Mr. Fraser, Miss Fraser, and I have just returned home from five days spent first at a water park and then on the Oregon Coast. On Wednesday, when my website was being discussed on Smart Bitches and Dear Author, we were on the road between the water park and the coast, with a side trip to Mount St Helens--which, incidentally, is way out in the woods, rendering my iPhone useless for hours on end. It's a bit disconcerting to have one's 15 minutes of internet "fame" take place while one is offline, I must say!
On the way home today we passed through Portland, so of course we stopped at Powell's, the most awesome bookstore in the world. The downtown flagship store covers a full city block, and I've spent the better part of a full day there on previous trips. Since Miss Fraser is an impatient 6-year-old, we couldn't stay that long, but I managed thirty minutes or so in the Britain and France shelves of the history section and came out with the following haul:
The English: A Social History, 1066-1945, by Christopher Hibbert
Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres, by Ruth Brandon
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, by William Dalrymple
Wellington and the Arbuthnots, by E.A. Smith
In Flight with the Eagle: A Guide to Napoleon's Elite, by Raymond Horricks
Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trials of Warren Hastings, by Jeremy Bernstein
Women in English Society 1500-1800, by Mary Prior
The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain, by Charles Kightly
The India, Wellington, and Napoleon books are research for specific future novels. The others just looked interesting.
You are going to have more than 15 minutes of fame as the book is fabulous and the writer phenomenal.
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