On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: The Duke and the Spirits of the Past (The Duke of Hertford) by Michael Stolle

A gripping historical novel full of intrigue, dark secrets, and deadly struggles for power!

France in the 17th century – an age of conflict, love, and honour, where any means are justified in the pursuit of power. Henri de Beauvoir is a man who will stop at nothing — even making a pact with the devil — to achieve his sinister ambitions. As the ruthless cousin of the Marquis de Beauvoir and Duke of Hertford, he spins a perilous web of deception, intrigue, and betrayal to bring about his cousin’s downfall.

A secret enemy from the past threatens to destroy the Marquis.
Danger lurks in the shadows — always ready to strike.
An unexpected love may change everything.

When the fate of the Marquis hangs in the balance, a deadly game of cat and mouse unfolds — one where every move is could prove fatal. Can Henri carry out his dark plans, or will the secrets buried in his past become his downfall?

Publication Date: June 1st, 2026

Publisher: independently published

Pages: 427

Genre: Historical Fiction

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Michael Stolle

Michael Stolle, award-winning and best-selling author, was born and educated in Europe. His enduring passion for history has deeply enriched his understanding of the human experience. Through his exploration, he has arrived at a powerful insight: the core essence of humanity is timeless, remaining as relevant today as it was in the 17th century.

Stolle started his writing journey in 2012, and since then, he has enthralled readers worldwide, selling over 250,000 copies of his books. His compelling narratives offer an immersive experience that breathes life into the richness of history, inviting readers to engage with the past in an intimate and vivid way.

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Dragonslayer's Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr by Jennifer Ivy Walker

Last of the Völsung line of kings descended from Odin, Sigurd is one of the elite Sjórúlfar—the fearsome Sea Wolves of southern Norway. Endowed with the divine blood of the wolf, he seeks glory at the Sólhjarta Summer Solstice Tournament to avenge his father’s death.

Brynhildr, daughter of the Raven King, is the Sun Falcon shieldmaiden and gifted seeress who has glimpsed her fate as a Valkyrie in a seiðr vision. When her father decrees she must wed the tournament’s champion, she summons Freyja for guidance—only to learn her future is bound to Sigurd.

As the Norns tighten the intricate threads of fate, Brynhildr must guide Sigurd toward his destiny as a dragonslayer—by defying the web of wyrd and incurring the wrath of Odin.

Publication Date: June 21st, 2026

Publisher: Green Mermaid Publications

Pages: 388

Genre: Viking Historical Romance

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Jennifer Ivy Walker

Jennifer Ivy Walker has an MA in French literature and is a former high school teacher and professor of French at a state college in Florida.  Her novels encompass a love for French language, literature, history, and culture, incorporating her lifelong study, summers abroad, and many trips to France.

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On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: The Fern Flower by Kathleen Shoop

 

Russia 1908-1917

Every good folktale reveals villains and heroes. Mila Belova’s world is overflowing with both.

Born into privilege as the daughter of the Tsar’s favored vodka maker, Mila appears to have everything: wealth, status, and a household devoted to her happiness. But behind the gilded doors of her family estate, she is trapped by the cruelty of a stepmother whose greatest wish is to give birth to her own child.

Each summer on Ivan Kupala Eve, Russia turns its gaze to river bends and forest floors in search of the legendary Fern Flower—a mythical bloom said to grant fortune, power, and the deepest desires of the heart. Only one person had ever found it.

Until Mila.

Years later, in the fading grandeur of Petrograd, Mila and her friends slip into the fabled Stray Dog Café, once the sanctuary of Russia’s most daring artists and dreamers. Inspired by its ghosts, murals, and memories, Mila's group resurrects the work she'd first imagined as a child. The Fern Flower is a breathtaking ballet drawn from folklore, magic, and the secrets of Mila’s past.

But in the fiercely competitive ranks of the Imperial Ballet School, talent is never enough. Though Mila wrote the ballet and her gifted musician friend composed its score, rivals question whether Mila is worthy of claiming the coveted lead role.

As World War I intensifies and revolution ignites, the Russia Mila knows begins to collapse. Family secrets surface, loyalties are tested, and the people she loves begin to disappear. When her parents flee and her young brother’s life hangs in the balance, Mila is faced with an impossible choice: remain with the found family who helped her chase her dreams or risk everything to save the person who needs her most.

With Russian folklore, imperial grandeur, and the fierce beauty of ballet, The Fern Flower is a sweeping tale of ambition, friendship, sacrifice, and the magic that survives even when the world is falling apart.

Publication Date: August 1st, 2026

Publisher: independently published

Pages: 598

Genre: Historical Fiction

Praise 

"IThis book is outstanding in its decision to tell the story through the eyes of the moon, Grusha... The character development of Mila is beautifully rendered."

