THE ENGLISH WIFE– and the kindness of authors
When I typed that title, I had Tennessee Williams on the brain, but, really, it should be more of a collective noun: a kindness of authors. A kindness of authors was wonderful enough to take time out of their own insane writing schedules to take an early look at The English Wife and share their…
Read MoreTHE ENGLISH WIFE– Goodreads Give-Away!
Summer may be over, but that doesn’t mean it’s all grim and glum. There are pumpkin spice lattes to look forward to, plaid skirts, and red, orange and yellow leaves… and 150 advance copies of The English Wife up for grabs on Goodreads! Between now and September 16th, St. Martin’s Press is very generously handing…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
How is it September already? I saw out the summer with winter in Scotland: Alexandra Raife’s Until the Spring, in which a pregnant woman seeks refuge with her lover’s family in a remote Scottish manor house after being tossed out by her adoptive parents. This Alexandra Raife book in particular is oh so very Britain…
Read MoreTop Five Heyers
The other day, when I posted about my recent Heyer-a-thon, a funny thing happened in the Comments section: an impromptu discussion of Top Five Heyer novels. Not four shall you count, not six, but five. (Sorry, Monty Python.) Why five? Perhaps because it’s so impossible to pick just one Heyer. Or, for that matter, three…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
Nobody does comic relief quite as elegantly as Georgette Heyer, the woman who invented the Regency romance. So, this week, in honor of Heyer’s birthday, I read two Heyer novels I had somehow missed out on over the years: Cotillion and Venetia. If there are any Mischief of the Mistletoe fans out there, then hie…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
On tap for this week have been: — Eva Chase’s Black Rabbit Hall, a dark Gothic (think echoes of The Thirteenth Tale), with a surprisingly upbeat ending, set in a moldering manor house in Cornwall; — Barbara Michaels’s Wait for What Will Come, because once you read one Gothic set in a moldering Cornish manor…
Read MoreWriter's Digest Conference– This Weekend!
When we were teenagers, many of my friends had subscriptions to Seventeen Magazine. I had a subscription to Writer’s Digest. Back in the days before the internet, I remember the thrill of the magazine’s arrival, eagerly reading through articles on viewpoint, pacing, research, publishing nitty gritty (back when it was more nitty than gritty). Because…
Read MoreWeekly Reading Round-Up
The first half of this post was originally meant to go up last week– but the arrival of a small person intervened. So let’s call this fortnightly round-up instead of weekly round-up today? (Also because I just love the word “fortnight”.) I started last week old school, with a murder mystery from the early 80s:…
Read MoreMore Pink on Sale!
It’s the summer of cheap e-Pink! For a limited time, the third book in the Pink Carnation series, The Deception of the Emerald Ring, is available for only $1.99 in e-book. 1803. Ireland. Intrigue. Plots. Spies. And one accidental marriage of inconvenience…. Here’s the official blurb: Eloise Kelly has gotten into quite a bit of…
Read MoreIf You Like….
A large chunk of The English Wife takes place in the unique environment of the Hudson Valley, just about an hour or so out of Manhattan. Having spent a significant portion of my childhood there, I’d always been fascinated by how different upstate New York feels from New England, shaped as it was by the…
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