Tag: romance

A Lady Awakened

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant is a romance that flies in the face of convention, just like  its main characters do. In fact, this debut romance is so unconventional that reviewers have found it impossible to merely “like” the book.  It’s either been really loved, or practically a “wallbanger” (as in “throw against the wall in disgust”) book. I’m glad I followed my curiosity and read it, the differences made it well worth the time.

Martha Russell is a widow after a mere 10 months of marriage. Her late husband was a drunken fool, but his pride kept him from countermanding her orders for improvements on the estate and nearby village. He was unwilling to admit that he couldn’t remember whether he had given the orders for the school, and the new roofs for the tenants’ cottages, and the other things she thought were necessary. Drunken blackouts, you see.

But driving himself and his carriage into a crash had not been in her late husband’s plans. Nor had it been in Martha’s. Russell had expected Martha to provide him with an heir to his estate, it was why he married her. Russell hadn’t wanted his brother to inherit. Thomas Russell was still remembered around the neighborhood for his abuse of the female servants.

But Martha hadn’t had time to give her husband an heir, in spite of his assiduous efforts in that area, distasteful to Martha as they were. Martha had nevertheless done her duty by him, and dreamed of all the improvements she could make to the estate.

When the lawyer reads her late husband’s will, Martha knows she isn’t pregnant. She’s three days past certain. However, she feigns uncertainty in order to buy time. She’s desperate, and knows there must be a way to keep the demon brother at bay.

In Church on Sunday, the Lord does provide in the form of a handsome and feckless neighbor. Theophilus Mirkwood has been forced by his father to rusticate at their family’s country estate until he learns responsibility. Martha Russell offers to pay him 500 pounds for his stud services, for one month.

Yes, that’s right. She wants him to get her pregnant. He thinks she’s also paying for pleasure. She is absolute dead set against enjoying the act. Martha refuses to surrender any part of her essential self, and that includes her pleasure, to a man she sees as a wastrel.

And yet, this is a love story. It really is. It’s amazing how they get there.

Escape Rating B: This is the first romance I’ve ever read where the sex is not any good for either partner for the first half of the book. It’s an amazing place to start the story. Really, truly. There are a lot of stories where sex turns into love, and stories where the heroine’s first time isn’t so great, but this one is a first. The sex isn’t good for either of them, and it isn’t supposed to be.

This courtship is about a lot of other parts of their relationship. When all of the other issues (and are there ever a LOT of other issues) are resolved, then the issues in the bedroom work out. But this is a romance and not erotica. Love is more important than sex, in spite of where (and how) they start.

Do I read romances? Is the sky blue?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | reading challenges

I can never resist a happy ending. Or even a “happy for now” ending.

As a friend pointed out, I do review a lot of what he called “bodice rippers” on my blog. Even if not a lot of actual bodices get ripped, because some of them are contemporary romances and as many as I can find are science fiction romances. But my friend was close to correct, at least in the “horseshoes and hand grenades” definition of close. I do read a lot of romance novels. I enjoy them.

I am also aware that I am quite fortunate. A lot of romance novels are available for review on NetGalley. This is what we call a win-win. Except when it comes to writing all the reviews. I read a lot of books, I write a lot of reviews.

Reading Romances, the blog, is running a Reading Romances Challenge that has a signup and a Goodreads group. One of the interesting things about this challenge is that instead of the usual levels, there are specific, well, I guess you would call them tasks, except that’s not quite right.

A task implies that it’s something you wouldn’t want to do. These are more like stretch goals. The idea is to get romance readers to try something a bit out of their romance comfort zones. The January stretch is to either read the first book of a series, read a book by a debut author, read a book by an author that’s new to the reader, OR, read a YA romance OR read an erotic romance. All the “challengee” has to do is pick one of the above.

I chose to read a book by an author that’s new to me. Why? Because I read a lot of books by authors who are new to me. It’s part of my reviewing. I love discovering new “voices”.

And on the Goodreads group side of this equation–I committed to reading 50 romances. Like that’s going to be a problem. I think I’ve got 5 down and 45 to go. Make that 44 and 3/4–I started a new book today, and guess what? It’s a romance!

 

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 1-8-12

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> Virtual Nightstand

And it’s January! Post-holiday doldrums anyone?

I live in the Atlanta suburbs, so let’s call it the South, more or less. I have for the last four years. But I grew up in the Midwest, and spent most of my adult life either in Cincinnati (OH) or Chicago, with the exception of three years in Anchorage Alaska. To me, winter is supposed to be cold, and sometimes snowy. (It doesn’t actually snow lots and bunches in Cincy). Winter in the South is like autumn everywhere else I’ve ever lived. Not that I miss the snow!

