Top 5 Unusual Historicals for December 2017

For those of you who pay attention to publishing cycles, December traditionally tends to be a dead month.  Thank heavens for self-publishing otherwise this month's Unusual Historicals column would have been a non-starter!  There's a nice bit of variety this month and hopefully a few gems just waiting to be discovered.  Here is what caught my eye for December:

Besieged and Betrothed by Jenni Fletcher (medieval)

Bound to her enemy

Ruthless warrior Lothar the Frank has laid siege to Castle Haword, but there’s a fiery redhead in his way—and she’s not backing down!

More tomboy than trembling maiden, Lady Juliana Danville would rather die than lose the castle. When she’s caught on opposite sides of a war, a marriage bargain is brokered to bring peace. But is blissful married life possible when Juliana has a dangerous secret hidden within the castle walls?

Fletcher is a newer author to Harlequin Historical, and this is her third release with them (her second medieval).  Naturally I have her first two books lurking in the depths of my Kindle (because of course I do).  I love, love, love tomboy heroines and looks like our fiery redhead must choose marriage in order to save her home.  I'm all in on this one.

Miracle on Ladies' Mile by Joanna Shupe (novella, Gilded Age)

A holiday novella set in New York City's Gilded Age, where anything is possible...

After losing his beloved wife, department store owner Alexander Armstrong seems incapable of anything other than work, despite his ache to be a better father to his daughter.

When he encounters Grace, a charming shop girl designing the store’s holiday window displays, he struggles to accept that perhaps miracles do happen in the most unlikely of places…

There's been a lot of chatter about Shupe's new series with Avon but I haven't seen much (OK any...) mention of this self-published novella.  I'll be frank.  I am, literally, the only reader on the planet who DNF'ed Shupe's celebrated debut novel with Kensington and the "DNF stink" has kept me from trying another one of her books.  WHICH KILLS ME BECAUSE OMG SHE WRITES IN THE GILDED AGE!  But this is a novella and frankly it sounds like Wendy catnip.  I LOVE historical department store settings and the whole single dad thing gets me every. single. time.  I'm going to try this.

The Swan by Piper Huguley (novella, Americana)

A beautiful woman with secrets comes to Noelle to confront a powerful person with the truth...and only six days left to save the town.

Avis Smith is willing to go to Noelle to marry a man she doesn’t know in order to avenge a fourteen year wrong--her abandonment to a life of misery and abuse when she was just six years old. In order to get to Noelle, she has to lie about who she is, but her thirst for vengeance is so strong, she transforms herself into the pious, beautiful bride that JD Jones wants. Still, she never expected to be abandoned at the altar.

 His work as an abolitionist and fighter for justice will not allow storekeeper Liam Fulton to turn his back on the beautiful woman his archenemy is willing to leave at the altar. He figures a way to help Avis out of her predicament, offers to showcase her in his store so that other potential grooms in Noelle will see her and might want to marry the young woman with the long and elegant neck.

When swans mate, they mate for life. When Liam offers to help Avis, he never expects that in working with her to find a resolution to her problem, he discovers a fierce need to protect her. Avis doesn’t know that she might find something better than what she was looking for--a new way to a family and bonds of a strong and life-long lasting love.

This is actually book seven in the multi-author series, The 12 Days of Christmas Mail Order Brides.  It appears to be one of those series where the authors are all operating in the same world (and using the mail order bride hook) but the stories appear to function well as stand-alone reads.  I'm highlighting Piper's book because of my past experience with reading her (she tends to create a wonderful sense of place in her stories - you're reading a historical y'all, there's no mistaking that!) and I follow her on Twitter.  Note to those of you with Kindle Unlimited - it looks like the entire series is available there.  Gorge at the trough mail order bride fans!

The Rancher's Inconvenient Bride by Carol Arens (western)

A Wyoming marriage of convenience…

Agatha Magee has put her difficult past behind her and is living an independent life at the circus. But when William English rescues her—from being shot out of a cannon—their scandalous situation leaves them no option but to get married!

