Book Birthday: Lace and Blade 4!

[hrj]

There's a new Alpennia story out in the world! The anthology Lace and Blade 4, edited by Deborah J. Ross, includes "Gifts Tell Truth", a story taken from Jeanne's early adulthood during the French occupation of Alpennia.

In The Mystic Marriage, Vicomtesse Jeanne de Cherdillac tells another character, ‘I have loved—truly loved—only four women. One of them is dead. One never found the courage to say either yes or no. You were the third.’ When I wrote those words, I knew relatively little about those first two women, but I had the first inkling that Jeanne might have some interesting stories to tell. This is not the story of either that first or second love, but of the time between them when grief and regret had not yet been replaced by archness and a cultivated sophistication.

The volume includes stories by many other great authors:

• “At the Sign of the Crow and Quill,” by Marie Brennan
• “On the Peacock Path,” by Judith Tarr
• “Sunset Games,” by Robin Wayne Bailey
• “Sorcery of the Heart,” by Lawrence Watt-Evans
• “The Butcher’s Boy and the Piri Folk,” by Pat MacEwen
• “Gifts Tell Truth,” by Heather Rose Jones
• “A Sword for Liberty,” by Diana L. Paxson
• “Hearts of Broken Glass,” by Rosemary Edghill
• “The Game of Lions,” by Marella Sands
• “The Sharpest Cut,” by Doranna Durgin
• “Pawn’s Queen,” by India Edghill
• “The Heart’s Coda,” by Carol Berg
• “The Wind’s Kiss,” by Dave Smeds

This collection of stories of swashbuckling romance is a perfect gift for Valentine's Day -- either for yourself or for someone you love (in addition to buying it for yourself, of course).