Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Title:   Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon Author: Kate Williams Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Hutchinson (7 Nov 2013) I've been waiting to read this biography ever since it was announced that Kate Williams' next book was going to be a biography of Josephine Bonaparte.  I devoured her  biography of Emma Hamilton, and her dual biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Queen Victoria. I think she is one of the best biographers around and not just because she has lovely curly red hair. Even though I saw the book in Waterstones when I was in London in December, I waited until I got back to order it. My suitcase was heavy enough as it was. So I ordered it from Amazon. It was the perfect companion to Heather Webb's novel BECOMING JOSEPHINE. By the time I was finished, I felt that I had a true portrait of the former Empress of the French.  Although Josephine grew up on a plantation, her family were not wealthy. At one point, the family were actually li...

On a dark, sultry night, the scent of the lush bougainvillea and frangipani filling the air, two young girls barely in their teens, cousins, one slight and skinny, the other with hair the color of moonlight slip away from the plantation house where they live. The velvet caresses of the night breezes stir their hair as they creep into the surrounding jungle, giggling at how they have eluded their guardians. They make their way past the swaying vines, entering into an eerie and mysterious world, no light but the fireflies to guide them as they pick their way to the tumble down shack of the conjurer woman who will hopefully tell their fortunes. Both girls know that they will get into trouble if their families know where they have gone, but the urge to know their future is too great. In the shack they find an elderly black woman of indeterminate years wearing a red turban and crouching on a filthy mat. Frightened and nervous, the two girls hold hands tightly as they tell the woman what t...