Friday Memes: A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

I had not noticed it when she first arrived: the way she leaned too far towards him as he kissed her hand, the hint of surprised recognition in his eyes. But having spent an afternoon in the same room as them, watching the effortless manner in which they fell into familiar conversation--two striking individuals against an equally spectacular backdrop--I could not deny that they were more than casual acquaintances. Never had I suspected my fiancé was so close to another woman.

Friday 56:

None of us breathed for a full minute after he'd left. Sir Julian picked up his coffee cup, his large hand nearly crushing the thin china. "Does this have something to do with Home Rule? What say you to that, Hargreaves? Are the Irish threatening Lord Salisbury?

This week I am spotlighting A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander. It has been on my TBR mountain since May 14, 2010. Here is the description from Amazon:

From New York Times bestselling author Tasha Alexander, a spectacular novel of historical suspense featuring the strong-minded and spirited Lady Emily Ashton

At her friend Ivy's behest, Lady Emily Ashton reluctantly agrees to attend a party at the sprawling English country estate of a man she finds odious. But the despised Lord Fortescue is not to be her greatest problem. Kristiana von Lange, an Austrian countess once linked romantically with Emily's fiancé, the debonair Colin Hargreaves, is a guest also. And a tedious evening turns deadly when their host is found murdered, and his protégé, Robert Brandon—Ivy's husband—is arrested for the crime.

Determined to right a terrible wrong, Emily embarks on a quest that will lead her from London's glittering ballrooms to Vienna's sordid backstreets—and into a game of wits with a notorious anarchist. But putting Colin in deadly peril may be the price for exonerating Robert—forcing the intrepid Emily to bargain with her nemesis, the Countess von Lange, for the life of her fiancé.