Archive for 'My Favorite Things-2006'
Not to be left out, even though Thanksgiving has past, here’s my list.
- Those Calgon, Take Me Away moments wherein you are transported from mundane suburbia into the rich lives of the Old West, the Near Future, the Distant Past, and the Alternative Reality.
- No matter how many big silly misunderstandings a couple suffers through complete lack of communication, in the end, nothing can keep the gudgeons apart.
- Learning new words, like gudgeon and ahvenge.
- The words “free book” can make my whole day better even though a book costs about the same as a lunch. Come to think of it, though, I get excited over the words “free lunch”. It just must be the word “free.”
- Even the tritest most hackneyed story plots still read like new under the hands of a great author.
- Despite biological impossibilities, humans can be made into vampires and immortals and really live happily ever after.
- Finding that even the basest of humans can be worthy of love and redemption.
- Having extensive knowledge about something.
- Being one of the millions of readers who read those kinds of books.
- That romance is an industry for women, written by women, sold by women, bought by women. Go WOMEN
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Dear Mrs. Canham,
 I hope that your muse can tempt you back into writing. I keep hearing rumors but what I want is to read another new Canham book! ;) Other reviews have decried the amount of violence and sex in “The Iron Rose.” Yes, it’s violent. Yes, it has sex. But it’s a pirate book! It’s supposed to be violent. It’s supposed to have sex. And it’s a wild, exhilarating ride. Like watching an old MGM movie. I kept expecting Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power to come swinging out of the shrouds, sword in hand, to battle the dastardly enemy in a duel of flashing rapier death. “Away, all hands up and over!”
Varian St. Clare, 12th Duke of Harrow has been sent to the Caribee by King James to persuade the English privateers to lay down their arms and sail tamely back to England in order to further a peace treaty with Phillip III of Spain. But when his ship is attacked without provocation by the Spanish and he’s rescued by Juliet Dante, the daughter of the famed Sea Wolf, Simon Dante, and captured documents are translated to reveal the …
Dear Ms. Garwood:
 I want you to know that I open myself up to ridicule from any number of blogland sources such as my blogging partners, Jayne and Janine, Keishon, Maili, and who knows else by writing this love letter to you. Alas, I cannot let this week of thankfulness pass by without referencing at least one of your books that I have read so much that is poor cover fell off. So I am hiding this review on Thanksgiving where I can be quietly be thankful for this book whilst the rest of the US blogland is sleepy from gorging on turkey and mashed potatoes. (As an aside, the Thanksgiving episode where Jerry plays with the mint boxed Superman whilst girlfriend is drugged upon Trytophan is hilarious).
This was one of the first of your books that I had ever read and the opening scene is unforgettable.
They meant to kill him.
Baron Duncan of Wexton land is standing naked, tied to the pole in the bitter winter. Even at his seemingly weakest moment, his enemies still fear him. They stand a weapon’s length away to spit at his feet …
Dear Mrs. Cobb South,
 I’ve been a fan of yours since “The Weaver Takes a Wife” and was delighted to hear that a new book was coming out. I can now happily say that “Of Paupers and Peers” will take its place beside my other Cobb South keepers. I just wish that 1) it was a lot cheaper so more people might buy it and enjoy it and 2) your books were available as ebooks. Any chance of that?
James Weatherly’s greatest hopes in life were to win the hand of the Peerless Miss Prescott and to aspire to the living in the small village of Fairford. When Miss Prescott laughed at his proposal, he lowered his sights to earning his keep as a Latin tutor and vicar. It was then that Fate, in the form of an unbroken male descent from the disinherited second son who ran off with a milkmaid, changed his life. James suddenly finds himself a wealthy Duke traveling to his vast Surrey estate when Fate hits him over the head again, only this time literally. Beset by two robbing ruffians, he’s lying in the middle of a dusty road when Miss Margaret …
Dear Ms. Johnson:
 Long before there was Jaid Black and Ellora’s Cave. Long before the rise of erotic romance and the publication of lines like Aphrodisia, Spice, and Avon Red, there were authors like you who wrote historically rich, emotionally deep and impossibly erotic romances. There are three of your books that I re-read with some frequency and this is one of them.
Forbidden is a book full of rule breakers. The book itself is a rule breaker because it features a heroine who is a minority, an Absarokee Indian; a hero who is married and then proceeds to get a divorce; a heroine who lost her virginity well before meeting up with the hero; a hero who actually has adult children and one grandchild; and a long separation; it’s set in 1891 and its in France and America. You would think that all of those things would tend to irritate the crap out of people but Forbidden is still in print today, some fifteen years after its original publication in 1991.
