As I've already mentioned, I work across the hall from my library's InterLibrary Loan department. I love wandering over there and poking around the stacks of books to see what is getting requested. And inevitably? There's usually quite a bit of romance to be found. Here are some titles I recently stumbled across:(Don't know what ILL is? Check out this previous post)
Splendor by Brenda Joyce, published in 1997.She Played a Dangerous GameRegency London, Russia and a Chick Wearing Pants? Fantastic!
Carolyn Browne was a poor bookseller's daughter and an enlightened thinker, delighting London with her scathingly witty columns, written under the name Charles Copperville. Penetrating the ton's gilded salons in male disguise, Carolyn soon throws her barbs at the wrong man-the enigmatic Russian prince, Nicholas Sverayov.
He Was a Dangerous Target
His notoriety, extravagances, and indulgent disregard for social convention fuel Carolyn's outrage. Nicholas has moved through the balls and soirees of high society effortlessly, a natural target of gossip, envy, and desire. But Nicholas is furious to find himself lampooned by Copperville, and quickly discovers Carolyn's dearly held secret. Now, as the two spar, a new game begins-a game of deception and pride, of longing and chance.
And They Played for the Ultimate Prize...
As Nicholas sweeps Carolyn from the teeming streets and gala balls of Regency London to the splendor and majesty of St. Petersburg, against all odds the unlikely lovers embark upon a whirlwind of passion and peril until there is no turning back-for the stakes have changed, demanding no less of them than the unwavering courage to claim the love of a lifetime.
For All Eternity by Linda Lael Miller, published in 1994I will love you beyond forever, in heaven or in hell, in life or in death....A vampire romance back before vampire romances were "cool." And the heroine is the vampire? Not the hero? Hello, awesome sauce!She is a creature of the night. Beautiful. Seductive. Immortal. Her kiss brings the mercy of death to wounded soldiers at Gettysburg. Her courage defies the darkest schemes of the queen of the vampires. Her soul struggles for peace in a war that is brewing with angels and warlocks.
But her heart is all too human -- and one man holds the key. His name is Calder Holbrook, a mortal man who has unlocked her deepest desires. And Maeve Tremayne is a vampire who has never experienced such all-consuming hunger. For love. For passion...
Annie In The Morning by Curtiss Ann Matlock, Silhouette Special Edition #695, published in 1991Annie Lane had always loved reading and writing, so it wasn't all that surprising than she met and was courted by her husband, rancher Matt Breen, through the mail. Soon he knew every little thing about her--except one: she was pregnant. But there were some things you just couldn't say in a letter .. . .Wow! It's like Internet dating before the Internet! And we even have a secret baby to boot! Could it get any better you ask? Why yes, it can! According to a review over at Amazon, our dear heroine is a 30-year-old virgin librarian who had too much to drink one night, had one sexual encounter (which was probably terrible because all these heroines tend to think they're "no good" at sex afterward) and voila! Ended up with a bun in the oven. If I didn't think it would have me running towards the closest bottle of vodka, I'd be tempted to read this one.
Writing to Annie, Matt found himself able to share his thoughts and feelings in a new and wonderful way. And when they met, he knew he'd found the right woman. But after discovering her secret, he felt like a stranger. Now that they were together, could they rediscover the love that had flourished when they were apart?
Now it's time for true confessions. Anyone read any of these? C'mon, I know a boat-load of you must have at least read the LLM vampire title. Any of these sound intriguing enough for you to hunt down for yourself?
18 comments:
For All Eternity takes me back! Released my senior year of high school. I was on such a Miller reading glom back then.
Ah the memories...
I read For All Eternity too -- loved that book!
The first one sounds interesting! I wonder if she's got a good disguise or if it's just a "tuck my rippling mane of gorgeous auburn/ebony/sunlit gold hair under a cap, et voila, I am a man!" disguise. Lame salad.
I've read all of them, having said that I read them new so I have next to no memory of them. I used to LOVE all of them, especially Curtis Ann Matlock, she always wrote sweet stories.
Ohhh, very interesting choices! :) Although I haven't read any... I'm surprised to see a vampire book by Linda Lael Miller. Most of her books are "western" nowadays...
I know I have the LLM on my tbr -- I read the previous one or two books and couldn't find FAE for a long time. Or I forgot about it. I stumbled across it when I was at the UBS a few years ago and it still sits in my tbr.
