Author: Caroline Angus

It’s TEN YEARS since the release of the first Canna Medici book, NIGHT WANTS TO FORGET. I can’t believe it – 10 years! To celebrate, all four books in the series have been re-released with new covers, and the story has been updated for the new decade. But Canna and her violent outbursts remain the same. While this series does not encompass any of my historical study or work, Canna Medici is especially important to me. New to Canna Medici? Read on.

Also, if you have downloaded any or all of these in the past, you can have the 2021 edition sent straight to your Kindle, or device of your choice through the app. Anyone who has read/owned the older editions can have the new version at no cost.

Click here for Amazon US    Click here for Amazon UK

All Amazon ebooks are regularly updated, though not all books automatically get sent straight to your account/device. If you have the book already (and did not receive an email advising you of the update) and still want to upgrade for free simply –

1. Login to your Amazon.com account
2. Hover your mouse on the right-hand side top where it says – Hello (Your
name).
3. Go to “Manage Your Content and Devices” page and you’ll be able to download the newer version from this page.

Trigger warning for the series – domestic violence, rape, drug use, depression/bipolar disorder

Canna Medici is a hedonistic young woman who flees her home and an abusive relationship in Italy, and finds herself in a new life in London. She becomes the new assistant of Virtuosi, a small opera group who are about to embark on a tour of ten of Europe’s greatest opera houses. When Canna soon becomes romantically involved with English tenor Dane Porter, trouble comes in the form of fellow Virtuosi singer Claudio Ramos Ibáñez, the dark, brooding Spanish baritone. Canna and Claudio have crossed paths once before with vicious consequences, and each are desperate for the truth to remain hidden.

As Claudio becomes more and more entangled in Canna’s violent and addictive secrets, Dane is forced to re-evaluate his life – his morals and stereotypes are going to be tested in order to accept her dark past. Canna continues to pursue pleasure at any cost, exploiting the weaknesses of those around her in an effort to hide her demons. All of the men and women in Virtuosi are going to be hurt by Canna’s narcissism unless she can overcome her inner torment.

Canna is night and Dane is day, and while the night wants to forget, another night is calling to her in a form very close to home, and love holds on too tight…

Forgetting the night and coming into the daylight isn’t as easy as first thought…

Canna Medici is free. Her tyrant husband, Giuseppe Savelli, is dead and can’t hurt her anymore. Or so she thought. Now that the recovering drug addict is the head of Caraceni Industries and heiress to Giuseppe’s billions, Canna finds that the riches are more dangerous than ever. Giorgio Savelli, the charismatic but volatile nephew of the deceased family patriarch, wants the Caraceni fortune, and Canna needs to decide how to eliminate Giorgio and be the sole heir of the dirty money.

Operatic music group Virtuosi are in the throes of stardom; world tours, new albums and legions of fans beckon. All baritone Claudio Ramos Ibáñez wants is to be with his lover, Canna, whose business dealings take her to Milan far more often than he likes. The Virtuosi group adapt to the new relationship between Canna and Claudio, but tenor Dane Porter isn’t sure of how he feels about Canna. Dane finds himself in a situation where he can destroy Canna and Claudio’s already strained ‘happily ever after’, and Virtuosi risk a descent into jealousy and madness.

When a brutal murder occurs, and Virtuosi get caught up in the scandal, Canna begins to question if she can have a future with Claudio. As the bodies of enemies and loved ones begin to pile up, the dark desires of drugs and self-mutilation dominate Canna’s mind. The truth won’t set anyone free, and Canna’s life is again under threat, this time from her most dangerous adversary – herself.

Eighteen months have passed since Canna Medici’s second near-death experience. Her new life has taken shape in the Corsican seaside town of Bonifacio, married to her soul-mate, Spanish baritone Claudio Ramos Ibáñez. With a successful boatyard to run, Canna doesn’t realise that her meddlesome friend, Abigail Troublé, is keen to move on from the death of her husband with a certain opera star…

One piece of the couple’s perfect life is missing. Claudio’s young son, Casamiro, still lives in London with his mother, Veena. As Canna and Claudio’s belated wedding ceremony looms, Claudio learns that life may give him a way to keep Casamiro on a more permanent basis, but custody will come at a great cost…

When Canna and Claudio are forced to spend more time in London, Claudio’s colleagues from Virtuosi, the now-broken famous opera quartet, want him to return and take his place as a superstar. With life in the spotlight and a custody battle, Claudio is too distracted to realise the danger of Canna’s mysterious Italian visitor…

It’s time for Canna to lay the ghosts of her murderous and drug-addicted past to rest, once and for all, but life crumbles when a surprise arrival shakes her happiness to the core…

Years before Canna Medici stumbled into the offices of opera quartet Virtuosi, she had a chaotic life as an Italian Countess. Riddled with abuse, self-loathing and the desire for pain, Canna had to fight for her life against Count Giuseppe Savelli, her greatest enemy.

Canna tells the story of the final few months of her marriage, raw and honest as she struggles with her choices, the men she is tangled up with, and the realisation that money causes more pain than it cures. With everything at her disposal, Canna only needs to find one thing – freedom.

