger we were left with at the end of series one, I can't wait? Have you read the books meanwhile? Or re-watched the episodes of the first season? 

Too many question marks again! Time for real news, now. Here is some info from the BBC Press Media Center website. Beware of some spoilers!

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark and Eleanor Tomlinson as his wife Demelza are back on BBC One this September 4 at 9pm . The debut series peaked with 9.4 million viewers across TV and iPlayer, generating phenomenal media interest and devotion from viewers which culminated in it winning the Radio Times Audience Award at this year’s Baftas.

BOOKS & MORE BOOKS - 'ME BEFORE YOU' AND 'AFTER YOU' BY JOJO MOYES

Prologue

I did it again. It was around the end of the school year in May. I saw one of my students fully-immersed in the reading of a book during the break and asked: "What is it that you are so eagerly reading?”

Her answer was a big smile and “So beautiful, prof.! You must read it. “ And then she showed me the book cover with the title.

“In English?”

“Yes, it is not out in Italian yet”

“A romance?” I suspected it from the cover and the title.

 Her answer came after a while: “ Not exactly … not only … it’s pretty special”

That  was enough to made me curious. I googled it, saw there was a movie coming soon starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, read the synopsis and … promised myself I was definitely not going to read it! Not another cheesy romance my students loved which was going to make me cry!

But then, while on holiday in Scotland,  I happened  to enter a bookshop with books half-price all over and I came out with not only “Me Before You” but its sequel too! I must be crazy, you say? Must be, since I not only bought those books,  I even read them. Well, worse even: I not only read them but also liked them.

Why did I start this post with "I did it again"? It ‘s not the first time I read books or watch movies recommended by my students and find them not so bad.  Did I say cheesy, somewhere above? Well, it wasn't. It isn't. Aren’t I a lucky teacher? ;-)

BOOKS UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

New books under the spotlight, ebooks to be more precise. The latest downloaded in my iPad and added to my TBR list. A book for each of my favourite genres. Number 1 is romance, number 2 historical fiction. 

1. The Full Brontë is a light-hearted novella set around a beautiful Yorkshire manor house which is being used to film the latest version of Jane Eyre. 

It’s a Kindle Single on Amazon. 

Gayle Hargreaves has never read a Brontë novel so, when a film crew descends on her small Yorkshire town and her life is thrown into disarray, she isn’t impressed. 

And she’s even less impressed when the handsome actor playing Mr Rochester starts flirting with her. But she can handle it, can’t she? After all, she just isn’t the sort to fall for a man in period costume... 

Set in the beautiful landscape so beloved of the Brontë sisters, The Full Brontë is a light-hearted novella. 

READING ITALIAN: FABIO STASSI & ALESSANDRO D'AVENIA

    Fabio Stassi,  La lettrice Scomparsa  (2016)

La Lettrice Scomparsa (The missing reader) is a literary mystery. A book which contains an entire shelf of good books (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, John Fante, Jorge Amado, Luigi Pirandello, Honoré de Balzac, George Simenon among others),  an investigation on fiction and life, a novel wondering how much life and fiction interfere with each other. Can fiction help men and women endure life? Can life, real life, make it to a good book page? Can reading a novel be therapeutic?

Fabio Stassi is a writer I truly appreciate and whom I have already mentioned and reviewed here at FLY HIGH! His latest novels are set in Rome and deal with fragile characters coping with the harshness of reality. They are watched and described through the lens of poetry, music and fiction,  which are Stassi’s solid background.

The protagonist is one of my unlucky colleagues, one who has lost his position after being a temporary teacher in several different schools for years. Now middle-aged and unemployed, Vince Corso has to reinvent himself and to find a way to survive.  Bibliotherapy is the first thing that comes to his mind: as a teacher of literature and a book lover, book counseling is an activity he thinks he can be successful at.

