This author just moved to the top of my auto-buy list. I loved Slave to Sensation, but had that fear in the back of my mind that maybe it was a one shot deal. Wrong! I’m happy to say I loved Visions of Heat, and from the looks of the teaser in the back, I…
What an odd, unsettling little book How I Live Now is. Should I be surprised that this received the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult fiction? It seems all of the YA award winners these days are for stories that push the envelope. And this one does. It really does. Daisy has…
Isn’t it great to come across a really erotic book with wonderfully real characters? Even when…um, the book is essentially a fairy tale. Though Holly sets up a semi-complicated mythology involving a demon race of superior creatures living in a remote area discovered by humans during the Victorian era, the truth is that she could…
Once Upon Stilettos is the sequel to Enchanted, Inc., and both books are Alternate Reality/Chick Lit hybrids. Katie Chandler works for a company called Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., but her roommates and parents know it only as MSI. Like most of the population, they are blissfully unaware of the magic going on around them….
The Marriage Spell is the first in a series set in an alternative Regency England which is familiar in every way except in this England, some people have the ability to perform magic. In a refreshing change of pace, magic workers – called wizards – are not burned as witches. Centuries earlier wizards proves to…
His Majesty’s Dragon is straight fantasy, no romance whatsoever, but it does have, at its heart, a very lovely and emotionally rich relationship between a man and his newly hatched dragon. Captain Will Laurence and his naval crew capture a French frigate in what Laurence assumes to be a routine skirmish. What’s hardly routine is…
A Brother’s Price takes place in a world where men are born far less frequently than women. With males at a premium, one husband serves many wives, and a family’s fortunes can depend on making the most beneficial match for their sons. With this premise, Wen Spencer offers a reversal of traditional gender roles that’s…
Here’s the theory. Once women were revered for their miraculous ability to bear children. This miracle was associated with the moon’s phases, the tides, and the fertility of the earth. Men worshipped the Mother Goddess. Life was good for women, who enjoyed their bodies and their sexuality, and everyone lived in harmony. Then men became…
You know, there are a lot of people out there who revere Arthur Conan Doyle and who scoff – scoff, I tell you – at those with the temerity (the nerve!) to put their puny talents to use bastardizing the author’s immortal characters. and, yep, it has to be admitted that I’m one of them….
The Demon’s Daughter suffered from a serious identity crisis. It could never figure out whether it wanted to be Victorian, alternate reality, romance, or erotica. In the end it was just plain bad. I had to read this in short increments to keep my sanity. Perhaps if the alternate reality setting been better done, and…