Told solely through Canna’s point of view comes the prequel to the ‘Canna Medici’ series, involving an Italian husband, a French lover and a Spanish man, a man with a broken soul but scintillating voice. Mistakes pile up around Canna as she decides what is best for her in a world of wealth and want. Canna is still innocent and yet destructive as she barrels towards the accident which will change her life.

A must-have for owners of the ‘Canna Medici’ series.

Click here for Amazon US    Click here for Amazon UK

Have you downloaded any or all of the series in the past? Want the 2021 edition for free? All Amazon ebooks are regularly updated, though not all books automatically get sent straight to your account/device. If you have the book already (and did not receive an email advising you of the update) and still want to upgrade for free simply –

1. Login to your Amazon.com account
2. Hover your mouse on the right-hand side top where it says – Hello (Your
name).
3. Go to “Manage Your Content and Devices” page and you’ll be able to download the newer version from this page.

Need more info? ⇓⇓⇓

BLOOD IN THE VALENCIAN SOIL

Spain, March 1939 – the Spanish Civil War is coming to an end. Five young Republicans in the small town of Cuenca know they are on the losing side of the war. History only recognises the winners, and the group knows they could die, all destined to become faceless statistics. They concoct a plan to go to Valencia in search of safety, but not all of these young men and women are going to survive…

Seventy years later, bicycle mechanic Luna Montgomery, the granddaughter of a New Zealand nurse who served during the Spanish Civil War, has made Spain her home. A young widow and mother of two little boys, Luna wants to know what became of her Spanish grandfather. He is one of the ‘disappeared’, one of the hundreds of thousands of Spaniards who were murdered and hidden away during and after the war. On a quick trip to Madrid, Luna forms an unlikely friendship with an intelligent and popular bullfighter, Cayetano Beltrán, but as Luna presses on to delve into Spain’s history for answers, Cayetano struggles with truths he wished he had never found out. In an ever-changing society that respects and upholds family ties, betrayal by the people that Luna and Cayetano hold dear will hurt them more than they could have realised. There are old wounds that have yet to heal underneath Spain’s ‘pact of forgetting’.

VENGEANCE IN THE VALENCIAN WATER

Valencia, Spain: October 1957 – After a long hot summer, Guardia Civil officers José Morales Ruiz and Fermín Belasco Ibarra have had enough of their lives. Sick of dealing with lowlifes and those left powerless under Franco’s ruthless dictatorship, the friends devise a  complex system of stealing babies, to be sent away to paying families. But as the October rains fall, the dry Valencian streets fill with muddy water, and only greed and self-preservation will survive…

It’s 2010, and Luna Montgomery is busier than ever. With the mystery of her murdered grandfather solved, she reluctantly prepares to be the bride in Spain’s ‘wedding of the year’. But four more bodies lie hidden at Escondrijo, Luna’s farm in the Valencian mountains. Her fiancé, bullfighter Cayetano Beltrán Morales, is not eager to have his name brought up in a post-civil war burial excavation. When Cayetano’s grandfather José, an evil Franco supporter, starts to push his ideals on Luna, her decision to join the Beltrán family comes under scrutiny.

The Tour de France is fast approaching, and Luna’s position as a bike mechanic on Valencia’s new cycling team begins to come under pressure. When an ‘accident’ occurs at Escondrijo, lives hang in the balance as more of Spain’s ghosts come to life and tell the story of a flood in 1957…

DEATH IN THE VALENCIAN DUST

Spain: September 1975 – After 39 years as dictator, Francisco Franco is dying, but his parting words to the nation are leaving a bitter legacy. Jaime Morales, brother-in-law and sword handler for Spain’s greatest bullfighter, Paco Beltrán, finds himself caught up with a young Basque woman named Alazne, who seeks political change with plans of violence. Executions are handed down, and Spain collapses into turmoil in the shadow of their leader’s death and the crowning of a new king. Jaime, Alazne, and the entire Morales family have to face who they are and what they believe…

It’s 2014 and the final season for Spain’s favourite celebrity bullfighter, Cayetano Beltrán Morales. Guided by his father Paco and Uncle Jaime, Cayetano is reluctant to let go of his magnificent career. His wife, Luna Montgomery, has plans as she transitions from mother of the couple’s four children to leader of the Beltrán family while fighting Spain’s ‘pact of forgetting’. Cayetano’s sister, Sofía, has rising political ambitions in Valencia as Spain crowns a new king. The final ghosts of Escondrijo, Luna’s Valencian farm, can finally speak the truth. But the Beltrán Morales family must, at last, recognise their identity, where they sit in Spain’s turbulent present, and their potentially fractured future.

Bodies need to be laid to rest, truths must be acknowledged, and destinies are up in the air as Luna Montgomery finds her long-awaited place in her Spanish family. But death still lurks in the Valencian mountains…

NOW AVAILABLE IN NEW EDITION HARDBACK, PLUS PAPERBACK AND KINDLE

The moderate man shall inherit the kingdom.

