Blog Tour: The Queen's Sister by Carol McGrath

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The Queen’s Sister

by Carol McGrath

June 8th - 12th, 2026

Publication Date: Jun 4th, 2026

Publisher: Headline Accent

Pages: 300

Genre: Historical Fiction

A mother, a wife, a woman of substance...

At nineteen, Elizabeth Seymour is already a mother, has been recently widowed, and seen her Queen, Anne Boleyn, lose her life. Against the wishes of her father, she heads North, away from Wulf Hall and the court in London to Yorkshire, determined to establish a new beginning as a landowner and business woman. As her family in Wiltshire curry favour with King Henry, aided by Thomas Cromwell, Elizabeth makes Kexby Manor her home, finding loyalty among her people there.

Soon, news comes to Elizabeth of the King's desires for her sister, Jane, while her brother, Edward, encourages her own betrothal to Gregory Cromwell, son of Thomas. It is a happy second marriage for Elizabeth, but it brings unwanted involvement in the dark plots and secrecy of the court, while in the wider country, changes in religious practice threaten to alter the traditions and values of all she has known...

THE QUEEN'S SISTER vividly imagines the story of the woman possibly portrayed in Hans Holbein's beautiful painting 'Portrait of a Lady,' and is a colourful, meticulously researched novel of Tudor life behind the scenes.

What readers say about Carol McGrath's novels:

'Another beautifully crafted, well-researched work of historical fiction from Carol McGrath'

'Brimming with intrigue, tension and adventure, The Lost Queen is a powerful Medieval tale full of atmosphere, danger and emotion and transports the reader to another world'

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Carol McGrath

Following a first degree in English and History at QUB, Carol McGrath completed an MA in Creative Writing from The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University Belfast, followed by an MPhil in English from University of London. She is published by Headline.

The Handfasted Wife, first in a trilogy about the royal women of 1066, was shortlisted for the RoNAs in 2014. The Swan-Daughter and The Betrothed Sister complete this highly acclaimed trilogy.

Mistress Cromwell, a best-selling historical novel about Elizabeth Cromwell, wife of Henry VIII’s statesman, Thomas Cromwell, was republished by Headline in 2020.

The Silken Rose, first in a Medieval She-Wolf Queens Trilogy, featuring Ailenor of Provence, saw publication in April 2020. This was followed by The Damask Rose. The Stone Rose was published April 2022. The Stolen Crown 2023 and July 2024, The Lost Queen, about Berengaria of Navarre and The Third Crusade.

The Queen’s Sister, sequel to Mistress Cromwell, sees publication in June 2026. Carol writes Historical non-fiction as well as fiction. Sex and Sexuality in Tudor England was published in February 2022 by Pen & Sword. She speaks at Conferences and gives interviews.

Subscribe to her newsletter via her website (use the drop down on her web-site Home Page).

Connect with Carol:

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Book of the Week: The Whirlpools of Time by Anna Belfrage #TimeTravel #HistoricalFiction #RecommendedReading

The Whirlpools of Time

The Time Locket, Book #1

by Anna Belfrage

He hoped for a wife. He found a companion through time and beyond.

It is 1715 and for Duncan Melville something fundamental is missing from his life. Despite a flourishing legal practice and several close friends, he is lonely, even more so after the recent death of his father. He needs a wife—a companion through life, someone to hold and be held by. What he wasn’t expecting was to be torn away from everything he knew and find said woman in 2016…

Erin Barnes has a lot of stuff going on in her life. She doesn’t need the additional twist of a stranger in weird outdated clothes, but when he risks his life to save hers, she feels obligated to return the favour. Besides, whoever Duncan may be, she can’t exactly deny the immediate attraction.

The complications in Erin’s life explode. Events are set in motion and to Erin’s horror she and Duncan are thrown back to 1715. Not only does Erin have to cope with a different and intimidating world, soon enough she and Duncan are embroiled in a dangerous quest for Duncan’s uncle, a quest that may very well cost them their lives as they travel through a Scotland poised on the brink of rebellion.

Will they find Duncan’s uncle in time? And is the door to the future permanently closed, or will Erin find a way back?

Praise for The Whirlpools of Time:

“When you open an Anna Belfrage story, you know you are in for an exciting and intelligent read. The Whirlpools of Time is no different. There is time travel, plus a courageous heroine, endearing hero, quirky characters, family, a mystery, romance, dreadful villains, the eighteenth century – all deftly written.”

~ Alison Morton, author of award-winning alternative historical fiction,
5* Review

“The narrative of this novel is rich with detail, bringing to life a time gone by, and it is almost as if the reader themselves has fallen through time, and has found themselves in a world so beautifully depicted that they do not want to leave.”

~ Ellie Yarde, Yarde Book Promotions, 5* Editorial Review

“I am a fan of time-slip historical novels, and in this tale, the lives of an 18th century man and 21st century woman collide. Hungry for a mix of adventure with history, romance, politics, a mysterious humming locket, and villains? Then this dish will more than satisfy.”

~ CS, 5* Amazon Review

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Join us as award-winning author Katherine Mezzacappa introduces characters from her compelling new novel, Lucie Dumas #HistoricalFiction #WomenInHistory #RecommendedReading

Lucie Dumas

by Katherine Mezzacappa

London, 1871: Lucie Dumas of Lyon has accepted a stipend from her former lover and his wife, on condition that she never returns to France; she will never see her young son again. As the money proves inadequate, Lucie turns to prostitution to live, joining the ranks of countless girls from continental Europe who'd come to London in the hope of work in domestic service.

Escaping a Covent Garden brothel for a Magdalen penitentiary, Lucie finds only another form of incarceration and thus descends to the streets, where she is picked up by the author Samuel Butler, who sets her up in her own establishment and visits her once a week for the next two decades. But for many years she does not even know his name.

