I’m delighted to welcome Luv Lubker and her new book, Under A Cloud, to the blog #HistoricalFiction #VictorianFiction #VictorianEra #GermanHistory #UnderACloud #LuvLubker #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub

I’m delighted to welcome Luv Lubker and her new book, Under A Cloud, from The Rival Courts series, to the blog, with an excerpt.

Excerpt 1

On the 24^th they had arrived in Palermo. Fritz had been emotionally excited to show them this place, where he had been the year before his and Vicky’s engagement. They had visited the place where he had stayed at the time, and also an old monastery, leaving with bits of beautiful mosaic in their pockets.

Most of the buildings here were of very Eastern architecture. The orange groves, aloes, cactuses, fig trees, heliotropes, date palms, all the vegetation was such as Vicky had never seen before outside of a hot house. They often stopped to breathe in the sweet, almost overpowering scent of the brightly colored flowers, and to watch the swarms of butterflies and bees. The gaudily painted donkey and mule carts, embellished with red dyed feathers and harnesses covered with glittering, jingling bells were also very striking. In the towns, they often met these carts, driven by boys or young men who were dressed for the heat – or rather so nearly undressed Vicky felt shy of looking at them.

She had begun to take sketches of the views which were most striking to her eye.

“You are sure you do not need more time?” Fritz had asked her. She had only been sitting a few minutes when she put her sketchbook away.

“Oh, no, that is plenty. I can finish them later,” she had assured him. “You remember my pictures from Balmoral. Most of those were done this way.”

“How do you remember the details? Every color is perfect, and the shadows, the drops of water. How do you do it?”

Vicky smiled up at him, meeting his gaze. He stood looking down at her, his eyes expressing his admiration, just as they had when she first showed him her artwork at Balmoral, a few days before he proposed. She shrugged and shook her head.

“It is so easy. I don’t know what the fuss is.” She laughed. “Bertie, I didn’t think you knew so much about art as you do. You knew every artist at the galleries we saw.”

Bertie shrugged, turning his face away. He had always professed ignorance and boredom when Papa and Mama had attempted to speak with him about such things. “I know. I – I don’t usually find it so interesting, though I do know it quite well. But you make it so interesting,” he said to Fritz.

“No, it is she who makes it interesting,” Fritz said, smiling at Vicky. “I know so little myself, my company could not possibly make it interesting.”

“No, that is not true,” Vicky and Bertie both said. Vicky took their hands, smiling up at them. “You have both learned so much about art, I am proud of you.”

Here’s the blurb

Vicky’s father, Albert, the Prince Consort, has just died, leaving her and her family under a heavy cloud of grief, without their dearest friend and advisor, at a most critical time: The political horizon grows dark with storm clouds at the entry of Bismarck to Germany’s political stage in 1862.

Will Fritz’s courage stand the test as he confronts the spider in its web? Is Prussia really fighting for the rights of the Schleswig people, or is so much blood being shed for the sake of Prussia’s aggrandizement?

Join Vicky and Fritz on their journeys under the blue cloudless skies of the Mediterranean to the peaceful heather-clad hills of the Highlands of Scotland; to the burning heat of the North African desert to the raging blizzards of a winter war in Denmark.

When Vicky’s closest friend disappears, will she be able to keep the secret? Will old enemies prove to be friends, and old friends prove to be enemies?

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Meet the Author

Luv Lubker has lived in the Victorian era half her life, making friends with the Brontë sisters and the extended family of Queen Victoria. Now she knows them quite as well as her own family.

Born in a cattle trough in the Appalachian mountains, Luv lives in Texas – when she comes to the modern world.

When she isn’t living in the Victorian era, she enjoys being with her family; making and eating delicious raw food, riding her bike (which she only learned to ride at 25, though she has ridden a unicycle since she was 7), and watching animals – the passion of her childhood.

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