Another month, another month running late with Unusual Historicals. October though, she does not disappoint. Do you love all things spooky? Well this is your month because the Gothics have come out to play. So buy yourself that second (or third...this is a no judgement zone) bag of Halloween candy, light a candle, maybe summon a few spirits (if that's your thing) and let's go browsing....
WHO WILL SURVIVE LACKADAY HOUSE?When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative's remote Gothic manor, he is horrified to find all the people he least wants to see in the world: his estranged brother, his sneering cousin, and his bitter ex-lover Gideon Grey. Things couldn't possibly get worse.Then the master of the house announces the true purpose of the gathering: he intends to leave the vast family fortune to whoever marries his young ward, setting off a violent scramble for her hand. Zeb wants no part of his greedy family—but when he tries to leave, the way is barred. The walls of Lackaday House are high, and the gates firmly locked. As the Dartmoor mists roll in, there's no way out. And something unnatural may be watching them from the house's shadowy depths…Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his heart. As the gaslight flickers and terror takes hold, can two warring lovers reunite, uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale?
You know I'd harp less on my dislike of illustrated covers if more of them leaned into creating atmosphere and mood - and it's hard to not get drawn into that with the cover of Charles' latest. A young man trapped in a Gothic manor thanks to the whims of a wealthy relative wants no part of any of the shenanigans, only to find the house has untold secrets. Who to turn to? The man he was once hopelessly in love with - of course. I need to find my reading mojo because this sounds right up my alley.
“It’s very dangerous to love a Dravenhearst…even more dangerous, perhaps, to be loved by one.”After a scandalous debut sent her into recluse, heiress Margaret Greenbrier returns to the Louisville social circuit for the 1933 season. Laudanum prescription or no, Margot is not crazy. She’s not. But perception is reality, and all the money in the world can’t buy the illusion of sanity. Nor, apparently, can it convince even the most red-blooded of men to get into bed with her.Meanwhile, in the heartland of Kentucky, the Great Depression is sinking its roots into the Bluegrass. Prohibition has not been kind to the whiskey industry, and bourbon aristocrat Merrick Dravenhearst is feeling the squeeze. After a chance encounter with a beautiful heiress, sworn bachelor Merrick impulsively throws his hat in the ring for Margot’s hand. Just the right hint of lust, money, and quiet desperation…the best society marriages have been staked on far less, after all.Upon arrival at Dravenhearst Distilling as a newlywed, Margot uncovers the legend of the Dravenhearst suicide brides—two generations of wives, both found dead on the grounds of the distillery. Her new manor home is teeming with ghostly glimmers of the women who lived there before her. And her brooding, beguiling new husband is unaware Margot has brought demons of her own to his estate, initiating a cataclysmic chain of events set to bring long-buried blood-tinged family secrets to the surface.
I didn't include it here but the subtitle on Barrett's latest is "A Kentucky Gothic Romance" and JUST GET IN MY EYEBALLS ALREADY! A wealthy heiress with a reputation for "madness" marries a man who desperately needs her funds because wow, Prohibition is a drag y'all. The spark and sizzle are there, but so are the secrets. A whole bushel of secrets...
Where bones fall from the cliffs and secrets linger in the mist, a village haunted by the past refuses to give up its dead...As the bones start to fall, the spirits will rise…Norfolk, England, 1895: When renowned spiritualist Edward Blackmore receives a desperate message from his cousin Barnabas, begging him to come to the coastal village of Thistlewick Tye, his first thought is to ignore the request. Despite his cousin’s insistence that his wife is possessed by a malevolent spirit, Edward has no time for the man who stole his inheritance.Lured by the promise of money, along with a genuine concern for Barnabas’s wife – who he’d once loved – he reluctantly travels to at Thistlewick House, only to arrive too late. Emma is dead.Barnabas suspects there are supernatural forces at play. But Edward is convinced murder is afoot. As he begins to investigate, he finds himself drawn into the lives of those in this isolated and unnerving village, especially the beguiling woman who gathers up the human bones falling from the rapidly eroding cliffs.Then he discovers that a travelling circus completely disappeared in the area forty years previously and no one is willing to talk about it. Perhaps not everything at Thistlewick Tye is quite what it seems…
A hero loathe to help out his paranoid cousin arrives too late to help the woman he once loved. To discover the truth he finds himself drawn into the lives of the remote and isolated village, and a woman who gathers up human bones as the cliffs erode away into the sea (I mean, she sounds like fun AMIRITE?!). And what does all this have to do with a traveling circus who vanished from the area forty years ago?