Based on true events.

Thank you for featuring my book Lucie Dumas on your blog today.

Characters are what makes a story. The writer, in my opinion, has to know who they are before a plot can advance very far. In writing this book, I had one character pretty much fully-formed, because Samuel Butler existed and was such a prolific, if sometimes eccentric, author. By contrast, his mistress Lucie Dumas, we know not that much about. She is mentioned by Henry Festing Jones in his biography of Butler, describing her role in Butler’s life, but Jones is completely silent about also having been one of her gentleman callers, in an arrangement brokered by his friend.

Alfred Cathie in 1898, painted by Samuel Butler
Wikimedia Commons: St John’s College, Cambridge – Art UK

Interviewed many years later, Butler’s manservant, Alfred Cathie, adds to the picture of a woman he, Alfred, clearly liked and respected (he did not care much for Mr Jones).

Samuel Butler
Wikimedia Commons: photographer J Russell & Sons

But to a significant degree, Lucie exists in the shadows. There is no known image of her, although Butler was also a photographer and artist. When I started writing her story, I thought Samuel Butler would occupy much more space in it than he in fact does. Her character takes over, which is as it should be, though their lives are entwined. Much of her life was about survival, physically and emotionally; she was a mother compelled to leave her little son behind in France. Yet, with Butler’s help, she was able to make the step up from the street to discreetly receiving gentleman callers in her own lodgings. I wrote the novel not only in homage to her but in remembrance of the hundreds of women in Victorian London who were both shunned by the respectable – and sought out by them when it suited them.

It is also in part the story of a doctor, Louis Vintras. He too existed. There is no evidence that he knew Lucie (and he doesn’t in the novel), but his father was director of the French Hospital near Leicester Square, where Lucie died of tuberculosis. I used Louis initially as the conduit for Lucie’s story being told, as in the novel Louis inherits her manuscript when his father Achille dies, and sets about translating it. But as I delved into the story of the real Louis, it was apparent that Louis himself had an interior life that was worthy of exploration. His parents were not married at the time of his birth, which in English law of the time made him illegitimate (a stigma that could not be cancelled out by marriage until much later). He was also the author of three novels and some poetry, but abruptly stopped publishing (I read his reviews; he could not have been other than deeply hurt by them). He did not marry until his father was dead. There was a whole backstory and dynamic to explore there, then, and I have intertwined it with Lucie’s story. Louis comes to admire her and to recognise a talent for words greater than his own.

Louis Vintras, 1904, by Alphonse Legros
Wikimedia Commons: Boston Public Library

The character of the brothel Madam is an invention, but in a way she is representative of a ruthless, exploitative class in which female solidarity is hard to find. Her counterpoint is Mother Magdalen Taylor, foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, who established a Magdalen refuge (to which I send Lucie), also the head of a community of women, but with a very different aim in mind. Mother Magdalen existed, and was a nurse in the Crimean War. I read biographies of her; as she appears in my novel, she is principled and astute, but perhaps doesn’t quite grasp the nature of the challenges facing the women she rescued.

Frances Taylor, afterwards Mother Magdalen of the Sacred Heart, nurse and foundress.
Wikimedia Commons: Poor Servants of the Mother of God

All of the characters have different motivations that entwine: Lucie, to find a life of some dignity, Butler to his physical needs met in a predictable and habitual way, Mother Magdalen to rescue. For her, a woman who was a mistress of one man was as fallen as one who walked the streets, but one who was probably easier to save. At the end of the book, Louis Vintras is helped by the dead Lucie’s story to make a decision in his own life.

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Katherine Mezzacappa

Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’Association Gold Crown award in 2025 and has also been published in Italian.

Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.

Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story and novel competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She is lead organiser for the Historical Novel Society 2026 Conference in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

Katherine has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church.

Connect with Katherine:

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Blog Tour: Some Starry Night by Irene Latham

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SOMe Starry Night

by Irene Latham

April 18th - 22nd, 2026

Publication Date: April 14th, 2026

Publisher: Historium Press

Pages: 264

Genre: Historical Fiction 

Under the pale glow of a Parisian spring in 1886, two restless souls move toward the same horizon-unaware that their meeting will ignite a love as luminous and fleeting as the stars themselves.

Vincent van Gogh arrives in Paris with little more than paint-stained hands and an aching determination to create something worthy of the world. Living in the cramped apartment of his brother Theo, he struggles against poverty, doubt, and the relentless pull of his own restless mind.

Across the ocean in Amherst, Emily Dickinson receives news that changes everything. Faced with the nearness of death, the reclusive poet does the unthinkable: she leaves the quiet safety of the Homestead and sails for Paris, determined to taste life before it slips beyond her reach.

When Emily agrees to sit for Vincent's portrait, their worlds collide in a blaze of color, poetry, and dangerous intimacy. Through letters, poems, and whispered confessions, the two artists discover in one another a fierce, unguarded understanding-one that will shape their art, their faith, and the fragile hours they have left.

But love between stars is never simple. As time grows short and darkness gathers, Vincent and Emily must decide whether beauty is meant to last...or simply to burn bright enough to change the night forever.

Some Starry Night is a sweeping, lyrical imagining of the hidden story behind Vincent van Gogh's most iconic painting – an unforgettable tale of love, creativity, and the courage to live fiercely, even in the shadow of the end.

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Irene Latham

Irene Latham writes poems and stories from the Purple Horse Poetry Studio & Music Room in Blount County, Alabama. She is the author or co-author of many books for young people, including African Town, winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Outstanding Historical Fiction.

This is her first novel for adults.

Connect with Irene:

Website • Blog • Author Page at Historium Press

Pinterest • YouTube

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