The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another
List by Merrin & NextReads
Quote by James Matthew Barrie
The hidden diary of Marie Antoinette
by Carolly Erickson
HIST ERI
Imagine that, on the night before she is to die under the blade of the guillotine, Marie Antoinette leaves behind in her prison cell a diary telling the story of her life - from her privileged childhood as Austrian Archduchess to her years as glamorous mistress of Versailles to the heartbreak of imprisonment and humiliation during the French Revolution. Carolly Erickson takes the reader deep into the psyche of Frances doomed queen: her love affair with handsome Swedish diplomat Count Axel Fersen, who risked his life to save her; her fears on the terrifying night the Parisian mob broke into her palace bedroom intent on murdering her and her family; her harrowing attempted flight from France in disguise; her recapture and the grim months of harsh captivity; her agony when her beloved husband was guillotined and her young son was torn from her arms, never to be seen again. Erickson brilliantly captures the queens voice, her hopes, her dreads, and her suffering. We follow, mesmerized, as she reveals every detail of her remarkable, eventful life - from her teenage years when she began keeping a diary to her final days when she awaited her own bloody appointment with the guillotine.
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Gone with the Windsors
by Laurie Graham
F GRA
In this fun and sassy diary novel, wealthy and recently widowed Maybell Brumby decides to leave Baltimore for the social whirl of 1932 London. Upon her arrival, Maybell discovers that an old school friend, the ambitious Bessie Wallis Simpson, is also in town, and though still married to husband number two, Wallis is out to score the world's most eligible bachelor: the Prince of Wales. This splendid account of the 20th century's most scandalous courtship will delight and entertain monarchy fans.
The book of loss
by Judith Jedamus
F JED
This is a story about jealousy. It is also about lies and betrayals, trysts and exiles, palace intrigues and plagues. The setting is exotic: the courts and streets of Kyoto, the imperial capital of Japan, in the late tenth century. The story is written as a diary kept by one of the two women who scheme for the affections of a conniving man. Their rivalry reaches such a pitch that it threatens to undermine the rule of the Emperor himself.
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Crossed bones
by Jane Johnson
F JOH
In an exclusive London restaurant, a gift is given that will change Julia Lovat's life. The antique book of Jacobean embroidery delights her, but when she settles down to read it more closely, she unexpectedly discovers within its foxed and faded pages; the extraordinary diary of a young Cornish girl, calling to her from across the centuries...The stories of these two women are destined to converge in an extraordinary and haunting manner.
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The tenth gift : a novel
by Jane Johnson
F JOH
In an expensive London restaurant, Julia Lovat receives a gift that will change her life. At first glance it is a book of exquisate seventeenth-century embroidery patterns belonging to a woman named Catherine Ann Treganna. Yet in its margins are the faintest diary entries; they reveal that 'Cat' and others were stolen from their Cornish church in 1625 by Muslim pirates and taken on a brutal voyage to Morocco to be auctioned off as slaves. Set almost 400 years apart, the stories of these two women converge in an extraordinary and haunting manner that will make readers wonder - is history fated to repeat itself.
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