Coming Back Around Again: Unusual Historical Highlights for October 2022

Seriously y'all, can you believe it's October already?! So many of my Romancelandia friends are embracing Spooky Season and hauling out their sweaters from storage and I'm here in Southern California bracing for triple digit temperatures and everything catching on fire. I don't miss snow, but I sure do miss autumn. But I'll get a taste of it next week when I'm heading back to the Midwest for a visit home. Apple cider, donuts, sweatshirts, visiting my favorite used bookstore ever - I got plans y'all, which will hopefully entail reading. What better way to start thinking about "airplane reading" than looking at October's crop of Unusual Historicals? Here's what's catching my eye landing in October.

 

The Boxing Baroness by Minerva Spencer

Magnetic and educated, Marianne Simpson has the manner of a lady and the looks of a lover, not a fighter. Neither of which explains her occupation as a boxer in her uncle’s circus, Farnham’s Fantastical Female Fayre. Nonetheless, when St. John Powell, the exquisitely handsome Duke of Staunton, begins turning up at her shows, she finds herself dangerously distracted by the powerful peer’s mysterious presence. With her safety at stake, Marianne’s days in the ring are numbered. But how long can she fight her attraction to the man the ton calls Lord Flawless? 

St. John Powell doesn’t just want Marianne Simpson, he needs her … to rescue his brother, who is being held for ransom by a treasonous English baron—the man all of Britain knows as the Rake of Rakes. No matter how little Marianne wants to see her duplicitous ex-lover, the man responsible for the humiliating nickname the Boxing Baroness, St. John must convince her. Even if it means climbing into the ring with the beautiful boxer and taking everything she’s got...

I won't disclose how long I've had an ARC of this (it's embarrassing) but how could I not have one-clicked a book featuring a Regency-era boxing heroine?!  Even better? This is the first book in a series.  Really looking forward to this.

Tempted By Her Outcast Viking by Lucy Morris

Tempted by the warrior… 

But she’ll never wed! 

Brynhild had once been close to Erik—until he’d betrayed her, and she’d hoped never to see him again. Now the fiercely independent shieldmaiden needs Erik’s skills to rescue her sister. Striking a truce with the tough, isolated loner, they reach a mutually beneficial deal: help her and, in return, she’ll help him in his quest to find a wife—by teaching him how to please a woman in bed! 

Speaking of books I'm looking forward to, this would be #1 with a bullet this month, Morris' second book in her Shieldmaiden Sisters series. I enjoyed the first book in this series when I read it this summer, and Brynhild is my kind of catnip heroine, the "fearsome one" who undoubtedly is masking her hidden vulnerabilities.  Oh, and the hero she falls in a love with? A bastard sold into slavery by his vile father. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

 

The Duke's Defiant Cinderella by Parker J. Cole

An arranged betrothal… 

By royal approval! 

As the servant girl who discovered she was the long-lost daughter of a comte, Lilas Moreau is no stranger to scandal. Now, more famous for her art, she won’t have her independence threatened by the return of her betrothed, Bastien, Duc de Languedoc. As a new attraction sizzles between them, Lilas is relieved he wants to end their secret marriage contract. But a summons from the queen means they’re forced to continue their charade!

Now this is exciting! And intriguing! Set in 18th century France a heroine determined to remain independent finds that independence threatened by a betrothed she was hoping was gone and...Marie Antoinette. This tale is set in 1775 so I'm not expecting any French Revolution shenanigans, but plenty of scandal and excess - which I am here for.

Father Goose by Jodi Thomas (novella, reprint)

 

Dispirited by war, Trapper Hawkins accepts a job hauling five little rich girls to Dallas. All he cares about is the money. He doesn’t expect the girls will awaken his spirit—much less that their intriguing nursemaid, Emery Adams, will awaken his heart. And when danger strikes as Christmas Eve nears, he definitely doesn’t expect Emery and the girls to risk their lives - for him...

A haunted hero who agrees to escort a woman and her five young charges to Dallas and gets more than he bargained for. This novella was originally published in The Cowboy Who Saved Christmas anthology, which at the time of this posting was available via Kindle Unlimited.  As someone who loves Christmas romances, just out here performing a public service....

Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Handeland (reprint)

Once Upon a Time . . . 

Beauty Became the Bounty Hunter 

Cathleen Chase was an unassuming farmer’s wife until her husband was gunned down in front of her. Desperate for revenge, she offered con artist Alexi Romanov anything if he would school her in the art of the dodge. 

Alexi didn’t realize he’d turned Cathleen Chase into Cat O’Banyon, a ruthless bounty hunter who would stop at nothing to catch the man who murdered her husband, until she was gone. That she took the heart he didn’t know he had along with her surprised him even more. 

Now Cat has a bounty on her head. Hunted by every gunslinger from Abilene to St. Louis to Denver, she won’t last long without an ally. With little choice, she turns to Alexi for help. But, again, he has his price. Again, she will pay any cost. 

