The Red-Haired Witch

By JoEllen Conger

The Queen of Candelore Series, Book 4

Historical Fantasy, 383 Pages

Cover art by Richard Stroud

Blurb:

Nine year-old runaway bride, Princess Salina Maria, counts on her giant bodyguard, Yeoman Sherman of the Iberian Queen’s Guard, her appointed Royal Companion to help her escape the eminent nuptials in a stampeding wedding carriage. However, the wicked bridegroom, Prince Ivor Irinushka of The Far Northland, a malicious warlock, uses his Black Magic to locate her.

Excerpt:

Lena planned to make preview of the nearby woods. She had asked the queen’s permission to take the air today on horseback, which had been approved. Her squire rode a half pace behind her, carrying on a conversation that wouldn’t have been possible should he have ridden at his respectful full-pace behind.

“Boyd,” she asked, “be there any ruins nearby we could go explore?”

“Just as a lark, ye mean?”

“Aye.” She tossed her hair. “Ye know, some place where I could just go and have fun looking about and making guesses at whatever happened there so long time ago.”

“I think I know what ye mean, Princess. I hear ye still be liking to play make-believe.” He laughed.

Yet she noticed it tweren’t a hurtful laugh. She half turned in her saddle to take a better look at his expression. He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but be caught up in his good humor.

“Ye could be the queen, and me the king,” Boyd said. “Wait, I know of a great place!”

“Be it far from here?”

“Nay, not really, but well off the beaten track…but it be way in the bottom of a canyon and badly overgrown; hard to get to. It used to was a flour mill…but the stone done got cracked, and it fell in half. So, the miller left.”

“Really? It sounds delightful. Not the stone breaking so that its owner had to desert their home. Can ye take me there?—Will ye take me there, without tattling?”

“Yer just a girl. Ye be sure ye want to do this? There be brush and thistles, and low tree branches. Yer dress will surely be torn.”

“I’ll take me dress off…if’un ye promise to button me up again.”

Boyd gave thought about this adventure, and that he wouldn’t even be able to share this story with his buddies at the barns. He laughed. “And there be poisonous spiders,” he said, turning his fingers into claws. Pretending to be a wicked wizard, he growled.

Lena enjoyed his wicked laughter. She couldn’t help but smile. “But there be running water there? Aye?” She thought surely the dragon twins would love playing in the brook. They had never seen running water in brooks or rills. This could well be the adventure they sought.

Boyd led the way. As soon as they reached the middle of the canyon, they tied their horses concealed under a grove of trees. Boyd blushed unbuttoning the back of Lena’s bodice, and turned away as she slipped out of her riding skirt. She put her belt back on and looped the back hem of her petticoat between her legs and fastened it with her belt buckle. She stepped out from behind her pony, wearing only her white, sleeveless petticoat and her borrowed squire’s knee-high boots.

“I’m ready,” she called.

What If?

By Kev Richardson
Historical Fantasy, 311 pages
Cover art by Trisha FitzGerald
 
Excerpt:
January 1944
In Great Britain, Hitler made much of being filmed sightseeing London.

He issued firm warnings to his Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), Joseph Goebbels, that every inch of footage was  made available for every Briton to see.

One of Hitler’s closest adherents, a master orator and virulent disciple in the extermination of Jews, Goebbels was assigned considerable freedom in rewriting English language textbooks in German, as well as full control of censoring press and radio announcements throughout Great Britain and Ireland. One of his first dictates was the surrender of every English language dictionary in the land, in exchange for a German dictionary and an English to German translation guide. Retaining copies of English dictionaries was pronounced a crime—the penalty, death by firing squad.

In a private cabinet meeting with Göring, Goebbels, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief High Commander of Armed Forces, his 2IC Alfred Jodl, Admiral Erich Raeder of the German Navy, and Admiral Karl Dönitz, U Boot Kommandant, Hitler outlined his plans to attack Russia.

“Maybe another year and early in the spring, gentlemen. How quickly we can rebuild our forces in each of your areas will dictate in which year. Stalin is driving his forces to the limit in his haste to wrap up the Middle East’s oil fields, and our intelligence chiefs report that he plans no rest period before attacking India. We need to have all our forces refreshed, re-equipped and ready by the time Russian forces are at their weakest.”

He pulled down one of the score of maps rolled up in the huge map bank mounted on the wall where every man present had a clear view. It showed the present border between their two countries from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. His map had but a dotted line splitting Romania in two.

“Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria are remaining true to the Nazi doctrine and my expectation is that they will grant us every assistance if assured we will come to their assistance should Russia invade. Our secret preparations, however, will be for a Blitzkrieg attack along this present border in the old Poland. We can expect Finnish permission to attack Leningrad through their border come early summer when clear of snow. By that time, however, we will have won for you, naval gentlemen, the entire coastline of the Baltic States currently reeling under Russia’s poor treatment of them.”

He sat, leaving the map exposed on the wall behind him.

“I have assurances from Japan that, given two months’ notice, they will attack Siberia both from Manchuria-based land forces and Vladivostok by naval forces.”

“Can we trust the Japanese to keep such a promise? How secure will be our secrecy, with them knowing our plans?”