That man needs to be the Queenmaker.

London 1529 – Cardinal Wolsey has ruled England in King Henry VIII’s name for most of his reign. Now Henry wants to leave his extraordinary Spanish wife of twenty years, Queen Katherine, to marry Anne Boleyn and secure a male heir for the kingdom. Only God can end a marriage, through his appointed voices on Earth, the powerful Cardinal Wolsey, and Cardinal Campeggio sent from Rome in the Pope’s place. Wolsey’s faithful attendant, commoner Thomas Cromwell, has the mind, the skills and the ambition to secure a royal annulment.

Cromwell’s forgotten past in Italy reappears with Campeggio’s new attendant, Nicóla Frescobaldi, the peculiar son of Cromwell’s former Italian master. While the great cardinals of Christendom fight the King, the Pope, and their God for an annulment, Cromwell and Frescobaldi hold the power over a country at war with its own conscience. Cromwell is called the double-minded man, whose golden eyes make money appear. Now Cromwell wants the power to destroy the Catholic Church in England. Frescobaldi is known as the waif-like creature, the Pope’s favourite companion, but Frescobaldi wants freedom from Pope Clement and his Medici family in Italy.

Cromwell and Frescobaldi will place themselves into the heart of religious and political influence as they strive to create an English queen, or lose their heads for their crimes and sinful secrets.

November 1533 – Thomas Cromwell and Nicóla Frescobaldi have their queen on the throne. The Catholic Church is being destroyed as the Reformation looms over England. Cromwell has total power at court and in parliament, while Frescobaldi wins favour with the king’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy.

But England’s fate is uncertain. The nobles still despise Cromwell and his Italian creature. Anne has not given the king a son. Queen Katherine refuses to give up her title, and Thomas More and Bishop Fisher defy their king. The final Plantagenets think they should hold the throne while the Catholics want Princess Mary named as heir.

England can be reformed, but Cromwell must dissolve all the monasteries and abbeys, and with the king on his side, the plan to change religion will sever heads. Queen Anne is losing Henry’s love, but Cromwell could suffer if Anne loses her crown. Frescobaldi creates a daring plan to replace Anne and regain the Pope’s favour, but Cromwell must execute the plans on his own. Schemes will go astray and the wrong heads will be severed to satisfy a vengeful sovereign.

Kings will rise, queens shall fall, children will perish, and the people of England will march in a pilgrimage to take Cromwell’s head, while Frescobaldi will have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

London, January 1537 – Thomas Cromwell is in deep mourning. His new queen is on the throne at King Henry’s command, but the personal cost is too high. Nicòla Frescobaldi is lying dead inside the Medici tomb in Florence, and Cromwell’s only daughter Jane is missing. Now, the people of England have rebelled against their king, marching to London to start a civil war. The Pilgrimage of Grace has two demands: remove all the Reformation changes from religion and cut off Cromwell’s head.

Cromwell needs his friends, allies and the king’s favour more than ever, but he can do nothing when Queen Jane dies giving England its son and heir. Cromwell’s son has married the Queen’s sister, but the Seymours will disappear from favour if Cromwell does not eliminate all those able to take their place. There is only one solution; become Queenmaker yet again and find a foreign princess for Henry, one to seal religious change and create stability in the war of Catholic against Protestant.

Nicòla Frescobaldi may be dead, but Duchess Nicòletta of Florence is not, so Cromwell and his creature can rule politics again to control England and Ireland. But when war with the Holy Roman Empire threatens, all of Cromwell’s powers, titles and schemes cannot save him from his oldest enemy in England, and a betrayal deep in the heart of the powerful Cromwellian faction.

There will be blood…

As the 19th century writes its final chapters, change cannot come to Spain fast enough. Gaudí’s architecture, Sorolla’s paintings, Ramon y Cayal’s scientific breakthroughs, and Blasco Ibáñez’s writings are matched with illness epidemics, poverty, inequality, and conservative landowners still reigning supreme.

In Valencia, Mireya de Centelles y Aragon, the sixth Countess de Valencia, holds a Happy New Year 1885 ball at her husband’s palace, to raise funds for earthquake victims in Spain’s south. But Mireya is unlike the other women of the Spanish nobility; the daughter of a Spanish duke and a French princess, she is a botany student at Valencia University, the only woman in her field. When Mireya meets an architect, Tiago Ríbera Herestoza, who is new to the city after studying in London, an idea is born.

Mireya married off at 15 to a nobleman twice her age, and Tiago, a middle-class man of esteemed education, have more in common than imagined. Both have a treasury of secrets and dreams that clash with their position within the class system. With Tiago’s London life threatening his future, and pressure on Mireya to produce the next generation of noble-blooded Valencians, the pair embark on an intense professional relationship. But one glass of tainted champagne will threaten Mireya’s 400-year-old noble family line forever…

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Initially released as Intense Professional Marquesa in 2016, Mireya de Centelles is back under a new title, new cover, and an all-new edit for 2021. A romance story set in 19th century Valencia, this is a standalone short story from others in my Spanish political series’.

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