To survive, they must trust each other, but in a relationship forged from deception and lust, is trust even possible? 

And if they can’t learn to trust, can they ever learn to love?

Sometimes y'all I could just kick myself in the teeth. Just READ this back cover blurb. I want to read the hell out of this and I'm pretty sure I have a print copy of this languishing in my TBR somewhere. Because I am THE. WORST.  Anyway, this was originally published by Berkley under Handeland's Lori Austin pseudonym and rights have obviously reverted.

Longing for Julia by Kate Bridges (reprint)

When Julia advertises for a husband, a bad-boy-turned-Mountie from her past shows up in town. 

Julia O’Shea could use a rugged man by her side as she’s running her busy newspaper and raising her young son alone. The young widow’s unique solution is to advertise for a gentleman husband. She’s dismayed when Ryan Reid arrives. 

Ryan loved and left her ten years ago. To everyone’s surprise, the black sheep of the Reid family has returned as an upstanding Mountie surgeon and commander. It doesn’t change how badly Ryan treated Julia. For her, there’s no such thing as second chances. But in all these years, Ryan has never forgotten Julia. She’s still as intelligent, beautiful and passionate. Now in his effort to save the town from a dangerous unfolding disaster, Ryan wonders if he and Julia were ever meant to be together… 

Bridges' has been reissuing her Harlequin Historical backlist as rights have reverted, and this one was originally published as The Commander back in 2006 - and yes, it's another book I've got buried in my print TBR because I am truly THE. WORST. This is another of Bridges' Canadian-set westerns (Calgary in this instance) and the third book to feature the Reid brothers.

The Hostage by Susan Wiggs (reprint)

Chicago, 1871 

Deep within the quiet of the night, a city erupts into flames, and a spoiled heiress is soon whisked away. 

Deborah Sinclair is a beautiful, accomplished young heiress with a staggering dowry. But her fortune does her no good when, one horrible night, Chicago is engulfed in flames. 

Tom Silver will walk through fire to avenge a terrible injustice—and he may have to. But when he makes Deborah a pawn in his revenge, the heat of the inferno fades next to the attraction he feels for his captive. And the further he takes her from everything she's known, the stronger their passion grows, until it threatens to consume them both.

I believe this is the second reprint (and third cover art iteration) for The Hostage, which was originally published back in 2000. It was my first read by Wiggs and I reviewed it for The Romance Reader, which just goes to show how old I am. Anyway, the book opens with the Great Chicago Fire and our kidnapped heroine ends up on isolated Isle Royale in Lake Superior, Michigan - and naturally she's hiding a Big Secret. Wiggs has moved on to women's fiction but she wrote some really great historical romance of which this was just one.

What Unusual Historicals are you looking forward to?

Top 4 Unusual Historicals for December 2018

I’ve been a collection development librarian long enough to tell you that publishing in December is traditionally a dead zone. You’d think that would have changed somewhat with the mainstreaming of self-publishing, but not really. Things still seem to bunch up around the fall and spring months of the calendar. But I can always count on my old friend Harlequin Historical and there’s two westerns this month that are prodding me to take a closer look.

The Governess’s Convenient Marriage by Amanda McCabe

A lady turned governess…  

 A life-changing proposal!  

When Lady Alexandra Mannerly last saw Malcolm Gordston, he was a poor crofter’s son—someone a sheltered duke’s daughter would never be allowed to marry. But scandal has rocked her arrogant family, and Alex now leads a quiet life as a governess in Paris—where she meets Malcolm again! Now he’s a wealthy, powerful department store owner…and determined to make her his bride! 

Sometimes I legit wonder if authors have a window into my soul because OMG WHY AM I NOT READING THIS BOOK RIGHT THIS SECOND?! A heroine now living a life below the privilege she was born into, and a hero who is a department store owner. Oh, and it’s a marriage of convenience story! Happy holidays to me!!!! 

A Scandalous Winter Wedding by Marguerite Kaye 

From one snowy Christmas…  

…to a sizzling-hot reunion!  

 A Matches Made in Scandal story. Kirstin Blair has spent seven years trying to forget brooding Cameron Dunbar. Now self-made man Cameron needs her help to recover his missing niece, and Kirstin must face the truth—seeing him again sparks the same irresistible attraction that first brought them together! She must decide: resist, or give in to temptation and risk Cameron discovering everything she’s fought so hard to protect… 

This is the fourth and final book in Kaye’s Matches Made in Scandal series and it’s time for the mysterious Procurer (a Regency era “fixer”) to get her romance! This one features a reunited lovers theme, and a bit of a mystery, as the heroine is helping the hero track down his missing half-sister. I’m behind on this series, but I’ve found The Procurer so intriguing just from brief glimpses, I’m half tempted to jump ahead and read out of order. I’ve seen reviews indicting this stands alone, so I just might throw caution to the wind!

Bound for Temptation by Tess LeSue 

Having survived the Oregon Trail, Emma Palmer is ready for a fresh start, even if it costs her all the gold in California.  

