#TwoForTuesday: Historical Fiction. Clairmont by Lesley McDowell & Saltblood by Francesca De Tores @LesleyMcDowell1 @Wildfirebks @RosieMargesson @FrancescaHaig @BloomsburyBooks #Clairmont #LesleyMcDowell #Saltblood #FrancescaDeTores

Good morning everyone today on Two For Tuesday I’m featuring two historical fiction books that I’ve received recently and am looking forward to reading.

💙 Clairmont by Lesley McDowell

🩵 Saltblood by Francesca De Tores

I love books that feature strong female characters, especially ones that I haven’t heard of so these books instantly appealed.  I’m looking forward to learning more about them and more about the period the two books are set in.

If you could go back in time, what period would you want to go back to?

Clairmont by Lesley McDowell

1816. A massive volcanic eruption has caused the worst storms that Europe has seen in decades, yet Percy and Mary Shelley have chosen to visit the infamous Lord Byron at his villa on Lake Geneva. It wasn’t their idea: Mary’s eighteen year old step-sister, Claire Clairmont, insisted.

But the reason for Claire’s visit is more pressing than a summer escape with the most famous writers in the world. She’s pregnant with Byron’s child – a child Byron doesn’t want, and scarcely believes is his own.

Claire has the world in her grasp. This trip should have given her everything she ever dreamed of. But within days, her life will be in ruins.

History has all but forgotten her story – but she will not be silenced.

Salt Blood by Francesca De Tores

In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

Mary’s dual existence as Mark will lead to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud. But none of this will stop Mary yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

She will become a pirate.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history’s most remarkable figures.