Hidden treasure. Murder. Mystery. Romance. All while snowbound at Christmas.While trapped by a blizzard at a remote country manor house over Christmas, a school headmistress teams up with a charismatic doctor to solve a murder and hunt for hidden treasure.But can she trust the man who has stolen her heart?
Selena Taylor is thrilled to cohost a Christmas house party at Darkmoor Park, the beautiful Yorkshire estate she will one day inherit. But a massive snowstorm hits the area, and no one can leave. When one of the guests dies after giving Selena a cryptic clue to a cache of hidden money, she suspects that he was murdered.Dr. Adrian Scott arrives out of the blizzard and he and Selena, fueled by a burning mutual attraction, become partners in investigating both mysteries—a thrilling hunt for hidden treasure and the search for a ruthless killer—while trapped with holiday guests who all seem to be hiding a secret.When another guest dies and she starts receiving threatening notes, Selena realizes that she is in terrible danger, pursued by a relentless villain and involved with a man whose touch makes her heart race but who may be hiding a deadly secret of his own.
Our heroine just wanted to help host a Christmas house party and instead she gets a snowstorm that traps her guests, a murder, and a cryptic clue about hidden treasure. On top of that, all her guests seem to be hiding some sort of secret. Helping her crack the case? A handsome doctor with secrets of his own. This is the third book in The Audacious Sisterhood of Smoke & Fire series.
Atlanta, 1940s. A war widow at twenty, Abby Willingham is just trying to survive by working nights as a cigarette girl at the glamorous Club Majestic - where world-renowned swing orchestras keep the dance floor alive and corruption is concealed in the next room. Grieving, broke, and fending off her shady boss’s advances, Abby clings to her independence, the sympathetic ear of her fast-talking best friend, and the comfort of her late husband’s memory.But when she meets architect Vince Vandenburgh III—charming, wealthy, and carrying secrets of his own—Abby begins to imagine a life beyond sorrow. As their paths continue to cross under the sultry glow of nightclub chandeliers, love dares to flicker... even as danger grows in the shadows.Torn between the past and a future she never expected, Abby must choose: protect her heart—or risk it all for a second chance at happiness.
I know less than nothing about this book or author but it's set in Atlanta in 1946 and the subject headings over at Amazon include everything awesome I love that's not romance (they had me at "women's crime fiction," and "noir crime"). However, a hop on over to the author's web site touts this as "Romantic suspense at its most gripping..." and y'all I seriously need to find my reading mojo because hot damn!
She offered her body. He demanded her truth. Both would require complete surrender.Sylvia Addison had built her fortress from shadows and secrets—a respectable medical facility by day, an underground rescue operation by night. For six years, she'd saved desperate women from violence, forging documents and identities with the same precision she'd once used to survive her own brutal marriage. She'd learned to weaponize everything—her beauty, her wit, even desire itself—all while keeping her heart locked away where no man could shatter it again. Then Dr. Albert Raines arrived, threatening to tear down everything she'd built with his damning medical license and haunted dark eyes that saw too much.Dr. Albert Raines came to Ravenwood seeking solitude, not scandal. The bastard son of an earl and a courtesan, he'd spent his life running from his mother's shadow, only to inherit a manor full of mysterious women and their maddeningly beautiful leader who threatened him with a gun and offered herself as casually as afternoon tea. Every instinct screamed to throw them out, to protect the reputation he'd fought to build. But watching Sylvia Addison save lives with fierce determination while carrying wounds that matched his own, Albert found himself wanting something he'd never dared imagine—a woman who understood that sometimes the greatest dignity came from choosing your own terms.When a woman who uses desire as currency meets a man who's spent his life refusing to be bought, who will surrender first?
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I am utter trash for heroines who have "reputations." This is the fourth book in the Madams and Mischief series and when I heard of it's existence, I downloaded the first novella to give it a whirl - I just need to find my flagging reading mojo. On the subject of novellas - y'all words should still mean something and I'm not sure what's going on here because while this is tagged as "novella four" Amazon lists it at 300 page count. Could that be an error? I mean, maybe? Because the first novella in my TBR is listed at 112 pages.
