…if only ! Still, despite the gloom of an excessively unsettled and wet winter, the new year has sprinted off to an energetic start with two new titles lined up for publication during 2014.
The second title in the JOURNEYS OF RUPERT WINFIELD series is scheduled for release early in the second half of the year. THE GERSHOM SCROLL deals with the situation in the Middle East in the 1930s. Historical interest concerns the situation in Palestine (seemingly unresolved almost a century later !) as well as the demand for oil from the new fields in the British mandated Kingdom of Iraq. Judging from the [unsolicited] feedback to Rupert Winfield’s first Journey through Egypt (FATAL TEARS), the itch to travel there and see for yourself has taken hold. The traveller in you will also not be disappointed with the next book, as much of the story is based around the rose-pink city of Petra. Words hardly do either the splendor or the scale of the place justice, so I’ll offer you this photo I took as a means of whetting your appetite.
Not to be left behind, La Contessa di Capezzani-Batelli has also embarked on the publication of her second appearance with her beloved chamber opera Group of Lucca, or COGOL for short. In Book 2 of the AN ECCENTRIC IN LUCCA series – FEELINGS OF GUILT – this unwelcome emotion is explored from several of the character’s perspectives and the Contessa, being a good listener and a keen observer of human frailty – including her own – becomes even more involved in the lives of several of her “angels”, as she calls her artistes. The bass Amilcare Luchetti meets a young man from Puglia, but remains unaware of the consequences of that meeting; why is the highly repected accountant Riccardo Fossi discretely meeting the man from Sicily ?; where will the Contessa’s establishing Lucca’s first hospice lead them all ? The Contessa’s faithful maid seems to have become even more cantankerous than before and Carlo Quinto is still muttering and growling at just about everything ! In adition to all of that, why has the eccentric Englishwoman chosen to put on one of her COGOL concerts to raise funds for a charity that looks after working horses and donkeys ?
Well, there is a link…in fact, the link extends across both new books.
The Contessa’s latest concert is to raise funds for a charity that was started by a woman in whom the spirit of caring humanity burned as brightly as it does in the Contessa herself.
In 1934 Dorothy Brooke, the wife of a British Army officer in Egypt, founded the OLD WAR HORSE MEMORIAL HOSPITAL in Cairo and the Brooke Hospital for Animals was born.
She had been so moved by the plight of thousands of horses abandoned by the British Army in Egypt at the end of World War I, that she raised money and opened the hospital with the promise of free veterinary care for all of the city’s working horses and donkeys. Today, her original hospital is still there, doing what it was established to do 80 years ago. Since then, the Brooke’s work has also extended well beyond the borders of Egypt :
Visit the Brooke and read about their work for yourself:
There will be more information about these two new releases on my website over the next few days. Please visit me there.
Until the next time…
stuartfifield.com 