Author of Saxon historical fiction and non-fiction, 20th-century historical mysteries, and Norse-inspired historical romantasy. Book reviewer and blog host.
Author: MJ Porter, author
I'm an author of historical fiction (Early England/Viking and the British Isles as a whole before 1066, as well as five 20th-century mysteries), a non-fiction title about the royal women of tenth-century England, and historical fantasy.
It’s happy release day to The Eagle Will Rise, the first book in The Sundered Kingdom Series. Listen to me talk about why I wrote this book #newbook #historicalfiction #Mercia
I’m introducing The Eagle Will Rise and reading the first chapter. Enjoy.
Here’s the blurb
The king is dead; for Mercia to survive, another must take his place.
Coelwulf, Mercia’s last king, is dead. His legacy and right to rule Western Mercia have been claimed by Alfred of Wessex, but all know Alfred was never to have Mercia. Neither were the Viking raiders, who now command the eastern-most parts of Mercia and the former kingdom of the East Angles.
Icel, the bastion of Mercia’s wars against Wessex and the Viking raiders, lies dying, but he refuses to abandon his beloved kingdom to her long-standing enemies.
Rudolf, the once-young ally of King Coelwulf the second, is summoned by Icel to attend upon him. Grudgingly, he arrives at Budworth, the task laid before him, audacious to say the least; rescue Coelwulf’s acknowledged heir, Æthelred, from Wessex, where he’s held prisoner by King Alfred. To do so, Rudolf must prevail upon the dispersed oath-sworn warrior band of King Coelwulf, and all of them, aside from him, have ignored Icel’s increasingly furious demands to attend upon him. If they won’t obey Icel, then why should they listen to Rudolf?
The fate of Mercia’s survival rests in the hands of a man who should long have been in his grave, and Rudolf, a boy who’s become a man in the most trying of circumstances. They must forge Æthelred into the emblem of Mercian survival. Or die trying. But first, they must rescue Æthelred from someone who’s always pretended to be Mercia’s ally, and is anything but.
I’m welcoming Nicola Harris to the blog with her new novel, Infidel #InfidelTheDaughtersOfAragon #NicolaHarris #CatherineOfAragon #HistoricalFiction #TudorHistory #BookTour #BlogTour #YardeBookPromotions
I’m welcoming Nicola Harris to the blog with her new novel, Infidel
Guest post by Nicola Harris
My research for Infidel began long before I ever thought of writing a novel about Catherine of Aragón. It began on a beach in Tenerife, years before tourism transformed the island. To a child, it felt like another world. The light, the heat, the colours, the food, the rhythm of life.
I was fortunate enough to spend a great deal of time with a Spanish family who welcomed me into their home and their culture year after year. They taught me fragments of their language and, more importantly, the stories that shaped their history. Through them, I first encountered the world of Muslim Spain and the Catholic warrior monarchs who fought to reclaim it. It was impossible not to be fascinated.
Catalina’s mother, Isabella of Castile, stood out immediately. She was disciplined, relentless, and utterly convinced of her divine purpose. She was also a mother raising her children in a kingdom defined by conflict.
That tension between power and vulnerability became the foundation of my interest in Catalina’s early life. Before she was a queen, she was a child shaped by siege warfare, political ambition, and the expectations of a dynasty that demanded strength from its daughters.
As I began to research more deeply, I found myself drawn to the wider world that touched Catalina’s childhood. I have always been captivated by the fall of Constantinople and the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II’s audacious plan to take the city.
On a trip to Turkey a few years ago, I spoke with a Turkish waiter about his view of the sultan. His pride and respect for Mehmed stayed with me. It reminded me that history is never simple. Every figure we study has another side, another story, another set of loyalties and beliefs.
That conversation helped me approach the period with a wider lens, aware that the Christian and Muslim worlds were not simply enemies but complex civilisations with their own brilliance and contradictions.
Juana of Castile, Catalina’s older sister, became a vital part of the novel for this reason. She is often reduced to the label Juana the Mad, but she was far more than that. In Infidel, Juana allows me to explore the moral questions surrounding the Muslim wars and the Inquisition.
She is outspoken, intelligent, and unwilling to accept cruelty as the natural cost of faith. Through her, I could give voice to the discomfort a modern reader might feel when confronted with the punishments and persecutions of the age. Without revealing too much, Juana’s own journey takes her far from home, and the emotional cost of that distance shapes her view of the world.
Her brother Juan was married to Margaret of Austria, who is frequently remembered for educating Anne Boleyn. What is less often acknowledged is that long before Anne ever entered Margaret’s household, Catalina was already connected to Margaret by family.