But it is your rule breaking that makes this book so wonderful. Daisy Black is a serious person, not …
Dear Ms. Abé,
Imagine a place so ripe and thick with the promise of magic that the very air breathes in plumes of pearl and gray and smoky blue; that the trees bow with the weight of their heavy branches, dipping low to the ground, dropping needles and leaves into beds of perfume. A place of white sparkling mountains and black forests and one high, ancient castle. Of diamonds that churn up raw from the marrow of the earth to lace the woods, unseen, in necklaces of ice and fire.
The first book in your drákon series begins in this fashion, with a prologue that tells of a species of dragons who, in order to survive the encroachment of mankind, took human shape and traveled from their home in Eastern Europe to England. Although I am usually a fan of luxurious language, the descriptions in the prologue verge on being too rich for my blood. They are very effective at conveying that drákon’s origins are the stuff of fables, but I am nonetheless glad when the prologue gives way to chapter one and The Smoke Thief settles into a lovely style that is still poetic, but more …
Dear Mrs. Beverley,
 I had fond thought of this book before I even started it because it was the subject of the first email I ever exchanged with someone who’s become a dear friend of mine. I had mentioned after the year 2000 AAR Top 100 that I was looking for a copy and Deb, the consummate bookstalker, emailed me saying she had one. Plus about 10 other books I’d been looking for. Deb, this review’s for you!
Mrs. Beverley, you work for me yet again with this one, the first in the Malloren series. Cyn, Captain Lord Cynric Malloren, is a great hero who is bowling along in his brother, the Marquise of Rothgar’s coach, when it’s held up by some very interesting highwaymen. Sensing something isn’t quite right, he goes along with things til he finds himself kidnapped to drive the coach to an out of the way cottage where things get even weirder. He soon concludes that the two *highwaymen* are actually women, one of whom resumes her female identity and turns out to be the mother of a months old infant. The other, the one who intrigues him, stays in her male …
Dear Mrs. Eagle,
 I’ve adored your books for years and have posted in praise of them in the past. And then something happened with your writing. A new direction, I think it was called. I know you have to follow where your muse leads you but frankly, I wasn’t happy about where she was taking you. Well, hallelujah I think you’re headed back in the direction I like.
Lauren Davis didn’t realize until it was too late that she was way over her head going up against a man she had once, well maybe not loved, but enjoyed being with. He hadn’t wanted her to stop riding his racehorses to have the baby but once Joey had arrived, Raymond Vargas decided that no one was going to take his son away. And when Lauren tried, he beat her then ordered her killed. And she would have been too if his henchman hadn’t gotten soft and dumped her by the side of the road on a rainy night in Missouri.
And that’s where Nick Red Shield finds her, bruised and bloody and so helpless he can’t abandon her even if that kind of behavior was in …
Dear Ms. Matthews:
 I am writing this letter today because I fear that the readership believes that I am a suspense thriller junkie who only likes boring police procedure stories interrupted by bouts of hot sex. I mean, yeah, that is me, but I also like to mix things up a bit. You are a traditional regency writer. If you were being published today . . . Well, I guess that’s a silly thing to say because you wouldn’t be published today because you do write traditional regencies but I think there is a readership out there today so I am thankful for Belgrave House for reissuing your books in ebook format.
A Curious Courtship is set in Leicestershire, Quorn(hunting) country. Mr. Gareth Rushton is visiting his good friend, Sir Penrith Southwood. It’s important for me to note that until I started reading these older traditional Regencies, outside of a Heyer book, I hadn’t seen a mere mister be cast as a hero. It goes to show that it doesn’t matter what title you give a man. Mr. Rushton comes from a distinguished background and from one of the …
Dear Ms. Linden,
 I was intrigued by the premise of your first novel, What a Woman Needs.
Stuart Drake has to get his hands on some money, and he has to do it fast. After becoming embroiled in not one but two scandals, neither of his own making, Stuart was cut off from his allowance by his angry father. Now Stuart, the subject of London gossip, is living on meager funds, and worse yet, if he doesn’t find another source of income quickly, he may have to sell Oakwood Park, the beloved estate he recently purchased.
In order to avoid that fate, Stuart has put his future title, his handsome looks and his charming manners up for sale, so to speak, and moved to Tunbridge Wells ahead of the gossip. There Stuart has found a young heiress who wants nothing more than to marry him. But standing in the way of Stuart’s marriage to Miss Susan Tratter is her aunt and guardian.