William has no intention of making this more than a marriage in name only. Agatha must somehow change his mind if she’s to have the family she’s always yearned for…

Arens has been writing for Harlequin Historical for a while and her backlist is chock full of westerns.  Has Wendy read her yet?  Of course not.  She's buried in the TBR of Doom. This sounds really interesting!  A heroine in the circus?  A misguided hero who "rescues" her?  I'll give this one a whirl.  And I know y'all usually rely on me for such information (HH, western, what do you mean you've never read her Wendy?!) - but opinions welcome.

A Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner (Regency, reprint)

London 1815, just before Waterloo...

After her noble father disowned her, Lady Serena Ravenshaw clawed her way from streetwalker to courtesan to prosperous innkeeper. Now she’s feared and respected from one end of London to the other, by the lowest dregs of the city’s underworld and the upper echelons of the beau monde, and she’ll do anything to keep it that way.

When mild-mannered chemist Solomon Hathaway turns up in her office, asking for her help, she immediately recognizes him from one fateful night years before. She’s been watching and waiting for him for years—so she can turn the tables and put him in her debt, of course, and not because he looked like an angel and was kind to her when she needed it most.

She’s determined not to wonder what put that fresh grief in his eyes. But after a betrayal even Serena didn’t expect, she must put aside her pride and work with Solomon to stop a ring of French spies and save her beloved inn, her freedom—and England itself.

Originally published by Dorchester, then reprinted by Samhain - I imagine Lerner throwing her hands up in the air saying "Screw it, I'm self-publishing it this time!"  OK, seriously - HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS BOOK?!?  OK, so I knew about it.  But not that the whole heroine gets disowned becomes a streetwalker then a courtesan then an innkeeper "thing."  I AM HERE FOR THIS ALL DAY LONG PEOPLE!  Ahem.  I'm blaming this on not reading reviews closely and new back cover copy.  For those of us who missed it the first...and second time around, at the time of this blog post it's a sweet 99 cents in digital.

What Historicals are you looking forward to this month?

Mini-Reviews: Sheikhs and a DNF

Work has been busy, which means Wendy has been tired, which means Wendy is still limping along with her reading and not blogging a whole lot.  Plus I had to watch my Detroit Tigers not make the post-season.  Well, hey.  No more baseball to watch, so maybe I'll start reading again?  One can hope.  That said, I do have a few recent reads where I don't have a ton to say, so it's time for another round of mini-reviews!

The Widow and the Sheikh by Marguerite Kaye is the start of a new series and was a garden variety "It's OK" read for me.  It was a pleasant way to pass the time, but it didn't light a fire in me the way some of Kaye's other work has.

Julia Trevelyan is a botanist and widow now traveling in the middle of the Arabian desert fulfilling her husband's dying wish.  Complete his magnum opus on exotic plant species, see it published, and get him all the accolades he so richly deserves.  Julia is a skilled illustrator and while not a love match, she did share her husband's passion for the work.  But now she's stranded in the middle of an oasis after her feckless guides drug and rob her.  She's rescued by Azhar, a wealthy merchant passing through on his way home.  Turns out Azhar is a Prince, and with his estranged father's death is now the sheikh - a position he's conflicted about considering his father's last words to him involved disowning him.

Azhar wrestles with his past, family baggage, and expectation.  Julia wrestles with memories of an unhappy marriage (no abuse, more like disinterest) and completing the book.  They spend time together, fall in love, yada yada yada.

There was nothing overtly wrong with this story, I just wasn't entranced by it.  I generally like Kaye's work (the Armstrong Sisters series is especially strong), so I'll read the next book in the series.  I've seen other positive reviews so this is likely a "It's me, not you" sort of thing.  Final Grade = C+

 Never Seduce a Sheikh by Jackie Ashenden was a Kindle freebie that I downloaded based on author name recognition.  Many moons ago I was asking the Twitter hive for recent sheikh books, and Molly O'Keefe suggested another title in this series, but since I already had this one in the TBR I started here.

Lily Harkness is the newly minted CEO of Harkness Oil and has a lot to prove.  1) She's taking over for her father and 2) She's a girl.  She's visiting Sheikh Isma'il al Zahar's country in the hopes of securing their oil rights.  Isma'il has inherited the kingdom from his tyrannical father and has a lot to prove.  He needs to work out the best possible deal for his country and he's not convinced Lily Harkness is the woman for the job.