In Infidel, those family connections matter. It reminds us that Catalina did not exist only in relation to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She belonged to a wider European network of women whose lives, loyalties, and alliances shaped the courts that Anne would later enter.
There is a great deal of sadness in this story, because there was a great deal of sadness in Catalina’s early life. She lost people she loved. She witnessed the brutality of war. She learned to read cyphers and how to read hearts. She watched her parents arguing over her father’s love affairs. She learned to stand firm even when everything around her was shifting.
Her childhood was not soft or sheltered. It was an ordeal. She came face to face with native Americans who were snatched from their land and brought to the palace. I wanted to understand what forged her, what hardened her, and what gave her the strength she carried into England. Her resilience did not appear by magic. It was earned.
Infidel grew from all these threads: my early love of Spain, my fascination with the fall of Constantinople, my respect for the complexity of the period, my interest in the overlooked connections between women like Catalina and Margaret of Austria, and my desire to show Catalina not as a symbol but as a girl shaped by fire.
She was fierce, vulnerable, determined, and unforgettable long before she became a Tudor queen. I wanted to bring that girl to life. I wanted to show the sisters who stood beside her, the world that formed her, and the dynasty that demanded so much from its daughters.
Here’s the blurb
Born in the glittering courts of Castile and Aragon and forged in the shadow of war, Catalina de Aragón grows up surrounded by queens, rebels, and explorers. She is her mother’s last daughter, the final jewel of a dynasty built on conquest and faith, and the one child Isabella of Castile cannot bear to lose.
But destiny has already claimed Catalina.
Promised to Prince Arthur of England since childhood, she is raised to bind kingdoms, soothe old wounds, and carry the hopes of an empire across the sea. Yet, Spain fractures under rebellion, grief, and the ruthless zeal of its own rulers.
From the burning streets of Granada to the storm‑lashed Bay of Biscay, Catalina and her sisters must navigate a treacherous path shaped by ambition, betrayal, and the dangerous love of men who fear the power of queens. She learns to read cyphers, to read hearts, and to stand unbroken even as her childhood is stripped from her piece by piece.
And when she finally sails for England armed with her mother’s lessons, her father’s steel, and the ghosts of the Alhambra at her back, Catalina steps into her fate not as a girl, but as a force.
A princess.
A survivor.
A daughter of Aragon.
Infidel is the story of a young woman raised for greatness and destined to reshape the fate of nations. This is Catalina, as she has never been seen before. She is fierce, vulnerable, and unforgettable.
A sweeping, intimate portrait of sisterhood, survival, and the making of a dynasty, Infidel reveals the hidden lives of a woman whose courage shaped the Tudor world.
Any Triggers: Grief, mild peril, the Spanish Inquisition, enslaved people, death in childbirth and miscarriage.
I’ve always been a writer, but it was only when illness forced me to stop everything that I finally had the time to write a novel. After decades of misdiagnosis, I learned I was born with a serious genetic condition, not rare, but profoundly misunderstood. The clues were there from birth, and suddenly, a lifetime of struggle made sense.
Writing became my lifeline: a way to step beyond my pain, to shape my experience into a story, and to find meaning where there had once been only endurance.
I have a lifelong love of children, Counselling, and Psychotherapy Theory and history.
I’m reviewing Harbour of Thieves by Richard Cullen, a brand new 19th century tale of smugglers and North Yorkshire #historicalfiction #bookreview @boldwoodbooks @wordhog
Here’s the blurb
An epic NEW historical crime story of treachery and bitter rivalry between Yorkshire’s tough smuggling gangs 💥 Perfect for the fans of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, House of Guinness and Peaky Blinders 🩸⚔️
Can one man forget his past, or will he be dragged back into the world of violence he worked hard to leave behind?
Yorkshire, 1840
Along this treacherous Yorkshire coastline, the cutthroat industry of smuggling thrives, and two rival gangs rule the night… the Stringers of Bay Town and the Lambs of Ravenscar. Waging a war for control of the contraband that flows through England’s northern cities.
After a lifetime of violence and bloodshed, Jim Hood returns to his hometown of Whitby with his friend Samuel Comus, their pockets heavy with prize money from their exploits along the African coast. They dream of respectability, of turning their backs on their past, but old friends and enemies await, and old habits die hard…
When tragedy strikes, and Jim’s well-laid plans turn to ash, Jim is forced to return to the brutal world he’d sworn to leave behind.
Now he must navigate the deadly currents that flow between rival smuggling empires, where childhood loyalties war with newfound enemies, and where the price of survival might be the very soul he’d fought so hard to reclaim.
