To The Fair Land by Lucienne Boyce #BlogTour

 

"There are dreams that lure men on, rumours of lost lands and hidden cities, hidden treasure, fabled gold. The facts speak against such chimera, and the world labels the man who seeks them mad, but he will not abandon his quest. The thought of wealth or power is too much for him. That is your Fair Land."

To The Fair Land by Lucienne Boyce is a sumptious historical novel, with elements of thriller. 

1789: We meet Ben Dearlove, an aspiring and struggling young writer in the Covent Garden Theatre, attempting to watch The Life and Death of Captain Cook amidst the sounds of cheering and hooting. The theatre goers are fighting for better seats, there is a constant influx of latecomers, when a strange woman sits next to Ben. 

She scorns the action on stage, pronouncing it to be rubbish and gibberish. When she claims that Captain Cook, the nation’s darling of the moment, was a fool, the audience around her doesn’t take it kindly. Ben has to rescue the stranger from the incensed mob and take her home. The woman is ill, and in her delirium cries out the name Miranda. Not only her behaviour is unusual, she also has a tattoo - "the red bird on the woman's shoulder with its high crest and long tail was as delicate as a drawing from a monkish bestiary".

Ben kindly offers some money to the servant attending the gentlewoman, as it's obvious they are in dire straits. He considers what to do next, but then decides that he's not going to do anything else. "...why should he concern himself with these women? They were a pair of curiosities, to be sure, but London was full of curiosities..."

A few weeks later an anonymous novel An Account of a Voyage to the Fair Land becomes a literary sensation in London. What's peculiar is that the ship in the novel is named Miranda. Ben decides to find out who the mysterious author of the novel is, and believes the strange woman he met in the Covent Garden might help him with the information. If only he can find her, as she has disappeared seemingly without a trace.

The search for the anonyous writer proves to be more than Ben has bargained for. The danger seems to follow in his footsteps. While Ben tries to go after the elusive woman, there are menacing strangers shadowing him. How is the Admiralty involved in all this secrecy? 

Before the scandalous truth is revealed, Ben has to get out of prison, catch a thief and try to bring the murderer to justice.

To The Fair Land is a sharp, daring original story of forbidden love, good and evil, betrayal and murder. It dazzles with vigour, holding the suspence from the beginning to the last pages.

It resurrects a historical period and place with an enthralling involvement, and casts a modern angle on the collision of cultures, lambasting the "civilised against primitive society" belief.

This post is part of the blog tour!

Many thanks to Lucienne Boyce, SilverWood and Rachel's Random Resources for my copy of the book!

 

Purchase Links 

Amazon – Paperback and Kindle:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fair-Land-Lucienne-Boyce-ebook/dp/B00936U3C2

https://www.amazon.com/Fair-Land-Lucienne-Boyce-ebook/dp/B00936U3C2

SilverWood Books – Paperback - https://www.silverwoodbooks.co.uk/product/9781781320174/to-the-fair-land

Book Depository - https://www.bookdepository.com/Fair-Land-Lucienne-Boyce/9781781320174

Foyles - https://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/to-the-fair-land,lucienne-boyce-9781781320174

Barnes and Noble – Paperback and Nook Book - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-the-fair-land-lucienne-boyce/1111543434?ean=9781781320174

Apple Books https://books.apple.com/gb/book/to-the-fair-land/id733789778

Kobo - https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/to-the-fair-land-1

Author Bio – 

Lucienne Boyce writes historical fiction, non-fiction and biography. After gaining an MA in English Literature, specialising in eighteenth-century fiction, she published her first historical novel, To The Fair Land (SilverWood Books, 2012, reissued 2021), an eighteenth-century thriller set in Bristol and the South Seas. 

 

Her second novel, Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery (SilverWood Books, 2015) is the first of the Dan Foster Mysteries and follows the fortunes of a Bow Street Runner who is also an amateur pugilist. Bloodie Bones was joint winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016, andwas also a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction 2016. The second Dan Foster Mystery, The Butcher’s Block, was published in 2017 and was awarded an IndieBrag Medallion in 2018. The third in the series, Death Makes No Distinction, was published in 2019 and is also an IndieBrag Medallion honoree, recipient of Chill With a Books Premium Readers’ Award, and a joint Discovering Diamonds Book of the Month. In 2017 an e-book Dan Foster novella, The Fatal Coin, was trade published by SBooks. 

 

In 2013, Lucienne published The Bristol Suffragettes(SilverWood Books), a history of the suffragette movement in Bristol and the west country. In 2017 she published a collection of short essays, The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign. 

 

Social Media Links – 

Twitter: @LucienneWrite

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LucienneWriter

Blog: http://francesca-scriblerus.blogspot.co.uk/  

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6437832.Lucienne_Boyce