In a nutshell - ball-busting businesswoman trying to make everyone get over the fact she's a woman and a hero who felt like a bit of a throwback to me.  Very Alpha.  Very challenging.  A heroine who is supposedly tough (and a former Olympic swimmer to boot) but is vulnerable and still struggling with past event that haunts her (spoiler: not rape, but a sexual assault by a trusted adult).  I found this to be a very challenging read mostly because of the skewed power dynamics.  There were elements at play here that felt Old School Harlequin Presents in some ways.  Also I can totally see some readers being displeased by yet another portrayal of a "tough businesswoman" who really isn't all that much.  Then there's the ending.  While I appreciated that the author addressed ethical issues, the final resolution will likely displease some.

All that being said, this is the first book I've read in a while that really stuck with me in the respect that I thought about it afterward.  It had me puzzling over issues addressed, the authorial choices made, and I spun it around in my head for a couple days after.  This is, quite frankly, a minor miracle given the way my reading mood has been of late.  Certainly not for everybody, and my recommendation is really reserved, but I'm not sorry I read this.  Final Grade = B-

Magnate by Joanna Shupe is a book that was tailor made for me.  Gilded Age New York!  Robber barons!  A hero raised in Five Points!  This should have been Wendy Catnip.  And it was...until it wasn't.  Minor spoilers ahead.

Elizabeth Sloane is a blue-blooded miss with a head for stock trading.  The problem being that she's a woman, women can't trade on the exchange, and her brother would never hear of it.  She wants to open her own brokerage firm and goes to see Emmett Cavanaugh, steel magnate, and a man she thinks is her brother's friend (ha ha ha ha ha! Uh, no.) to propose a partnership.  A self-made man, Cavanaugh has a massive chip on his shoulder and Lizzy's proposal has him suspecting that maybe her brother's railroad isn't as healthy as it seems.  He sees this as an opportunity to take William Sloane down a few pegs.

So this sounds great, right?  A heroine bristling against society conventions, who wants to work, meeting her match in a ruthless self-made man who has an ax to grind with her brother.  The world-building is wonderful, Shupe paints the opulent excess of the Gilded Age marvelously and doesn't shy away from portraying her robber baron characters as ruthless and skirting the boundaries of fair business practices. Basically, they're jerks of the first order.  Hey, Carnegie did build a ton of libraries but he wasn't a nice guy either.

And then it all goes to heck in a hand-basket.  Lizzy and Emmett get caught in a compromising position and William basically blackmails Emmett into "doing right" by his sister.  Lizzy is shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YOU, that her brother thinks she needs to now marry Emmett (why should anyone care?) and is horrified when she finds out that blackmail was involved and that Emmett was "forced" to marry her and doesn't love her.

OH COME ON NOW!!!!!

Given how great I found the world-building to have this devolve into yet another historical romance featuring a heroine who has nary a care in the world when it comes to societal mores and who is determined to marry for twu wuv drove me batty.  The Sloane parents are dead - but Lizzy gets out in society.  She has a best girlfriend.  How could she think for one second that she couldn't NOT get married after being caught in a compromising situation?  Of course her brother would force the issue to protect her reputation.  As a woman YOUR REPUTATION IS ALL YOU HAD!!!  A passionate kiss in a private dining room?  Lizzy girl, you're basically a whore now.  She's never heard gossip about other society chits who "got into trouble?"  She never saw a "whore" get shunned by her former social circle?  Really?!?!?!  REALLY NOW!?!?!?!?!

I cannot express how much this irritated me.  It irritated me so much that even though I'm halfway through the book the thought of finishing it just irritates me even more.  For some this will seem like a silly thing to nit-pick over, but ugh - Wendy irritated!  Wendy smash!  There's a lot glowing reviews out there, so obviously I'm in the minority here - and Lord help me I'll likely try another book in this series to see how it goes because after all...Gilded Age New York.  I am nothing, if not predictable.  But seriously, what could have been.  Final Grade = DNF