Today it's my pleasure to welcome Beverley Eikli to my blog to talk about her latest book The Maid of Milan which is published this Friday.
Can you describe The Maid of Milan in 15 words or less?
Phew, that’s hard. But here’s my best try for now ;-)
A once-vibrant debutante’s error of judgment has condemned her to live a lie – preventing her from forging real love with her husband.
Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book The Maid of Milan?
The Maid of Milan is a psychological historical drama as much as a romance with a redemptive ending, about a once-vibrant debutante who made a terrible error of judgment four years before I take up the story. Unfortunately, my heroine, Adelaide has been condemned by her morally upright mother to live a lie - one which denies her the ability to forge real love with the husband she reluctantly married three years before.
I was thrilled with my first review which describes it as a combination of ‘Dynasty’ with its love triangle, drug addiction and lies, but written in a style reminiscent of Anthony Trollope’s ‘The Pallisers’ where ‘beneath the waving fans is gritty intrigue.'
Can honour and action banish the shadows of old sins?
Emily Micklen has no option after the death of her loving fiancé, Jack, but to marry the scarred, taciturn, soldier who represents her only escape from destitution.
Major Angus McCartney is tormented by the reproachful slate-grey eyes of two strikingly similar women: Jessamine, his dead mistress, and Emily, the unobtainable beauty who is now his reluctant bride.
Emily’s loyalty to Jack’s memory is matched only by Angus’s determination to atone for the past and win his wife with honour and action. As Napoleon cuts a swathe across Europe, Angus is sent to France on a mission of national security, forcing Emily to confront both her allegiance to Jack and her traitorous half-French family.
Angus and Emily may find love, but will the secrets they uncover divide them forever?
This afternoon as part of the Choc Lit feature week I've decided to take a look ahead to some of the fab books they are publishing in the next 3 months. And with a wide selection of genres covering historical, regency, paranormal and contemporary, there's surely something for everyone.
The Maid of Milan by Beverley Eikli (published 7th March)
How much would you pay for a clear conscience?
Adelaide Leeson wants to prove herself worthy of her husband, a man of noble aspirations who married her when she was at her lowest ebb.
Lord Tristan Leeson is a model of diplomacy and self-control, even curbing the fiery impulses of his youth to maintain the calm relations deemed essential by his mother-in-law to preserve his wife’s health.
A visit from his boyhood friend, feted poet Lord James Dewhurst, author of the sensational Maid of Milan, persuades Tristan that leaving the countryside behind for the London Season will be in everyone’s interests.
But as Tristan’s political career rises and Adelaide revels in society’s adulation, the secrets of the past are uncovered. And there’s a high price to pay for a life of deception.
Amazon links: Paperback