~ The Historical Fiction Company

"Shoop captures the transformation of a young girl's world in a manner all kinds of readers will find fascinating. Librarians can thus highly recommend The Fern Flower's wide reach to audiences who will relish the story... As for the moon, she comes full circle to influence, abet, and reflect events in a satisfyingly original manner that readers won't see coming."

~ D. Donovan, Sr Review, Midwest Book Review

"Deeply moving in the cultural currents it captures... The family dynamics are one of the key elements that make it a must-read."

~ Readers’ Favorite

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Kathleen Shoop

Bestselling author, Kathleen Shoop, PhD’s novels have won awards in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Eric Hoffer Book Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Readers’ Favorite, and more.

Kathleen has more than twenty years of experience in the classroom and has been featured in USA Today and the Writer’s Guide. She co-coordinates Mindful Writers Retreats and co-coordinated the 2023 Pennwriters Conference.

She frequently teaches and is a regular presenter at conferences for writers.

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One More Hour of Daylight by C.M. Gray

From the Bestselling Author of Shadowland

On the first day of World War II, a young man makes a promise—one that will shape every choice he makes for the next four years.

Essex. September 1939.

A wounded German pilot drops from a clear autumn sky into a quiet English field. Seventeen-year-old Derrick finds him—broken and feverish. Not an enemy. Just a young man asking for one small mercy before everything ends.

One more hour of daylight. That is all I ask. A chance to breathe free air before whatever comes next.

Derrick gives him until morning.

When the stretcher comes, the pilot’s last words strike Derrick like a blow he will never stop feeling.

Scotland. France. Germany. 1941–1943.

In the mountains of Scotland, they teach him how to kill, how to lie, and how to endure things that break most men. Then they give him a new name, put him on a plane, and drop him into the dark.

As an SOE operative deep inside occupied Europe, Derrick Sedgley lives on false papers, borrowed names, and nerves worn to nothing by years in the shadows. He moves agents to safety, builds escape routes, and stays one breath ahead of the Gestapo.

Then a mission collapses—and everything changes.

Forced to run, Derrick finds himself moving through the most dangerous corners of occupied Europe alongside someone whose connection to his past he cannot yet see. As safe houses fall, loyalties fracture, and the frozen passes of the Pyrenees rise ahead like the edge of the world, Derrick begins to understand something.

The choice he made in an Essex field on the first day of the war has been leading him here all along.

Some debts cannot be paid.

Some can only be carried.

And some—if you are brave enough, and fortunate enough—can finally be laid to rest.

From the quiet fields of Essex to the mountains of Scotland, from the dangerous streets of Lyon to the shadows of wartime Hamburg and the high passes of the Pyrenees, One More Hour of Daylight is an unforgettable story of courage, guilt and redemption—of ordinary people forced to make impossible choices in extraordinary times.

Some promises can survive a war.

Some people can too.

For readers who believe that even in war, what matters most is who we choose to be.

Publication Date: June, 2026

Publisher: Constance Books

Pages: 417

Genre: Historical Fiction / WWII Thriller

Praise 

"A beautifully written book with a perfect pace that kept me reading
from start to finish."

 Bookcollector, Amazon

"A confident, carefully crafted novel that handles its subject matter with restraint, earning the weight it carries."

Indie Library, Goodreads 

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C.M. Gray

C.M. Gray's first book, The Flight of the Griffin, was longlisted in the 2015 Times Chicken House Writing Competition. Shadowland, the first book in the Pendragon Saga, has so far received over 900 five-star reviews on Amazon. These things still genuinely astonish him, and he is deeply grateful for every one of them.

Most of his previous work has been fantasy: either pure fantasy or historical fantasy, the kind of writing where druids turn up uninvited and one of your main characters develops an unsettling affinity with wolves before you have quite decided what sort of book you are writing. Shadowland began with every intention of staying grounded in historical reality, the story of Uther Pendragon. It did not. It has turned out to be a popular book, so he does not complain.

His years travelling through Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East have a habit of finding their way onto the page. He has seen and done some fairly strange things along the way and met some extraordinary people, and writing fantasy has always felt, to him, only a short step from writing fact.

New for 2026

One More Hour of Daylight, marks C.M. Gray's return to writing. It was published in June 2026, marking a departure: pure historical fiction, no druids, no wolves. It follows Derrick Sedgley, a seventeen-year-old from Essex who makes a single moral choice in a field one September morning in 1939 and spends the next four years living with the consequences. From the Essex countryside to occupied France, from the mountains of Burgundy to the Pyrenees, it is a story about promises, betrayal, courage and the cost of doing the right thing too late.