Perfect for the fans of Bernard Cornwell, Ken Follett and Dan Jones.
Harbour of Thieves is a rollicking good read set in the 1840s, in and around the coastline of Whitby and Scarborough (North Yorkshire) and focuses on the underbelly of smuggling as two rival bands face not one, but two enemies, and are riven with discord between each other as well.
We have multiple characters in this thrilling, fast-paced tale, and we also need to give a shout-out to the Yorkshire weather! There are many characters we simply despise, a few we quite like, and others we can perhaps admire, while being grateful never to be faced with the decisions they have to make. We have strong women, even stronger women and those we think we should pity but who, in their own way, are perhaps the strongest of all. We have villains aplenty, from the excise man to the leader of the Lambs, who is a nasty piece of work.
The story is fast and satisfying, as events wrap around our would-be heroes, forcing them to make hard decisions to survive. This is a thrilling adventure of high stakes and high seas, and I devoured it in only 24 hours!
Check out my review for Rebellion, the first book in the Chronicles of the Black Lion series.
Meet the author
Richard Cullen is a writer of historical adventure and epic fantasy. Previously published by Head of Zeus and Orbit Books, his new historical adventure series for Boldwood, Chronicles of the Black Lion, set in thirteenth-century England, will launch in October 2024.
I’m delighted to welcome Vicky Adin and her new book, Sarah’s Destiny, to the blog, #HistoricalFiction #VictorianWomen #workingclasswomen #enduringlove #Bristol #widows #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn
@thecoffeepotbookclub.com
I’m delighted to welcome Vicky Adin and her new book, Sarah’s Destiny, to the blog,
Read about Vicky Adin’s inspiration for writing Sarah’s Destiny
My inspiration stretches back well into the seventeen hundreds as I hunted for my family history. Genealogy research always turns up interesting snippets of information. A name on one document, repeated on another and linked to another often leads to the discovery of the places, people, and occupations associated with their lives. I was in for a surprise as I abandoned the direct line and drifted along another branch to twigs and leaves.
Sarah’s story was one of those sideways leaps as I searched for extra details relating to my third and fourth great-grandparents. With a love of history and genealogy, such research can provide details beyond the facts, however, there are always gaps and to me that’s where the stories lie. I love filling in the gaps.
My third great-grandfather intrigued me. In those times, several branches of an extended family and generations of a direct line would live in that same area over long periods, with the sons often continuing the father’s occupation. In this case, a daughter maintained that tradition and in keeping with the naming patterns of the day, Sarah was the third daughter to be given that name in memory of two others. She must have carried a huge sense of responsibility. Such traditions are invaluable to a genealogist, but ….
Sometimes, the information doesn’t quite add up. When my great-grandfather’s dates didn’t quite match and when his daughters broke tradition and moved away from the family, I researched the one who remained. A gut instinct told me she could well be the key to what I was searching for. And I was right. The more documents I found about her life, the more fascinated I became.
Sarah lived her life in the Victorian era from 1834 to 1907. During that time, she was to have two husbands and eight children and lost three, but her marital status and the children’s names and dates were often confusing, suggesting more to the story than the hard facts provided. She was literate and worked as a licenced victualler, a pub landlord, in her own right, just like her father. She was, without doubt, loyal, determined, and defied conventions. But what was she really like? That is the one question genealogy research will never answer, especially that far back. That is where a writer’s intuition takes over.
Next came the historical research about Bristol, where she lived and worked her entire life. In its heyday Bristol was a progressive and prosperous city that sparked my curiosity. I’d never been to Bristol so I used Google Earth to ‘wander’ down the same streets that Sarah would have done. I found the pub, one among many, where she’d grown up beside the Welsh Back and where bars and restaurants still dot the landscape today, just as they were in her day. I love the fact that the core of England never changes. Some new buildings and some road realignments but in essence what Sarah knew, I could view.
A ‘back’ is a Bristolian word for a wharf and the Welsh Back is the cobblestone street running along the length of the famous floating harbour built in 1809. That is where the trows, (specially designed boats with folding masts to get under the low bridges) from Wales came across the notorious Bristol Channel and tied up to unload their wares.
The more I looked into Bristol’s history, the more I realised the city itself had a story to tell. So too, her lover.
I took Sarah’s facts and the spirit of Bristol and recreated her life. I filled the gaps, taking into account Bristol’s unique words and dialect and all the numerous and wonderful Victorian revelations, the likes of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and the serialisation of Dickens novels, the completion of the Bristol Suspension Bridge and so much more. We can never know exactly what people said, how they behaved, or what they thought, but understanding the mores and laws of the time offers a likely premise.
