An impoverished, idealistic lawyer falls for a kindly, compassionate heiress but is unsure if their love can bridge the social and economic divide between them in Elizabeth Camden’s Carved in Stone. Gwen Blackstone Kellerman has suffered plenty of heartache in her life. Her mother died when she was a child, and her father and husband…
Since I’m a fan of the Colonial Williamsburg living-history museum in Virginia, I picked up The Dollmaker’s Daughter, intrigued by the Williamsburg setting and a story set in 1776 that has more to do with a young woman’s search for adventure and a scientist hero, than with fighting the War of Independence. Although not styled…
The second daughter of the Queens’ close friend, the Scottish Duke of Buccleuch, Lady Margaret Montagu Scott is expected to make an advantageous marriage. But Margaret is an impulsive and outspoken girl in a repressive society where women are, quite literally, caged in corsets and required to conform. When Lady Margaret’s parents arrange a society…
The Nature of a Lady is the first novel I’ve read by this author, and as it happens, it’s the first novel in her new series The Secrets of the Isles. I enjoy stories of mistaken identity, and with the addition of a mysterious disappearance, two love stories, a brilliant guidebook to life on the…
Pride and Premeditation hits a lot of notes that tempt me – it’s a Jane Austen retelling, a murder mystery, and an historical romance. This novel sets Elizabeth Bennett in London as the daughter of a barrister striving to prove her worth. She is the second of five sisters, and while Lizzie wants nothing more…
I enjoy learning about a different culture in a different time; throw in a romance and I’m on board. With those things in mind, A Dance in Donegal seemed like a good fit but the romance was a little too flat and the story a little too slow and inconsistent for my taste Shortly before…
I’ve reread Sarah Sundin’s first novel (A Distant Melody) so often that there are parts of it I could quote by heart. What I love about that story, and many of her books since, is that they remind me of the 1950s era WWII movies my parent’s loved. They are sweet, innocent, romantic and revolve…
I started The Lady Brewer of London on an afternoon where I had just a few minutes of free time between errands – a grievous mistake. This is an epic, set in fifteenth-century England, and not easy to put down. Between the romance, intrigue, and historical detail, there’s a lot to enjoy in this story….
Laura Frantz’ characteristically immaculate research choices uncharacteristically falter in Tidewater Bride, about a bright matchmaker and a land baron with a secret. Selah Hopewell stands among the recently-arrived-from-England phalanx of tobacco brides who have arrived to marry the single men of Jamestown and thinks upon her role in matchmaking the parties together. The women will…
Marsha Canham’s work is nothing if not painstakingly researched and beautifully actualized. The Mark of the Rose brings us back to the 1200s with ease, then flashes us forward to the present day, taking us into the lives of one special woman and her ancestor. But the two halves of its story don’t feel truly…