HAVEN BLOG TOUR - SPOTLIGHT & GIVEAWAY

About the book

Haven (Chronicles of Warshard #1) is the 2nd place winner of World's Best Story!

Princess Haven was never meant to be Queen.

Her immortality has saved her time and time again, but when the last of her royal family dies at her feet, she is next in line to rule a nation on the brink of war. With no formal training on how to be Queen, Haven must rise to the occasion with the help of her best friends, and personal guard, or risk losing everyone she has ever loved.

With war to the West, and no escape to the East, the evil tyrant Kadia sets her sights on the six kingdoms. Haven's neighbors are quick to fall under the swords of Kadia's shadow soldiers, leaving a sea of bodies and a clear path to Haven's only home. Haven must make a choice; take her people and flee to the foreign Republic across the sea or lead a last stand against a powerful dictator.

Amazon  ~   Barnes & Nobles  ~  Book Depository ~  Indigo Chapters

SCOTLAND, AT LAST!

Loch Lochy, the Highlands, Scotland

After an exciting experience it is not easy to go back to your everyday life. After a journey, you download, order and archive the pictures you’ve taken and look at your travel notes: all those beautiful moments flew at the speed of light and left you astonished,  with beautiful memories but also the awkward impression that you dreamt and have just woken up. Maybe writing can help you fix them somewhere in a safer place and make them somehow more real.

Scotland, at last!

Eilean Donan Castle 

Scotland is the 3-M land: the land of magic, mist and myth. How could one resist its charms? I simply couldn’t.  Last year, after a very brief visit,  I had to promise myself I would soon go back to see more of it. I did it in July and here I am,  back from an incredible tour,  which has been as magical, misty and mythical as Scotland in my dreams.  In our 10-days’ schedule an unforgettable series of fantastic sites, a variety of wonderful places, which I had the opportunity to visit  in the company of four of my anglophile friends.

One of the themes of our  tour was Outlander, the best-selling saga set in Scotland written by Diana Gabaldon,  as well as its TV adaptation.   We managed to visit a few of the main locations they used in seasons one and two or important sites mentioned in the books.

RAGE BLOG TOUR - A SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM A GREAT THRILLER

... dark – and darkly humorous – European crime fiction at its best... (Reader Dad Blog)

Rage is a book by Poland’s number one crime writer, Zygmunt Miłoszewski, which has been released just yesterday in English.  It became one of the bestselling books in Polish literary history when it came out last year.

Zygmunt Miłoszewski is the biggest name in Polish crime fiction, his addictive, gritty novels have been compared to the Scandinavian crime masters. The first two novels Prosecutor Szacki series (A Gain of Truth and Entanglement) have been made into films and BBC Radio 4 are currently in the process of dramatizing Grain of Truth for radio. His books have been translated into over 13 different languages. 

Here’s a special excerpt for you,  readers of FLY HIGH! 

Chapter Two

For a while Szacki was lost. He remembered Olsztyn’s Warszawska Avenue as a wide road leading out of town past the university, but it turned out to have an uglier sister—a short extension lined with scruffy little tenements right next to the Old Town. He had to turn left by Jan’s Bridge. The hospital was located opposite something that called itself the “regional beer center.”

He showed the guard his ID and found a parking spot between the buildings. This had once been the German garrison hospital, probably of lesser importance, as the buildings of immortal red brick looked much smaller and more modest than the neo-Gothic blocks of the city hospital. Part of it looked neglected, and part had been renovated, with a modern interior that was nicely integrated with the German architecture. The place had the atmosphere of a building site, arising from the fact that Olsztyn’s university medical faculty had only been up and running for a few years. In a short time a squalid military hospital had been transformed into a clinical marvel. Szacki had been to see Żenia’s mother here last year and had realized that on the whole it had quite a human dimension, compared with the various medical monstrosities he had seen in his career. That had been during a hot spring, when the chestnut trees were flowering among the buildings, and the old brick walls exuded a pleasant chill.