In between festivities, I’ve been kicking off my research for my next book by reading Paula Byrne’s Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead. (Hint: the stand alone that comes out in 2015 will be set in the heavy partying world of the Bright Young Things.) I also received a haul of books…

Usually, around this time of year, I wallow in seasonal stories. I embark on orgies of Christmas reading. This year, what with small person and book deadline, I’m a little off my usual schedule. Since it’s already time to start researching for my next book, another 1920s-set stand alone, I decided to mingle work and…

My reading round up is sparse this week, but I do have some good news to impart…. Pink XI, aka The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla, is DONE! (At least until revisions.) Here are those triumphant final moments, accompanied by my second venti peppermint mocha of the morning (you know you’re in the final writing…

I am deep in the throes of finishing up Pink XI, so this week has been all about wrangling Sally and watching BBC videos about stoats (which are both adorable and deeply disturbing creatures). I did just start Sarah MacLean’s latest, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished— so all I can tell you is that the…

Right now, I’m reading Kristan Higgins’s latest, The Perfect Match. While I’m extremely partial to the early Higgins (Fools Rush In is an old favorite), this may be her best so far. What have you been reading this week?

Do you ever have books that you mean and mean to get to– and then finally do, a decade or so later? Back in the early 90’s, when I was all about paperbacks with atmospheric looking houses on the cover, I picked up Alexandra Raife’s Drumveyn— and when I saw that it was women’s fiction…

What with working away on The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla and a certain little someone deciding that sleep was highly overrated, there hasn’t been much in the way of recreational reading for me this week. But a box of books I was waiting for just arrived, so stay tuned…. What have you been reading…

Have you ever bought a book and found that it’s missing a large chunk of pages in the middle? I have very vivid recollections of sitting on the train from New York to Boston with Julia Ross’s The Wicked Lover only to discover that I could read one segment of the story twice, but the…

Since Halloween is coming up this week… how could I resist doing an If You Like about ghost stories? As you know, I’m rather devoted to the genre. (They go so well with a rainy afternoon and a hot cup of tea.) Some of these on this list are old friends, while others are new…

I’ve been having a little Heyer-a-thon this week. First The Corinthian, which I hadn’t read in some years, having decided, on a first read, that it was a little annoying. You can blame Bee Ridgway for this week’s Heyer binge: she spoke so glowingly of The Corinthian, that I had to go back and revisit…