Narrated by Steve Worsley Dance to the Storm is the second book in the Storm Over Scotland trilogy by author and historian Maggie Craig, and if you enjoy meaty, well-researched historical fiction with a compelling, star-crossed romance at its heart, then I suggest these books might be right up your alley! I’ll say straight off…
Calling Outlander a time travel romance is like calling a Dove Bar ice cream on a stick. Mere labels can’t possibly prepare you for the totally engrossing and sensual experience of either one. If you are ready for 850 pages packed with action, sex, life and death, then take the plunge. But then be prepared…
The Highland Commander finds its inspiration in real life events surrounding the Jacobite uprisings of the early 1700s. I’ll admit that my knowledge of 18th Century Scottish politics is sadly lacking; however I know enough to understand the danger behind a Scotsman discussing the cause during this period. Lord Aiden Murray and his fellow officers…
Lovers separated by treachery, war, conflicting ideals, and the like are among my least favorite plot devices because they’re so often accompanied by other big irritants. How many times have you sighed with annoyance because the hero refuses to believe he’s been deceived? How ofen have you read angrily while the heroine clings to a…
I don’t think it’s too much to state that Anne Stuart’s House of Rohan trilogy comes with high, high hopes. This author has given readers some of the darkest, cruellest, and most successfully redeemed heroes ever, and her historical novels seem to have an especially devoted following, possibly because they are now rarer than not….
Captain Alexander (Alec) Fraser, officer and lawyer for his Highland Regiment, has been summoned to London to demonstrate Highland broadsword fighting for the Queen’s birthday. There he sees, and becomes entranced with (though he doesn’t speak to) Kate MacCarran, a fellow Highlander in London ostensibly to lobby for relief for Scots war widows. She is…
Every successful author must have at least one book published early in her career, which is surely the last she would recommend to anyone looking for a sample of her work. For Patricia Gaffney, Sweet Treason could be it. Unfortunately, even the engrossing story and elegant prose couldn’t redeem its two great blunders: a hugely…
I spent a year and a half staring at the four installments of this story, sitting neatly on one of my shelves. Diana Gabaldon’s books are filled with plot devices I had always shied away from in romance novels. “They’re written in the first person, the heroine’s older than the hero, they’re huge,” I whined,…
There must be something romantic about hopeless endeavors – how else can you explain the popularity of movies like Titanic, where you know going in that the boat’s going to sink? Or the multitude of books set during the Scottish rebellion of 1745-6, where you know before you crack the book open that the English…
Readers who are familiar with The Scarlet Pimpernel will undoubtedly recognize the main elements in The Black Knave: A seemingly foppish, ineffectual young nobleman fools everyone around him, including his wife, into thinking he could never be the man responsible for aiding in the escape of persons threatened with execution by a merciless authority. Only…