First Impressions: The Writings of Author Alexa Adams: Tis The Season for Swag: Giveaways Galore 5

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Tis The Season for Swag: Giveaways Galore 5

Giveaways Galore Guidelines: To enter, please leave your email address in a comment on the giveaway in which you are interested (you may enter as many as you want), including the name of the book in which you are interested. This giveaway is only open to US residents, I'm sorry to say. All giveaways are open until Christmas, winners being announced on 12/25. In those giveaways featuring greeting cards, the recipient of said cards will be selected amongst the winners.

Four novels on offer today: loved by me but ready to bring new joys to you. Blurbs are taken from Amazon. One lucky winner will win both of the first two novels:

The Darcys & Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers by Marsha Altman

The former:

A Tale of Two Gentlemen's Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters

Three days before their double wedding, Charles Bingley is desperate to have a word with his dear friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, seeking advice of a most delicate nature. Bingley is shocked when Darcy gives him a copy of an ancient, illustrated book of sensual secrets-but it does tell him everything he needs to know.

Eventually, of course, Jane finds this remarkable volume and in utmost secrecy shows it to her dear sister Elizabeth, who goes searching for a copy in the Pemberley library...

By turns hilarious and sweet, The Darcys & the Bingleys follows the two couples and the cast of characters surrounding them. Miss Caroline Bingley, it turns out, has such good reasons for being the way she is that the reader can't help but hold her in charity. Delightfully, she makes a most eligible match, and in spite of Darcy's abhorrence of being asked for advice, he and Bingley have a most

And the latter:

In this lively second installment, the Darcys and Bingleys are plunged into married life and its many accompanying challenges presented by family and friends.

With Jane and Elizabeth away, Darcy and Bingley take on the daunting task of managing their two-year- old children. Mary Bennet returns from the Continent pregnant by an Italian student promised to the church; Darcy and Elizabeth travel to find the father, and discover previously unknown—and shocking—Darcy relations. By the time Darcy discovers that there's more than one sibling of questionable birth in the family, the ever-dastardly Wickham arrives on the scene to try to seize the Darcy fortune once and for all.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathlene Schine
(read my review here)

Betty Weissmann has just been dumped by her husband of forty-eight years. Exiled from her elegant New York apartment by her husband’s mistress, she and her two middle-aged daughters, Miranda and Annie, regroup in a run-down Westport, Connecticut, beach cottage. In Schine’s playful and devoted homage to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, the impulsive sister is Miranda, a literary agent entangled in a series of scandals, and the more pragmatic sister is Annie, a library director, who feels compelled to move in and watch over her capricious mother and sister. Schine’s witty, wonderful novel “is simply full of pleasure: the pleasure of reading, the pleasure of Austen, and the pleasure that the characters so rightly and humorously pursue….An absolute triumph” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer).

Derbyshire by Marie Hogstrom

As the wife of Mr Darcy, Elizabeth realises that some of the closeness that formerly existed between her and Jane is now present between man and wife. But there are some things she cannot confide even to her husband. Bound by a vow of silence, as well as unsure of her own reactions, Elizabeth is forced to judge the events she becomes a witness to alone. Who is the beautiful Miss Byron, whose presence awakens Darcy’s joy at the same time as he is unwilling to reveal his relationship to this lady? How tolerant is the social sphere that Elizabeth has married into towards a woman who falls in love with a man far below her station? How will the woman’s brother react if he fears that the man in question is another gold-digger with his eyes set on her fortune? What does one say to a friend who has entered into a marriage of convenience, when she suddenly experiences what the force of passion makes a human being capable of?

Each of the winners will be entered in a second drawing, the winner of which will also receive a set of the following Christmas cards, made by myself, on unbleached paper: