Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
I am wicked thrilled to be on this lovely blog tour celebrating a series I first *discovered!* on NetGalley – which is the Bury Down Chronicles! I have only been on NetGalley since February of 2020 (wherein I started participating by listening to audio extracts) and I have been reviewing and listening to audiobooks via NetGalley since July, 2020. Previously I was not able to participate on NetGalley due to my inability to read ebooks due to my chronic migraines. Hence why I am celebrating this year NetGalley finally released a format which works for readers who only read stories in print and/or listen to audiobooks; as the latter have been such a keen pleasure of joy in my life since I first started listening to them in 2016.
I wasn’t sure which kinds of audiobooks would be available for review consideration this Summer on NetGalley but what I am finding is a lovely mixture of stories – from adult to Children’s Lit and from Fiction and Non-Fiction. Three of the reviews I submitted are on my blog now – which are as follows: Solstice Shadows (see also Review); My Life in Plants (see also Review) and Jorik Calling (see also Review). I will be releasing more as I finish the stories I’ve begun listening to whilst I am also re-balancing my NetGalley selections as a few of them archived before I could listen to them and am thankful those selections are on Scribd.
When it came to Megge of Bury Down – I was thankful I could request the audiobook from the author as I had a lot of health issues in September and at the end of October; this coming week I am listening to both Megge of Bury Down (courtesy of the author) and The Lady of the Cliffs (which thankfully was available via NetGalley). What caught my attention first and foremost is how this is a lovely installment of stories featuring strong women and a cornerstone of History I do not regularly get to read or listen too. I love seeking out hidden stories in the historical past which bring to life a bit of history you are not expecting to find and whose heroines of the stories themselves have such a strong story to be heard.
I personally love finding Feminist Historical Fiction & Historical Women’s Fiction stories as much as I love stories which dip into the shadows and corners of Magical Realism. Each writer who uses Magical Realism re-invents what can be done with this genre and it is a joy to continue to discover each writer’s spin and evocation of the genre itself. For these reasons I am wicked thrilled I can listen to this series during the blog tour and to help signal boost the series to those readers who might not have discovered it.
Today, I am sharing extracts from both stories in order to give you a better preview of what is inside them and hopefully after reading the extracts you might decide to either fetch these audiobooks via NetGalley yourself (as I saw they are still available under ‘Listen Now’) or perhaps you’ll add the series to your own #mustread list! Either way, ENJOY!
The Bury Down Chronicles:
Megge of Bury Down (book one)
Megge of Bury Down was recently named a Distinguished Favorite in the categories of historical fiction and cover design at the Independent Press NYC Big Book Awards.
The Lady of the Cliffs (book two)
The Lady of the Cliffs is a continuation of Megge of Bury Down, it is not a standalone novel and readers will have to have read Megge in order to understand the events that take place in this book.
Published by: Rowan Moon (@RowanMoon_Press)
Genre(s): Historical Fiction, Celtic Historical Fiction
Converse via: #HistoricalFiction, #HistFic, #Celtic and #MeggeOfBuryDown
as well as #BuryDownChronicles, #MagicalRealism or #WomensFiction
About Rebecca Kightlinger
Rebecca Kightlinger holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. A fulltime writer and literary critic, she divides her workday between researching and writing the Bury Down Chronicles, reviewing novels for the Historical Novel Society, and reading fiction submissions for New England Review. She travels to Cornwall to carry out on-site research for each book of the Bury Down series.
In her twenty years of medical practice as an obstetrician gynecologist, she had the privilege of caring for the women of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Guyana, South America. A lifetime Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a member of the American Association for the History of Medicine, she also studies ancient medicine, medieval midwifery, the history of Cornwall, and the manuscripts and arts of the mystical healer.
She and her husband live in Pennsylvania.
The Silent Woman (Interview)