Sarah’s Destiny is inspired by a true story, the facts guided her time frame, and the history embellished the storyline, but Sarah’s soul captured my imagination.
Here’s the blurb
Young Sarah Daniels is the heart, soul and future of The White Hart Inn on the Welsh Back. Alongside the quay and wharves on Bristol’s floating harbour, she dreams of finding love, and a destiny where she can escape the drudgery and tragedy that life usually delivers Victorian women. But dreams are free, and few share her ideals. When reality strikes, and Sarah learns the hard way that life is unkind, one man offers her hope.
Through many decades of heart-aching loss, false promises and broken dreams, the young widow clings to that one hope. With six children to care for, she takes risks few others would consider. She breaks conventions and makes sacrifices to keep that hope alive.
Will her wishes come true, or is she destined to be another unfortunate in the sea of many?
Any Triggers: Grief, abuse, attempted rape (gentle)
This title is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.
Meet the author
Like the characters in her books, Vicky has a passion for family history and a love of old photos, antiques, and treasures from the past. After researching the history of the time and place, and realising the hardships many people suffered, Vicky knew she wanted to write their stories. Tales of love and loss, and triumph over adversity. Her latest release, Sarah’s Destiny, Book 1 of The Ancestors series, is inspired by a true love story set in Bristol.
Vicky particularly enjoys writing inter-generational sagas, inspired by true stories of early immigrants to New Zealand, linked by journals, letters, photographs, and heirlooms.
She’s an avid reader of historical novels, family sagas and women’s stories and loves to travel when she can. She has a MA(Hons) in English and Education. Her story of Gwenna won gold in The Coffee Pot Book Club Women’s Historical Fiction Book of Year in 2022 and several of her books carry the gold B.R.A.G medallion.
I’m reviewing the new book in the Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Italian Mysteries, Murder in Rome by TA Williams #BookReview #BlogTour #CosyCrime #ContemporaryCrime
I’m reviewing the new book in the Armstrong and Oscar Cozy Italian Mysteries, Murder in Rome by TA Williams #BookReview #BlogTour #CosyCrime #ContemporaryCrime
Here’s the blurb
The BRAND NEW instalment in the bestselling, beloved Armstrong & Oscar Cozy Mystery series!
A road leading to Rome
Former DCI Dan Armstrong has been living and working in Florence for nearly three years—yet somehow, Rome has always eluded him. That is, until glamorous TV celebrity Tamsin Goodfaith turns up with a request he can’t refuse: investigate her uncle’s suspicious death in the Eternal City.
Murder at the castle
Philip Hastings was a billionaire financier, found dead at his magnificent—if slightly spooky—medieval castle in the Roman hills. Dan and his faithful canine companion, Oscar, soon find themselves surrounded by luxury, secrets and more suspects than sightseeing opportunities.
This time it’s personal. But when a second murder follows close behind, the case turns dangerously personal. With whispers of ghosts and crumbling alibis, Dan and Oscar must sniff out the truth before he becomes the next victim. Harder to crack than castle walls—and harder still than stopping Oscar from stealing snacks—this Roman holiday is anything but relaxing. .
Murder in Rome is somehow the 15th book in the Armstrong and Oscar mysteries, and I’ve read them all (apart from 1, which I seem to have missed).
This latest outing sees Dan taking a trip to Rome, somewhere he’s not been before, with Oscar at his side. What he encounters is a palatial residence that seems to be hiding its own secrets, but his remit is simple, determine if Philip was murdered, or whether he really did commit suicide. As Dan begins to investigate there are strange goings-on in the dysfunctional, wealthy family.
Murder in Rome unfolds as earlier books in the series. The reader genuinely doesn’t know who can and can’t be trusted until there is a huge breakthrough. For this one, I loved the historical elements as it’s passed time Anna was able to help Dan solve his cases. Of course, Oscar has a starring role once more too.
Always a guaranteed good read, I didn’t guess who did it! I do love this series.
Check out my reviews for earlier books in the series, and be sure to start at book 1, Murder in Tuscany.
Meet the author
I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I studied languages at Nottingham University a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to work in Italy for seven years. My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years. We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only thirteen years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.
I started off writing romances but after 28 of them, I knew I wanted to try something different, and so the first of the Armstrong and Oscar cozy mysteries, Murder in Tuscany, was born three years ago. I’ve been having a lot of fun ever since getting to know the dynamic duo (and introducing them to people all over the world). These books are cosy crime [a genre I didn’t even know existed when I started writing them). They are murder mysteries, but not gory, over-violent stuff, but stories designed to exercise the brain of the reader and to put a smile on their face. Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations all over my beloved Italy.