Charlotte Griffolino is the surly old widow of an Italian count, according to Susan. So when Stuart finds himself halfway seduced by a lushly-curved, golden-skinned woman of thirty, he doesn’t realize …
Dear Ms. Jaffe:
 I feel for you. I really do. You really, really must have made someone angry in the art and title department. Why else would they saddle your outstanding contemporary romance suspense book with the cutesy cover and an even worse title? I imagine that those readers looking for a fun cute read were sorely disappointed by the contents of the book and those readers who would have picked up a hot, sexy contemporary romance would have totally passed this by. I know I passed it by any number of times. I can’t recall if I finally picked up after a recommendation or what. But oh, what I story I had been missing. If you ever decide to give us romance readers another try, let us know.
Chicago “Windy” Thomas is the new head of the Las Vegas Metro police department’s criminalistics bureau and the mother of a 6 year old going on 16. She’s also very hot. One suspect wondered if she was a stripper. “Honey, you tell 'em to get these cuffs offa me and …
Back blurb:
“The cowled figures which stood around the open grave in the moonlight at Glastonbury in the year 1189 were used to mystery but even they were overawed by what was in the coffin.
Their great and ancient monastery was in trouble and if this sword was what they thought it was, if those bones were really Arthur’s, then they had a great relic for which their king would be properly grateful.
But their king was in France, fighting his son, Richard Coeur de Lion, and getting the sword to him would be a perilous business. A lot of people wanted that sword for a lot of reasons.
The young monk who takes it for them is unobtrusive enough but, as rumour of what he is carrying spreads, he is in danger. The companions he picks up on the way, a formidable Prioress, a Crusader haunted by the massacre in the Holy Land, may be trustworthy, or they may not.
The king they are seeking, Henry II, is sick so they are not only evading enemies, they are also in a race against time.
KING OF THE LAST DAYS makes a story full of sharp medieval detail, and lively wit and variety of mood.
…
Dear Ms. Howard:
 I know that you won’t be reading this letter as you are not an onliner, but let me tell you about my love for Dream Man. To some, this is a terrible book filled with a terrible betrayal by the hero. To me, it shows the extent I will overlook things when I fall in love with a story.
Marlee Keen is a psychic. She can see the thoughts of people around her. The emotional unstable are unusually strong projectors and because of this Marlie could see crimes as they were being committed. After a terrible ordeal in which Marlee was kidnapped and she was forced to watch while a madman violated a young child, Marlee’s psychic ability left her. Marlee found this to be a blessing. She moved to Orlando and began to build for herself “something safe and solid.” She bought herself a nice little house. Got a job at the bank and lived without feeling anyone else’s emotions but her own.
As she is driving home from the movie theater, she begins to have visions of a grisly murder being committed. …
Dear Ms. Roberts:
 If I were to rate my favorite books by my favorite authors, this would probably qualify. It’s full of classic Nora Roberts features: three dimensional characters, rich family relationships (albeit dysfunctional), and two believable individuals coming together to give each other comfort and love. Your books aren’t about the big and grand romantic gestures, but rather the small gestures that show inevitably that these two lovers belong together and regardless of what life throws them, they’ll be there for each other. Which is big and grand in its own way.
Caroline Waverly is a world class violinist. She had an emotional breakdown in the midst of a long tour and a messy breakup with her conductor-lover. She retreats to her grandparents’ house in Innocence, Miss, to recover. Unfortunately peace and quiet isn’t to be had because there is an attractive, naked, and murdered woman in her pond: Edda Lou Hatinger. Edda Lou had a very public spat with favorite son Tucker Longstreet just days earlier. She was looking for more than what Tucker ever offered to women: permanence. Edda Lou is the third mutilated female …
Dear Readers,
 This was a nice little book. It’s set in 1540 England during the dissolution of the last monastery by Henry VIII. Now, when’s the last time you read a book with that background? The heroine’s father has been the bailey of the monastery of Woodham which is to be surrendered to the King. I got the impression that a bailey was the man responsible for managing the monastery grounds, record keeping and such. Anyway, the hero is with the Court of Augmentations, the group of men who traveled around the country seeing to the take over of these church lands and property and guess who’s house he’s come to inventory? Not an auspicious beginning for our love story.
Kate is in love with a showy courtier who’s come in the company of the King to Woodham (the fictional town and Abbey which is based on the real Waltham Abbey) to go hawking and enjoy rural life away from London for a few days. She’s upset about the closing of the monastery both for religious reasons and because her father is about to lose his job. Master Matthew Hartwell seems to her to just …
 Apparently this is the conclusion of the Kendall series started in the 90s(?). I haven’t read that series but I understand that there is some who have great affection for this family. To some extent, I felt that this book was written for them because I lacked any real connection to Zach Zeke which inhibited my ability to stay interested in what happened next. I wanted to like this story because it was a different type of paranormal. The fantasy theme: a fight of between the faerie clans was also appealing. Unfortunately, too little time was spent on the faerie politics and too much spent on describing the fantastical scenery.