Warrior, adventurer, charmer…husband?Egill Eriksson has had more wild exploits than he can remember. Now with his brothers settled, it’s time for him to secure his own future and finally wed! Enchanted by thrall Mildritha, Egill has a simple plan: free her from servitude and win her hand. If he can convince her he’s changed his ways…The last thing Mila wants is a man trampling on her independence, especially one with a reputation like Egill’s! But there’s no arguing with their inescapable chemistry. Until Egill’s unruly past catches up with him and threatens the future Mila was just daring to hope for!
I mean, if you're not a Viking with a reputation, how good of a Viking could you possibly be? Our hero in Morris's latest is finally ready to settle down, he just has to convince the heroine that's he's a changed man. Turns out that's easier said than done.
Arabella Comerford always had too many dreams and desires to ever be happy with the forced marriage and staid life her cruel father planned for her. She sees her way out when she spies on a handsome gentleman engaged in elicit activities with a woman at Vauxhall Garden. Ultimately it leads her to her own path as a celebrated courtesan with freedom and money. But she always wondered about that man who got away and the startling green eyes that haunt her fantasies.Silas Windham has been gone from London for nearly six years, after his father’s death caused a rift between him and the marquess’s legitimate children. Now he’s back thanks to the illness of his half-brother and unsure what to do next. Until he encounters Arabella at a hell and realizes she’s the woman who he once caught spying on him in a garden. The one he hasn’t been able to get out of his mind since.Long-held memories and desires explode into a passionate affair that can only be temporary for both of them. But as their passions soften into deeper and deeper connection, it leaves them both wondering if two wild, broken people might be able to let go of the past and become everything to each other.
A trapped and desperate heroine discovers the answer to all her problems after spying a notorious rake in flagrante delicto. Six years later, she's a celebrated courtesan and he's back in London when his half-brother falls ill. Their paths cross again and naturally things get very complicated. Again, trash for a heroine with a "reputation" and OMG, this is the first in a series featuring courtesans!
A wallflower with a secret…Olive Becket has played it safe since the day her father died. So no one is more surprised than she when her suffrage anthem–an anonymous, harmless jingle–is a state-wide sensation. The public is clamoring to know who she is, but revealing herself could incur the wrath of her anti-suffrage landlord. Unfortunately, the devilishly handsome detective hired to unmask the composer is convinced she knows something. As if supporting her family isn’t enough, now she must outmaneuver a man who makes her shiver. If she misses a beat, she could find herself on the street. Or worse–directly in the rake’s embrace.A detective under pressure…Emil Anderson’s new detective agency is sinking fast. When a lucrative partnership is dangled in front of him in exchange for locating one low-profile composer, he doesn’t hesitate. To his surprise, his only lead–a perplexing pianist with spellbinding doe eyes–is immune to his famous charm. Unfortunately for her, Emil loves a good riddle, and he’ll track her until it’s solved. There’s only one snag–the more time he spends with her, the more protective he becomes. Now he has to choose: close the case, or open his heart.An unexpected partnership…Her livelihood. His future. The truth. All dangerously close to unraveling. How can they put aside their mutual suspicion–and inconvenient chemistry–before someone else pulls the strings? And what if the ending they fear turns out to be the beginning they never saw coming?
No one is more surprised than our heroine when the little jingle she wrote becomes an anthem for the suffrage movement. And really, who knew one little jingle would end up causing so much fuss? She's treading lightly around her anti-suffrage landlord and now there's a detective snooping around looking to unmask her. Now if she can only thwart him while not falling for his charms. This is the second book in The Seattle Suffrage Society series.
She’s much too carefree, too lovely, too enchanting to be a spy.His job is to catch spies. She cannot possibly be one—and he cannot possibly love her!Clive Davenport, the Marquess of Carlisle, does not fall for beautiful women. But when the dark-haired sylph he glimpsed not far from his home last winter reappears on the beach at Brighton, he cannot escape her lure. Swaying in the June breeze, she is the picture of freedom and delight in the summer sun. Then she saves his little girl from the crashing waves of the Channel waters and constructs kites that dance in his daughter’s hands—and in his heart.She tells him her name is Giselle Laurant, and that she is a French émigré with a work commission she must urgently finish. Employing her special talents as an illustrator, she does not reveal that her renderings of coastal English towns have a special destination.So falling in love with dashing Carlisle creates problems. He will not disappear. Nor does she want him to. Her past experience with an abusive husband and French police are bitter. Yet she marvels at Clive’s kisses that are so sweet, and his tender regard so alluring, that she allows herself one night of surrender.But when her foes track her, Clive is determined to save her, no matter her sympathies. No matter that he loves her to distraction.
