In King’s Man – the first full length book in her new Outlawed series – Sally Malcolm has pulled off a feat that, in these days of clichéd, been-there-read-that historical romance is little short of a minor miracle. This book is that rare gem in an overcrowded genre and something that every fan of historicals…
Western romances used to be a staple of my reading life, but over the past several years, I’ve kind of drifted away from them. However, when I learned that Amy Harmon, one of my very favorite authors, was coming out with a new novel about a wagon train on the Overland Trail, I knew I…
Felicia Grossman’s début historical romance, Appetites & Vices makes use of a setting I’ve not come across before in historical romance – 1840s Delaware – and boasts a couple of interesting, though flawed, central characters who enter into a faux engagement in an attempt to better the social standing of the heroine so she can…
Big Misunderstanding plots don’t work for me. Beautiful but scatterbrained heroines really don’t work for me. So it was a surprise and delight when Pamela Morsi’s The Love Charm proved the exception and made both these elements work very well. In an Acadian community living by the Vermilion River, everyone knows the most beautiful girl…
I think The Midwife’s Tale might be the first Pennsylvania-set book I’ve read in ages that doesn’t have an Amish person in sight. Instead, readers get to visit a sleepy 19th century country town and follow the adventures of the local midwife as she treats patients and starts to find a love story of her…
I just had the kind of month that just wasn’t good for reading. You probably know how it is – kids this, work that, family obligations here and something else going on there. So it took me awhile to really get into Lord of the Sea. Once I got into it, though, I really got…
Have I mentioned how happy I am for indie presses, self-publishing, and the internet lately? I am. I really am. Normally, in the old days, I’d have to scour the internet for those old Carla Kelly Signet Regencies, and save up for outrageous amounts. But reprints are fantastic (especially once you’ve regained your author rights,…
If I had an outsized gospel voice that could penetrate digital walls, this review would just be me singing “Oh, happy day!” But that wouldn’t be good for your ears, not to mention the fact that it would be pretty insufficient as reviews go. So I’ll just have to settle for outsized elation in plain…
By the hundredth page, I was cursing myself. Why oh why oh why did I ask for this book? Because it’s an American book set in 1799, that’s why, and they’re pretty rare on the ground. And because it’s Jude Deveraux, the author who wrote one of the biggest and most successful tearjerkers of all…
Living in the 1850s, whether in a city such as Boston, in a small community, or on a farm wasn’t a very pleasant proposition by today’s standards. Even worse was traveling in a covered wagon across the prairie with your worldly possessions, unsure of what you’d encounter or if you were prepared to endure the…