Shelf Share Thursday

Welcome to Shelf Share Thursday! This is the place to give the long neglected books gathering dust on your shelves a little love. Each week I will post a letter of the alphabet and 3 books on my shelf that start with that letter. Maybe I'll find out I've been holding on to a must read for far too long or maybe I'll find better uses for that stinker of a book I've had for far too long-scratching post for the kitty maybe? Please feel free to share your books too. Just pop your info in Mr. Linky at the bottom of the post :)


This weeks letter is E.

is for...............

Elizabeth's Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England by Robert Hutchinson
From Amazon:

"Elizabeth’s Spymaster is the story of the greatest spy of the time: Sir Francis Walsingham. Walsingham was the first ‘spymaster’ in the modern sense. His methods anticipated those of MI5 and MI6 and even those of the KGB. He maintained a network of spies across Europe, including double agents at the highest level in Rome and Spain---the sworn enemies of Queen Elizabeth and her protestant regime. His entrapment of Mary, Queen of Scots is a classic intelligence operation that resulted in her execution. "

The current book I am reading, The Huntress by Susan Carroll features Francis Walsingham as a supporting character. Basically anything to do with Elizabeth fascinates me and I got a great deal on this one a BookCloseOuts. The paperback version of his novel House of Treason: The Rise and Fall of the Tudor Dynasty is being released in September and I am looking forward to that one too.

E is also for:

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

From Amazon:

"Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie’s vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl," Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. "

I love the classics. I got this one at one of my fave used bookstores-Mystery House Book Shoppe in Walker, MI. I've never read anything by Edith Wharton (a shame, I know) and I decided to start with this one because its a short read. Hopefully I'll find time for it soon.

and E is for.....


Earthly Joys by Philippa Gregory

From Amazon:

"Whether he is nurturing a single rare seedling into a blossoming tree or planning acres of exquisitely conceived royal gardens, John Tradescant's fame and skill as a gardener are unsurpassed in seventeenth-century England. But it is Tradescant's clear-sighted honesty and loyalty that make him an invaluable servant, and in his role as informal confidant during garden strolls with Sir Robert Cecil, adviser to King James I, he witnesses the making of history, from the Gunpowder Plot to the accession of King Charles I and the growing animosity between Parliament and court."

I cut my historical fiction teeth on The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and have since read many of her wonderful novels. She wrote several during the Tudor period and now this one takes us on a journey into the Stuart period of England. This lady knows how to tell a great story and I'm hoping this one and the sequel Virgin Earth are as good as her others.

And those are my 3 for this week. Now it's your turn:

What's on your Shelf?