BooksChatter: ☀ Christmas Child: Victorian Saga [1]

Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Christmas Child, a Victorian Romance Saga by Carol Rivers (23 September 2019,Carol Rivers Publications , 402 pages).

PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and the Kindle Cloud Reader Preview below, as well as full details of the series.

Christmas Child is FREE on Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library.

Author Carol Rivers will be awarding five dedicated signed paperback novels by her to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), and reviews (✍).

|| Synopsis || Teaser: KCR Preview || Teaser: Exclusive Excerpt || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

Synopsis

The 2019 Victorian romance from the Sunday Times bestselling author.

A perfect Dickensian saga for Christmas.

Christmas Day, London 1880.

Snow falls … a dying Irish girl clutching her new-born baby drags herself to the sanctuary of an East End orphanage and throws herself on the mercy of the Sisters of Clemency. The nuns raise little Ettie O’Reilly as their own, but the lives of the nuns and orphans are soon crushed by an unscrupulous bishop. The heart-breaking outcome turns Ettie’s life upside down and Christmas will never mean the same again.

Will Ettie ever find her friend Michael Wilson whose secret holds the key to their past?
Will Ettie keep her innocence and survive the traumatic events that are about to erupt?

Teaser: KCR Preview

Teaser: Exclusive Excerpt

Snow fell in silent showers, settling peacefully on the cobbles of the lane as Colleen O’Reilly dragged herself over the carpet of white. Behind her, drops of blood, as red as summer cherries, melted into the snow.
     Colleen didn’t care that she was bleeding. Nor that her boots barely had soles, or that the ragged shawl around her thin shoulders provided little warmth. She was beyond caring. All that mattered was her baby. Miraculously the infant had survived her premature birth. Cutting her own cord with rusting shears Colleen had found in the brewery’s back yard had left her weak. Colleen knew her life’s blood was seeping away.
     Once again she gazed lovingly at her child. The baby’s lips were blue with cold. ‘Live my darlin’ girl,’ she pleaded. ‘Live for your mother’s sake.’
     The tiny eyes flickered. Her baby was still breathing. But Colleen knew her own time was short in this world. To preserve this new life, she had torn up her petticoats and wrapped them around the tiny body. But what use were rags in such weather? The distance between the brewery’s back yard where she had sheltered to give birth, to the convent walls, was but a stone’s throw. Yet, with little milk in her breasts, her baby would surely die if not from the cold, then from hunger.
     Pain clawed at Colleen’s stomach. An internal agony raked her insides. ‘Don’t take me yet, sweet Jesus. Give me strength to deliver this innocent into the safety of the nuns’s hands.’
     Colleen plodded on as the ice cold snow froze her feet. Now there was only one place she could go, for Colleen O’Reilly knew she was clinging to life for the sake of her child.
     If only she had been a regular churchgoer! But in the months of her belly swelling she had been ashamed. The nuns would surely ask about her condition. And how could she tell them the truth? About her long journey as a girl from Ireland to the shores of England. From the famine of her own country to a richer one - or so she had thought.
     ’London’s streets are paved with gold,’ she had heard promised.
     Now she knew better. She dare not think of, much less voice the degradation she had fallen into. The first man said he loved her but sold her into slavery. She had been used for men’s gratification, until a new life had formed in her belly. It was then she had found the courage to escape. She would never let her child suffer in the same way.

Searching for an uplifting read with powerful Christmas nostalgia? Then look no longer!

Christmas Child
Available NOW!

About the Author

“Were there’s muck there’s money!” If my family had a royal crest I’m sure those are the words that would have been hewn into the stone above it.

Mum and Dad were both East Enders who were born on the famous or should I say the then infamous Isle of Dogs. They were costermongers selling fruit, veg and anything else that would stand still long enough!

Their family were immigrants who travelled to the UK from Ireland and France, while others emigrated to America.

As a child I would listen to the adults spinning their colourful stories, as my cousins and I drank pop under the table.

I know the seeds of all my stories come from those far off times that feel like only yesterday. So I would like to say a big heartfelt thank you to all my family and ancestors wherever you are now … UK, Ireland, France or America, as you’ve handed down to me the magic and love of story telling.

Carol xx

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Giveaway and Tour Stops

Enter to win the following signed books (UK Only): “Lizzie Flowers and the Family Firm”, “Molly’s Christmas Orphans”, “A Wartime Christmas”, “A Sister’s Shame”, “Eve of the Isle” – a Rafflecopter giveaway
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