Mushroom eBooks Blog

Etheldreda by Moyra Caldecott is now available much more widely and in the full range of our formats. All the usual eBookstores (see the list in the right-hand column) will be carrying it, whereas it could only previously be found at a couple of retailers. Samplers are available from the Etheldreda webpage.

The book is a fictionalized retelling of the life of Etheldreda, the seventh century Anglo-Saxon saint, written in the exciting and believable style for which Moyra Caldecott is so renowned. As one critic has said about her work: “…the author is so immersed in her subject that no trace of fantasising or contrivance is apparent. Like Joan Grant, she lives her work. Because it is so well done it is believable…” (The Glasgow Herald).

The blurb goes something like this…

Etheldreda, Princess of East Anglia, Queen of Northumbria and Abbess of Ely, was a remarkable woman who lived in restless, violent times when old beliefs were dying and new ones were struggling to emerge. Pagan clashed with Christian as the seven kingdoms of the Germanic tribes warred against each other and against the native Celts. Occasionally an uneasy peace was bought by the skilful use of the ‘diplomatic marriage’, and twice Etheldreda, though vowed to chastity, submitted to marriage for political reasons. When her second husband refused to accept the ‘arrangement’ between them, she fled south to the Island of Ely. But this is not just the story of a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon saint. It is about the general human struggle to comprehend the enigma of existence and to come to terms with Christ’s God, faced as we are by a violent and cruel world. This edition also contains several pages of chronology, genealogy, place names, notes and a map.

The eighth title, Fliers of Antares by Alan Burt Akers, in the long-running Saga of Dray Prescot is now published in multiple eBook formats. Many formats are available from eBookAd.com immediately, and the complete range of formats will be available from Fictionwise probably on Monday.

Here is the blurb from the book:

Dray Prescot, the Earthman who had been brought across interstellar space as the tool of the mysterious Star Lords, confronted his most baffling task while he was a hunted and harried wanderer of the continent of Havilfar. That task was to discover the means by which the aircraft of that continent’s most advanced civilization operated. Prescot is no scientist, but fulfill his task he must or he would never return to the princess and homeland he had won. So, for Dray Prescot there was but one course — with a whole continent against him, with time itself conspiring to balk him, the secrets of an unknown science must be made his…

Book seven of the excellent chronicles of Dray Prescot is now available from all the usual places online. Here is the blurb…

Never a man to leave something half done, Dray Prescot knew his task on the mysterious continent of Havilfar was far from completed. There were cruel conquerors to be overthrown, there was pursuit of the manhounds and their masters, and there was the dreaded arena. Could he survive the life of a gladiator against the killers and monsters of a spoiled queen — while the Star Lords waited for his mission to continue?