My friend C.M. Mayo publishes the frantically active Madam Mayo blog, and is the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for her collection of short stories Sky Over El Nido. Unbridled Books has just released her novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, an epic about Maximilian von Hapsburg, the Archduke of Austria, who for a few curious years in the 1860s was declared and installed as Emperor of Mexico. I look forward to a sunny afternoon, where I envision myself taking it up to the castle in Chapultepec Park (where Maximilian reigned, along with his wife, the bipolar Empress Carlotta). At 448 pages it will be a long afternoon, but knowing C.M.'s writing, I am sure it will be a page-turner. I wish her the best of luck with the book.