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Fall of Poppies
Stories of Love and the Great War
Stories of Love and the Great War
Contributions by:
Hazel Gaynor, Beatriz Williams, Jennifer Robson,
Jessica Brockmole, Kate Kerrigan, Evangeline Holland,
Lauren Willig, Marci Jefferson, edited by Heather Webb
Releasing March 1st, 2016
William Morrow
Top voices in historical fiction deliver an intensely moving collection of short stories about loss, longing, and hope in the aftermath of World War I—featuring bestselling authors such as Hazel Gaynor, Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig and edited by Heather Webb.
A squadron commander searches for meaning in the tattered photo of a girl he’s never met…
A Belgian rebel hides from the world, only to find herself nursing the enemy…
A young airman marries a stranger to save her honor—and prays to survive long enough to love her…The peace treaty signed on November 11, 1918, may herald the end of the Great War but for its survivors, the smoke is only beginning to clear. Picking up the pieces of shattered lives will take courage, resilience, and trust.
Within crumbled city walls and scarred souls, war’s echoes linger. But when the fighting ceases, renewal begins…and hope takes root in a fall of poppies.
Every once in a while, I like to leave my “romance genre” comfort zone and read something a different. Fall Of The Poppies is an interesting collection of short stories, all set around the end of World War One in 1918.
Here are my three favourite stories from this historical anthology:
A moving story about a single mum. The Daughter of Belgium by Marco Jefferson – Amelie has lived within the confines of the Cavell Institute in Brussels for three years. Now it is time to move all the patients into another building. Amelie is informed she is to stay behind and use the training she has gained during her time at the institute to look after the only patient who isn't moving too.
Lars Ludvig is not who Amelie thinks he is and finds out they have much more in common that she ever dreamed.
Betrayal. Something Worth Landing For by Jessica Brockmole – A beautiful story of an artist who develops feelings for an injured American serviceman who is being fitted for a mask to cover his facial disfigurement. He then goes back to his home, after been told tragic news about the beautiful young lady who helped him. Years later the woman finds out that the serviceman was told of her death, so she actively tries to track him down.
Compassion and hope. All For the Love of You by Jennifer Robson – A young pregnant woman who is and about to lose her job and home meets a pilot who offers to marry her on a whim. He tells her she can claim Widows benefit if he dies. Neither would have guessed that during the time they wait to become legally married, they both are falling in love with each other.
All the contributing authors are new to me. Each has their own individual style, covering vastly different plot-lines but all share the poignancy of the Great War. The austerity of the era is highlighted, yet, there is an abundance of hope for the protagonists. As a reader, I love any story that leaves me to ponder about what happens next and there is plenty to think and wonder about within these short stories.
4 stars
***arc generously received courtesy of publisher William Morrow via Edelweiss***
Jessica Brockmole is the author of the internationally bestselling Letters from Skye, an epistolary love story spanning an ocean and two wars. Named one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2013, Letters From Skye has been published in seventeen countries.
Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home and A Memory of Violets. She writes regularly for the national press, magazines and websites in Ireland and the UK.
Evangeline Holland is the founder and editor of Edwardian Promenade, the number one blog for lovers of World War I, the Gilded Age, and Belle Époque France with nearly forty thousand unique viewers a month. In addition, she blogs at Modern Belles of History. Her fiction includes An Ideal Duchess and its sequel, crafted in the tradition of Edith Warton.
Marci Jefferson is the author of Girl on the Golden Coin: A Novel of Frances Stuart, which Publisher’s Weekly called “intoxicating.” Her second novel, The Enchantress of Paris, will release in Spring 2015 from Thomas Dunne Books.
Kate Kerrigan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island trilogy. In addition she has written for the Irish Tatler, a Dublin-based newspaper, as well as The Irish Mail and a RTE radio show, Sunday Miscellany.
Jennifer Robson is the USA Today and international bestselling author of Somewhere in France and After the War is Over. She holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. Jennifer lives in Toronto with
her husband and young children.
her husband and young children.
Heather Webb is an author, freelance editor, and blogger at award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. Heather is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and she may also be found teaching craft-based courses at a local college
Beatriz Williams is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Secret Life of Violet Grant and A Hundred Summers. A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons. She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. William Morrow will publish her forthcoming hardcover, A Certain Age, in the summer of 2016.
Lauren Willig is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven works of historical fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, awarded the RITA, Booksellers Best and Golden Leaf awards, and chosen for the American Library Association’s annual list of the best genre fiction. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.