Hitler made a pyramid of his hands while raising eyebrows at Alfred Jodl.

“Do you see the smile on Erich’s face, Alfred? We have right now, on board one of his light cruisers in the South China Sea, supported by flanking destroyers, V5 rockets for Japan to begin raining on Hawaii from bases in the Aleutians. General Tojo has my personal promise that he shall have our V7s as soon as we have finished perfecting and testing them. They will reach even the most southern point on the USA west coast, and many kilometres inland of it. Japan has much to gain by maintaining our confidence in its security.”

He deliberately refrained from telling them all, which only Göring and Keitel so far knew, that the V7 was also intended for use by Germany, if necessary, on Canada and the United States’ eastern states, from Iceland.

Also, whenever he was ready to approach the United States for peace talks, he would ensure that American intelligence was aware that Jamaica and all other British islands in the Caribbean had been prepared for rocket launching into the Unites States.

Then with Russia subdued, Germany and Japan can carve up the entire rest of the world. Each will then control enough of the world’s raw materials to be able to bargain on where the world’s few borders will fall.

High King Of Brightland

By JoEllen Conger

The Queen of Candelore Series, Book 3

Historical Fantasy, 316 pages

Cover art by Richard Stroud

Blurb:

Prince Anthony of Candelore becomes crowned High King of Brightland on his wedding day to Princess Bodicca of Castlerald. Together, they begin their royal family, while he governs all the united realms, she proudly begins her battle training kennels for Irish Wolfhound war dogs.

Suddenly, a distraught nine-year-old run-away bride, Princess Lena Maria appears at their gates, seeking sanctuary. Anthony and Bodicca swear they will never permit Lena’s cruel bridegroom-to-be to capture the young Princess and drag her unwillingly to his realm in the frozen northlands.

Excerpt:

Fifteen year old Prince Anthony II, born in the new city of Candelore, tugged downward on the hem of his formfitting brocade jacket and studied his reflection in the full-length mirror. Never before had he been dressed so auspiciously. Caressing his skin-tight burnished-leather leggings, he admired how his high-topped, black leather boots joined them just below the knees. He scanned his likeness and marveled at the length of his muscular legs. Until this very moment he hadn’t really appreciated just how tall he had grown.

Then he turned first one way and then the other, appraising his image. He loved the cut of the high collar, and the way it accentuated his broadened, war-trained shoulders. He was still too gangly to be mistaken for a man. He sighed in resignation. That day would come soon enough, he counseled himself. Today he would be wed, followed by the coronation. He had time enough then to become a man.

He turned to his longtime Royal Companion. “Gallagher, I am still amazed that all the kings and clan chieftains actually avowed me to become the H-i-g-h K-i-n-g Dar-k-dra-g-on, of A-L-L Bright-land,” Anthony emphasized with a grand flourish.

“It’s yer birthright, Anthony. What’s not to approve?” questioned Gallagher, who watched his royal charge from the window alcove. “Ye have already set yer reputation during the battle at Kamlaird, and have truly worked diligently to become worthy of this day. Everyone be talking about how much ye look like yer departed da… Now, ye shall become the great leader himself. That’s quite an accomplishment, Yer Highness, even for a man of so few years. It be said ye truly be as worthy a diplomat as yer sire before ye.”

Anthony drew in another deep breath. “Just look at me. I feel like a pampered parade pony,” he grumbled, surveying his elaborate coronation attire once again.

“Speaking of horses,” Gallagher went on as though he hadn’t noticed Anthony’s petulant mood, “I instructed the livery to bring our Iberian-trained stallions up from the stables for the procession. I hope that meets with yer approval.”

“Good thinking, Gallagher. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

Gallagher leered. “That’s why ye have me,” he teased.

Anthony sighed once again. I should have guessed it would take all day just to dress for the most important day of me life. Reluctantly he sat in a straight-backed chair to allow his dresser to secure the thin gold crown, pressing it firmly into his thatch of wiry golden curls. Then his royal dresser went off on his way, this job concluded.

Gallagher stepped over to Anthony and massaged the back of his neck. “Relax, Yer Highness. At this rate ye will have yer shoulders clean up to yer earlobes by day’s end.”

The Never Ending Sleep

By Peter L. Lyons, Historical Fantasy, 409 pages

Cover art by Richard Stroud

Campbell Robson was cursed by the man he has accidentally killed. Over endless time he is incarcerated in prisons through no fault of his own and seems condemned to live out his endless life suffering the depredations of various forms of punishment

Excerpt:

“There’s something I do not understand, Prisoner Robson. Your record speaks of a ruffian, a wild, uncontrollable convict who would have to be a lower class, uneducated peasant. Yet I see here before me a man who speaks with evidence of education, even culture, in his voice. It says in your record that you have spent thirty years in the prisons of New South Wales, yet I do not see evidence of that. I do not know what I should be seeing, but what I do see is not consistent with the evidence presented to me in your record.”

Campbell did not speak. He wondered what Herrington was leading up to. The commandant leaned forward and picked up the sheet of paper in front of him and waved it at Campbell.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked quietly.

Campbell stared. “No,” he said shortly.

“It is a ticket to freedom,” Herrington said. “Or it could be, if someone named Campbell Robson was lucky enough.”