Emma Palmer has had many jobs and has gone by even more names, but most recently she is known as Seline, madam of her own establishment. Her place is clean, her booze is cheap and her bedrooms are fancy. But when a would-be patron won’t take no for an answer, she is forced to don a new disguise and flee for her life. While the schemes she cooks up might seem outrageous to an outsider, they haven’t failed her yet.  

Tom Slater is a taciturn cattleman at the tail end of a long, hard season on the trail. He’s looking forward to a quiet winter at his old family homestead in Mexico. What he doesn’t plan on is escorting a group of women on the run to safety south of the border. Tom doesn’t need to be a trailsman to know that the woman with the sly, green eyes—the one he can’t keep out of his thoughts—will only lead to trouble. 

The third in a series, this book is prodding me to check out the first book currently languishing in my TBR. I love historical westerns but I’m not a “funny ha-ha” sort of reader by nature and reviews for book one indicated it was of the light, humorous variety (I like my historical westerns to run toward dark, angsty, are we going to survive winter?). But the heroine is described as a madam and frankly that means I at least need to download the sample to take a look.

The Valentine’s Curse by Jodi Thomas 

As a Yankee in Texas two years after the Civil War, cowboy Broderick Monroe is given the jobs no one else wants to do—including keeping company with the cursed Widow Allen at the annual Valentine’s Day dance thrown by his boss’s wife.  

After losing two husbands to the war, Valerie Allen has become a local pariah. Rumor has it that if a man touches her, he’ll be dead by morning. But Brody believes in curses about as much as he believes in love.  

One secret embrace in the moonlight leads Valerie to think she has found a kindred spirit, but fate—and the curse—aren’t done with her yet . . . 

This novella was originally published in the multi-author Be My Texas Valentine anthology in 2012 and is now available separately for the first time. It sounds positively delightful and nearly every review for the anthology singled out this Thomas story as the true gem in the collection. I nearly broke a nail one-clicking this.

What Unusual Historicals are looking forward to reading this month?

The Librarian's Dirty Secret

Today we're going to talk about the one aspect of library work that generally horrifies the public and that some librarians drag their feet on. Yep, I'm talking weeding. That process where librarians actually get rid of books. As in, take them off the catalog, stamp them "discard" and either 1) toss them in the nearest dumpster or 2) give them to the Friends Of The Library to sell.

The horror!

My experience with weeding is that the public doesn't understand it, and that some librarians really suck about doing it. Weeding has to be done people. It's part of the circle of life in Library Land. As much as we would like them to, books just plain flat-out wear out. Spines get busted. Pages turn crispy brown. And accidents happen. Someone drops the book in the bathtub. Or leaves it outside in the rain. A curious tot thinks it's a neat-o new coloring book. Or the dog thinks it's a tasty new chew toy. Shit happens. Sometimes literally (ewwww!) to library books. So they have to go.

When it comes to fiction, I tend to preach condition, condition, condition. Always weed on condition, first and foremost. Look people, I don't care if the darn book is The Great American Novel, if it looks like it was buried in someone's backyard for the past 10 years, it's time for it to go. If it's truly that important and vital, sooner or later some publisher will realize they can make money off it and reprint the darn thing.

But weeding is sometimes about hard choices. I had to make one today. Yep, it's time for my library to say goodbye to The Tender Texan by Jodi Thomas. Published in 1991 and currently out of print. According to OCLC, we have the only copy in the entire state. We've been housing it in our closed-stacks-storage section for a while now, given it's borderline fragile, not- so-appealing condition. This bad boy has been a circulation stats machine. We've sent it hither and yon. However, when I stumbled across it today in our InterLibrary Loan department, I knew it was time for it to go.

You know how the paper in mass market paperbacks goes yellow? Well this book has gone right past yellow and is now the color of dirt. The discoloration has gotten so bad, that the dirt brown is now bleeding past the margins and landing on the first few words of each line.

Ewwwww.

In the grand scheme of things, considering it's a 18 year old paperback that has circulated 67 times in the past 6 years, it could probably look worse. That said, it didn't look anywhere near "good." So even though we had the last copy in the state, and even though it circulated a ton for us, it's time for it to go. The Tender Texan has moved past tender, and is now overcooked and chewy.

So yes, while a little piece of me died inside - I weeded it.

Because that's how all good librarians should roll.

Oh, and in case anyone at Berkley is reading this? Maybe it's time to reprint some older Jodi Thomas. Just sayin'.

Assuming I'm doing my math right (always doubtful) this book circulated 32.6865 times every year, for the past 6 years. That sounds awfully high though. Especially when considering a 3-week check-out period. I wonder if this was an instance where our circulation stats actually carried over from our previous automation system? Either way, I'd say we got our money's worth out of the $4.95 this title originally cost. Holy crap!

And since I'm sure someone will bring it up in the comments section, yes - an ebook version would be nice. However I don't see libraries throwing print out on it's ear anytime soon. So yeah, print would be good.