Rules of Engagement is the second book in Christina Dodd’s series about the Distinguished Academy of Governesses. It follows Rules of Surrender. Here we find Devon, Lord Kerrich, who must become respectable or risk losing large sums of money that Queen Victoria has deposited in his family’s bank. He decides that the best way to…
In Diamonds and Desire, Constance Laux’s latest novel set during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, a titled jewel thief meets his match in a spunky tabloid reporter. Aggie O’Day and her brother were left without funds, so the pretty redhead got a job as a reporter with a scurrilous rag called the London Daily Enquirer and…
The book I began my keeper shelf with was Once an Angel. Rereading it, I found out why. Seamless, lyrical prose (Medeiros is truly a word artist), an unconventional setting, touches of magic realism, and a hero and heroine who need each other so deeply, I felt the world might end if they couldn’t be…
Indiscretion is a very lusty farce and an altogether wonderful romance. It’s far more sexual than any of author Jillian Hunter’s books of which I am aware. It also features a fairly daring plot structure, which reveals the hot and heavy past relationship between hero and heroine right at the start. If, as I do,…
Do you sometimes feel like you’re in a romance rut? Are you yearning for a story that steps away from that same old plot? Have I got a book for you! In Forbidden Garden, Tracy Fobes gives us the story of a young widow, Anne Sherwood, who works as a botanical illustrator for Kew Gardens…
The Pygmalion myth gave George Bernard Shaw the idea for his play Pygmalion which was turned into the wonderful musical My Fair Lady. Judith Ivory takes this story and gives it a twist, (and a lot more romance than grumpy old GBS did). Edwina Bollash, linguistics expert and tutor of gauche young ladies in the…
I haven’t read too many historical romances that take place in Australia. At first, I thought September Moon was going to be just like those American Historicals that take place on the frontier – lots of hardship, wildness and danger. It is. And yet, it is different. Ms. Proctor brings all the strangeness and wildness…
In Fairest of Them All, Josette Browning has written an updated nineteenth century potboiler, reminiscent of Edgar Rice Boroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes with a Pygmalion twist. This highly unusual romance novel imitates a Victorian popular novel including its sensibilities about sex and social rank. The result makes for a sometimes disturbing read. The book…
In love with her cousin Emily’s husband, Laura Hewitt travels to India in the winter of 1856-1857. She does not want to travel with Emily and Charles on their honeymoon trip, but family pressure and family affection compel her to accompany the newlyweds as Emily’s companion. Laura is, above everything else, a resilient and pragmatic…
Imagine not showing up for your own wedding because you figured the person you were marrying wasn’t going to show up either! That’s exactly what happened the first time Isabel De Quincy and Benedict Costigan were scheduled to wed. Both were from rival fireworks-making families, and convinced that the other was only out for personal…