Zach Zeke Kendall is an anthropologist who studies Northern American indigenous societies. At the invitation of a colleague, Zach Zeke is looking at burial and rituals of the migratory cultures of the eastern hemisphere, specifically, Ireland. Zach Zeke, while looking at burial grounds in Ireland, falls down a cairn and like Alice, awakens in a new and strange world. Nuala, heir to the throne of Mab, is there to catch him. Faith, for sure, because she has …
Dear Mrs. Mueller,
After I enjoyed your short story “Till Death Do Us Part,” I knew I had to try some more of your work. The problem still is that a lot of them are very highly priced. So when I noticed you have some freebies at your website, I was very happy. I love freebies!
All of these stories are short (range 21-32 kb) and all use different locations and eras from Roman Britain to Dark Ages Ireland, 17th century Bermuda to the Western prairie. I’m coming to expect strong women in your works and am delighted with these four. They look life in the face and stand up for themselves. All have faced various hardships and tragedies and managed to not only survive but to triumph. Only one of these might be considered a romance but all are filled with evocative descriptions and interesting characters. I do have to mention that I wish the editing was a little stronger.
A New Beginning – Western
Warrior – Roman Britain
Absolution – Dark Ages Ireland
Black Angel – 17th century Bermuda
These stories convinced me to lay out some hard cash for your books at various publishers (and wow, your books …
Dear Ms Owens Malek,
 Are you still writing? I hope so but haven’t seen anything new from you in ages. You’ve got me worried. I guess until I learn otherwise, I’ll have to just keep re-reading your OOP books.
This is a dual ‘against all odds’ romance. Two sisters love men who are completely forbidden to them. Julia Rosalba Casca was dedicated as a Vestal Virgin on her 10th birthday by her power greedy grandfather. She’s now 17 and resigned to her fate until the day she helps the Chief Vestal make alterations to Julius Caesar’s will and sees the handsome Centurion with him. Marcus Corvin Demeter feels like Jove’s thunderbolt smacked him down when he sees Julia and knows he has to meet her again. But romantically pursuing a Vestal will lead to death, both for him and, in a more horrible way, for her for betraying the sacred trust of the Roman people.
With the help of her sister Larthia, the two begin to secretly meet. But this isn’t the only thing that Larthia is up to. Fearing that his widowed granddaughter could become the target of assassins due to his political opposition to …
Dear Ms. Hoyt:
 At first blush, this isn’t a book I would buy. The back cover blurb reads as follows:
Widowed Anna Wren is having a wretched day. After an arrogant male on horseback nearly squashes her, she arrives home to learn that she is in dire financial straits. What is a gently bred lady to do?
The Earl of Swartingham is in a quandary. Having frightened off two secretaries, Edward de Raaf needs someone who can withstand his bad temper and boorish behavior. Dammit! How hard can it be to find a decent secretary?
When Anna becomes the earl's secretary, both their problems are solved. Then she discovers he plans to visit the most notorious brothel in London for his “manly” needs. Well! Anna sees redâ€â€and decides to assuage her “womanly” desires . . . with the earl as her unknowing lover.
Frankly the blurb reads like some idiotic erotic romance book that publishers seem to think are so popular. Virginal heroine turns skanky ass prostitute like in order to sate her newly discovered passions. What it turns out to be is a believable love story between two lonely …
Dear Ms. Stuart,
 Genevieve Spenser finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she arrives on billionaire Harry Van Dorn’s yacht. Harry is not only rich but gorgeous and charming, and his sexiness has gotten People magazine’s stamp of approval. He is known for caring about working conditions in his factories and is meeting with Genevieve to give away oil fields to charity.
Among the staff working for Harry is his practically invisible assistant, Peter Jensen. Peter is meticulous, bland and polite, except when Genevieve catches him casting a disapproving look at her seven hundred dollar shoes. He seems completely sexless and Genevieve thinks of him as “that gray ghost of a man.”
From this description some readers who haven’t read your previous book in this series, Black Ice, might assume that Harry is the hero whom Genevieve will end up with and Peter is just a fly on the wall. The nice thing is that they’d be wrong. Harry, it turns out, is a megalomaniac villain plotting to bring seven worldwide disasters he can profit from. And Peter, a secret assassin sent by a shadowy organization called the …
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