This week, most of my discretionary reading time has been swallowed up by contest entries for a contest I probably shouldn’t name in a category that must also remain nameless. Which means that I can’t list any of it, because it would all be a dead give-away. Here’s what I can tell you I’ve been…

Don’t you love it when you rediscover something you’ve forgotten about and find that it’s even better than you remember? That happened to me this week with Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Maggie Quinn series. I like to describe them to people as supernatural YA Vicky Bliss. The heroine’s tart tone reminds me a great deal of vintage…

Happy Friday! Here’s what I’ve been reading this week: — Isabelle Holland, The Marchington Inheritance. Remember that care package my roommate sent me over the summer? I’ve been eking it out, book by book. This one felt bizarrely topical, since it was set in New York and involved a UN meeting. — John Harwood, The…

Happy Friday, all! Here’s what I’ve been reading this week. — Harriet Evans, Happily Ever After. I’ve been reading Harriet Evans’s books since a friend gave me A Hopeless Romantic as a gift years ago. I think of her books as the next stage after chick lit: that frank, open tone, the addressing of day…

I’ve given myself a bit of a break from Bronte and Gaskell this week, and bounced around between time periods and genres a bit. Here’s what I’ve been reading: — Dodie Smith, The Town in Bloom I’ve been hoarding this ever since I found it in Hatchards (yes, that Hatchards) in June. It’s by the…

I’ve been going full steam ahead on research for the next stand alone novel, so all of my leisure reading has been focused around the late 1840s. Luckily for me, it was a particularly fertile literary period. — Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey. You know my thing for governess books, right? I’ve heard Agnes Grey referred…

I was just asked which Victoria Holt to read as an introduction to the Holt oeuvre. And since I know there are many Holt fans out there– with many strong opinions– I thought I’d fling it open to all of you…. My gateway Holt was Curse of the Kings: Victorian Egyptologists, ancient curses, all that…

Now that Pink X, The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, is off in the hands of my editor, I finally have a chance to catch up on some leisure reading. This week’s haul included: — Caroline Llewellyn, The Masks of Rome. I’d found this book in the library back in Middle School and have been…

This has been a week of old books with crackly paper covers for me: specifically, my ancient, much read copy of Dorothy Sayers’s Busman’s Honeymoon and one of the remaining roommate care package gothics, Isabelle Holland’s Grenelle. What have you been reading?

In between wrangling Miss Gwen, I’m still reading through that care package my wonderful college roommate sent me. I’ve been taking a break between 70’s gothics to read the first few of Laurie King’s contemporary mystery series, featuring detective Kate Martinelli of San Francisco. So far, my favorite is the first one, A Grave Talent,…