And for those who have been waiting patiently for the Pendragon Saga to continue: the third book, Shadow's Heir, the story of Arthur Pendragon, follows in September 2026. More on that very soon.

C.M. Gray was born in England and grew up in the Essex countryside near the Suffolk border, which is where Derrick Sedgley grows up, too. The flat fields, the big skies and the particular quality of Essex light found their way into the book, whether he intended them to or not.

C.M. Gray is now very happily settled just outside Barcelona with his wonderful wife and partner in life, Adriana.

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On tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club: The Valet’s Witness by Rohn Hein

In the summer of 1776, as the Declaration of Independence takes shape within the charged chambers of the Second Continental Congress, two lives unfold in quiet, irrevocable collision-one etched into the official record, the other deliberately erased from it.

Edward Rutledge, the youngest delegate from South Carolina, moves with calculated precision through a world of rhetoric and reputation. Brilliant, ambitious, and deeply entangled in the economic realities of his homeland, he walks a perilous line between liberty and self-preservation. He argues fiercely for independence while working just as diligently to shield the institution of slavery from scrutiny, determined that the new nation will rise without unsettling the foundation upon which his power-and his prosperity-rests.

At his side stands Pompey, his enslaved valet-unseen, unacknowledged, yet ever-present. Moving silently through corridors thick with ambition and contradiction, Pompey becomes a witness to history in its most unguarded moments. He listens where others speak freely, observes where others perform, and remembers what others choose, or need, to forget. To the men shaping a nation, he is invisible; to the truth, he is indispensable.

Among the servants and valets attending the southern delegates, a hidden network begins to take shape-men bound by circumstance yet united by awareness. In kitchens, in narrow stairwells, in the shadowed edges of candlelit rooms, they exchange fragments of overheard debates and whispered concessions. They piece together a parallel record of the nation's birth: one of uneasy compromises, moral evasions, and calculated silences. They hear the arguments over freedom and tyranny; they witness the careful removal of any language that might threaten the institution that binds them.

As Rutledge maneuvers behind closed doors-pressing to strike any condemnation of slavery from the final draft-Pompey gathers something far more fragile and far more dangerous than political victory: memory. Each conversation, each omission, each moment of hesitation becomes part of a story that has no place in the official narrative. It is a story carried not in ink, but in the minds of those denied the power to write it.

Yet history has a way of resurfacing through the voices it tried to silence.

The Valet's Witness is a sweeping, intimate reimagining of America's founding, illuminating the lives that moved just beyond the margins of recorded history. With lyrical depth and moral clarity, it reveals not only how independence was declared, but what-and who-was sacrificed to secure it. In the space between liberty and bondage, between principle and profit, a hidden truth emerges-one that challenges the very meaning of freedom in a nation built on both hope and contradiction.

Publication Date: July 1st, 2026

Publisher: Historium Press

Pages: 307

Genre: Historical Fiction

Praise

"The historical research underpinning the novel is extensive. The atmosphere surrounding the Second Continental Congress is recreated with confidence, and the political negotiations feel carefully grounded in the historical record. Readers familiar with the American Revolution will appreciate the author's evident knowledge of the period, while those approaching it for the first time will find themselves immersed in both the personalities and the events that shaped the emergence of a new nation."
~ Ellie Yarde, Yarde Book Promotions 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"As someone who enjoys historical fiction that remains grounded in its period, I appreciated the care that had gone into recreating this pivotal moment in history."
~ Mary Anne Yarde, The Coffee Pot Book Club 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Excerpt

The second trip to Philadelphia in one year was overwhelming to Pompey. Last year when they arrived by schooner, he was a stranger in a new city. This year he will have a better understanding of the place and his station. Looking forward to rekindling the friendship of other Black valets and the other delegates, he didn’t think that Master Rutledge had ever noticed what Pompey did with his free time. The slaves had their own fraternity, and they shared the secrets they heard from the lips of their masters and their friends.

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Rohn Hein

Rohn Hein is a first-time author with fifty years of involvement in non-partisan community activism. Starting as a VISTA volunteer in 1973, he worked for five different non-profit organizations working with welfare recipients, senior citizens, urban housing, racial justice, and environmental efforts in Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and New Jersey. For the last 40 years Rohn was an investment adviser while volunteering with social justice activities in affordable housing, racial justice, and environmental issues. Rohn has written testimony presented in the Minnesota and New Jersey Legislature and appeared at numerous churches, city council, county, and regional government agencies.

He works with many New Jersey non-profit organizations on racial justice issues, such as The NJ Institute for Social Justice, Salvation and Social Justice, NJ NAACP, Fair Share Housing, and  UU Faith Action. He has worked on landmark affordable housing legislation and on the enactment of a racial justice impact statement on legislation in New Jersey.

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