Okay, you've enticed me enough to mooch SPLENDOR & ANNIE IN THE MORNING. Dagnabbit, every time you post on books, new books get added to my wish list and TBR shelves. You are evil Wendy--eeeeeeeevil, I say! :)
PS: Don't stop.
Nath: You need to hang out with KristieJ some more. She shall school you in Da Old School ways. Yep, LLM wrote a few vampire books. Back before they were "cool."
And I knew I'd get some comments on the LLM book! If memory serves I had to weed my library's last copy because it was falling apart (:sob:) and it's out of print now. Or at least it was then. I should double-check to make sure....
Abby: Oh puhleeze. It's probaby the "tuck my rippling mane" scenario :) I can count on one hand the number of Chick In Pants stories I've read where the chick in question actually cut her hair.
Tara Marie: And we all bow down before Tara Marie! All haul TM!
Amy: And people say I need a TBR intervention. I'd beg you to do a count but then I'm afraid we'd lose you for a couple of weeks - LOL.
Catie: Just paying it forward. I helped "organize" The Great Western Drive and even I wasn't immune to some of the recommendations. Kristie was the worst! I added two Patricia Potter titles and a Rosanne Bittner to the TBR because of her.
Yes. LLM Vampire series was great. I bought them when they were first released in '93. Before those books the only vampire books I had read was Anne Rice. They are still my some of my favorites and I re-read them every so often.
Wendy, I'd need a hard hat and excavation equipment to do a count of my TBR. That idea may come to fruition if I actually buy a house this year, because ultimately...the books will HAVE to move too. They're my other child. LOL
I didn't read For All Eternity, although I'm pretty sure I have it somewhere, but I did read the first one - blanking on the name - and loved it. He was a vampire who hated being a vampire - something we don't see anymore. And yea - I'm pretty sure she was the first to write vampire 'romance' though I think Anne Rice and maybe Anita Blake wrote vampire books first - but I'm not sure if they are romance in the traditional sense of romance.
And I've read Splendor but I don't really remember it.
Splendor is one of my all time favorites. For me it's one of those romances that turns a few 'automatic no-go's' into exceptions (adultery, for one). You take an impoverished bluestocking radical who happens to be an undercover reporter/columnist, turn her into a governess & send her into deepest Russia with a married Russian prince. It reminds me of one of the old school sagas. I reread it often. Somehow it all just works for me, although none of Joyce's other works have. {:0 Go figure.
have not read any of them, but i positively SWOON for the chick in pants plot. that sounds sort of tranny like.
but it is my FAVORITE
If I remember correctly LMM had a number of female vampires as the heroine books. Usually they were the children of a male vampire/human female from a previous book. At least the few I read were that way. At the time I was still a young teenager and my father didn't approve of me reading romance novels. So my forays were few and far between. Mom would get them for me, but dad would complain about me reading "smut." (Yet he had no problem with violent murder mysteries, go figure.)
Oh, I remember reading and loving For All Eternity! That was one of my closet romance reads when I first started college. I had been reading HH's since high school, but I discovered Kinsale, Gellis, Silhouette Shadows and the LMM vampire books all around the same time. This convinced me that romance was the greatest thing ever!
Lynette: LLM really was a trailblazer. I remember when I first started reading romance, paranormal books were few and far between!
KristieJ: I like my vampires angst-y. I know some readers like shiny happy vampires who are totally cool with their status, but not I. I like the vampires who HATE being vampires - LOL
Bookwormom: Joyce is one of those old school writers that I don't "hear" to much about. She's writing paranormal these days, but she has oodles of old school historicals in her backlist.
LustyReader: LOL! I thought of you when I saw that book!
Jami: Even with the paranormal boom, you still don't see many female vampires these days. I suspect because male vampire screams "Alpha" and a lot of romance readers love to get their Alpha hero fix.
And naysayers never have an issue with murder mysteries. But throw in a book with sex in it and they lose their minds. At least in my experience.
Lynn: I know LLM's vampire books used to come up routinely on the AAR boards - especially back in the day when paranormal romance was hard to come by!
I've read Splendor--it's very sexy and very, very dramatic, but it is also very much a historical romance (as in the history is not wallpaperish). I really enjoyed it.
Wow, I read For All Eternity in college back in the days. I remember it was in a series of books. This was way before the current vampire craze. Aww, I need to see if this book is at the library!
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