The fifth book in the Scarlett Affairs series features a hero whose job it is to catch spies and a French émigré heroine, a talented illustrator, who likes to draw pictures of coastal English towns. I mean, she can't possibly be a spy, can she? Dude, c'mon now.
A widow starting anew. A gentleman dodging the noose. Will their pretense of a marriage turn into a head-over-heels love?To purchase the publishing house of her dreams, new-to-London Gwendolyn Barnes must find herself a husband. With no desire to wed again, the young widow pays an exorbitant fee to the notorious Black Widow of Whitehall for a husband who, she assures Gwen, is almost certainly dead.Then her husband, shipping magnate and aloof son of a duke, Gideon Devereux, walks through the front door.After reading of his marriage to an unknown bride, the date of which provides him a handy alibi, Gideon returns to London determined to discover who framed him for treason. He’s content to allow his farce of a marriage to the beautiful bluestocking to stand. He only sees two problems—Gwen’s stipulation the marriage remain in name only, and an ungovernable hunger for each other that neither can quell.Secretly falling for the brooding and seductive Devereux, a wary Gwen vows to avoid a repeat of her disastrous first marriage. And with his enemies circling ever closer, Gideon’s inner demons whisper that their white-hot passion can never ignite into a forever love.Can this made-for-each-other couple discover new heights of happiness in each other’s arms, or will the echoes of their pasts tear them apart?
Another month, more books that are part of The Lyon's Den world. The heroine wants to purchase a publishing house but in order to do that she needs a husband. So she pays an exorbitant fee to wed a man that is most likely dead. It should be perfect, until it isn't. For you see, the husband isn't dead and his "marriage" just so happens to provide him with an alibi that wiggles him out of trouble. He's fine with letting the sham of a marriage stand, other than the fact that his wife doesn't want to consummate it. Oh and the small matter that someone almost succeeded in framing him for treason....
In search of excitement… Though Captain Simon Henry Huxley lost an eye in the naval war with America in 1812, it hasn’t slowed him down the past six years. Since his contemporaries are falling into parson’s mousetrap with alarming regularity—manipulated by Mrs. Dove-Lyon no doubt—and with yearning to return to the sea thrumming through his veins, London is a bit dull. But after a spontaneous visit to the infamous Lyon’s Den gaming hell one winter night, his life will change in every conceivable way.Dreaming of freedom… Lady Hattie Anne Russell, youngest daughter to the Earl of Stonewycke, has been intimate with scandal since the day she turned sixteen. She dislikes rules, labels, or the ton’s boring dictates for proper ladies, and through it all she’s been bedeviled by dreams of an adventurous lion. Frustrated, her mother turns to Mrs. Dove-Lyon for help in marrying Hattie off before further disgrace follows; no stake is too high, and any Lyon will do, but Hattie won’t be tamed, and neither will she submit to marriage without a fight.A matchmaker’s interference may provide both… After a hasty marriage of convenience, the newly wedded pair is forced to make the best of their reality. As the calendar marches toward spring, the two accidentally find common ground by bonding over the silliest of things. Secrets and dreams are shared, and emotions prompt surprising heat between them, yet an unexpected complication has the power to destroy what they’re building. It will take daring heroics and exceptional mettle to prove they are worthy of a love—and a life—for the ages.
Yes, more Lyon's Den - and look, I'm only human. The hero is rockin' an eye patch. Also I can't even begin to tell you the last time I saw the War of 1812 play any sort of role in a historical romance since the bodice ripper era. He's anxious to return to the sea, and she's a scandal-ridden heroine whose mother is determined to bring her to heel. Of course these two messy people end up married to each other because it would be no fun otherwise.
Ah, October. The month for spooky shenanigans, mysteries and secrets galore. Will this crop of Unusual Historicals that feature so much Wendy catnip unearth my reading mojo? God willing and the creek don't rise. What Unusual Historicals are you looking forward to?
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