The weather is just not as conducive to curling up with a good book as a Chicago blizzard. But I make do.

I have books from some very different sources this week. In December, back when I thought I had a breather (silly me!) I volunteered to become an occasional reviewer for Book Lovers Inc. I received my first book from them over New Year’s, and it looks really neat.

Past Tense by Nick Marsh is described as Doctor Who with a dose of Being Human, with a slice of All Creatures Great and Small thrown in for body. I’m wondering if that might be a literal furry body somewhere down the line, since the hero is a vet. The opening scene has the boring anatomy lecture he’s attending temporarily getting hijacked either into Alien or the Cthulhu Mythos. Howsomever, his return to the real brought my attention to the fact that this is book 2 in a series. I begged the author for book 1. He sent it.

Which means that I now have Soul Purpose by Nick Marsh to review for Reading Reality before I can finish Past Tense and review it for Book Lovers.

I am also on the hook to Book Lovers for Todd Grimson’s Stainless, but I don’t have a date for reviewing it yet. They only have print ARCs, and their last shipment seems to have been dropped in sake, so they don’t have any to send me. (I’m not making this up, that’s really what I was told)  Yes, there is a pun in there, and I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t able to refrain from making it to the publicist.

I have seen a absolute ton of reviews for Cecilia Grant’s A Lady Awakened. I had to find out for myself, and this was available on NetGalley, so I grabbed it. None of the reviewers are neutral because there’s no way to be neutral about this one. Can you have a romance where the sex isn’t any good for the first half of the book? You can if there’s a reason for it. I’m more than halfway through, and it all does make sense. This is very character driven, and it is working for me.

Mea Culpa. I should have listed this last week. Stephanie Rowe’s Hold Me If You Can is on my list for January 1, 2012 and it got lost in the shuffle for the holidays. Almost literally. This is the third book in her Soulfire Series, which starts with Kiss at Your Own Risk and continues with Touch If You Dare. I have paper copies of both Kiss and Touch somewhere in a box, because I was able to get them cheap from Powell’s, but heaven knows which box. I was also able to get Kiss really cheap for my iPad, because Sourcebooks was having a sale on first books in series.

There’s one truly new book on the list. Don’t Bite the Messenger.

Don’t Bite the Messenger by Regan Summers is a Carina Press book I got from NetGalley about vampires living in Anchorage, Alaska, and one human courier who seems to be resistant to their charms. Vampires in Alaska? What do they do in the summer? Even in Anchorage it never gets completely dark, and believe me, I know. Fireworks on the Fourth of July are a real problem.  I read Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dance with the Devil. Zarek mostly suffered in the summer. I’ll have to read this book to see what these vamps do.

Looking back keeps me honest. Or it makes me suffer as much as those vampires in Alaska in the summer, take your pick. But I did make progress.

I found the box with Demi-Monde: Winter in it. I put it in one of the boxes marked for my office with “VIP Papers” marked on them. I obviously should have left myself better notes.

My new book from last week, P. Kirby’s The Canvas Thief, has not been doing terribly well on the review circuit. But I still need to get to it.

Looking back at the Christmas Nightstand, I finished Marissa Meyer’s Cinder. That review will be posted this week. It was pretty good, but I wish she hadn’t tried quite so hard to hit every single point of the Cinderella story. Or something like that. It didn’t quite live up to the hype.

A post at The Galaxy Express about Superhero romance reminded me that I had a book about superheroes, although not a romance, in my long backlog. The Black Stiletto by Raymond Benson is the story of the birth of a very human caped crusader. It’s fascinating the way the story is told. The woman’s son is reading her diaries, because the Stiletto herself is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. And yet she lives again. See my review on Wednesday.

Well, that all we have time for this week. See you next week for another exciting edition of “what’s in that box?”

Don’t forget, tomorrow is Ebook Review Central‘s turn at the last of November 2011. We’ll see Amber Quill (really that’s Amber Allure publishing at the moment), Astraea Press, Liquid Silver and Riptide Publishing.

 

12 for 2012: My most anticipated books in 2012

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> books> ebooks

It’s very difficult to figure out what books I’m looking forward to most in 2012. I mean when I started to look at lists, I realized that most of what I was anticipating were the next books in series, or new books from authors I already knew. But when I looked at the list of my best reads from this past year, most of them turned out to be authors who were new to me. It’s a puzzle, isn’t it?

This doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the series books that I read. I certainly did. But it’s the discoveries that turned out to be the most memorable. Maybe that’s because they were such surprises.

Just the same, these are the books I am planning to stalk NetGalley for review copies. And if I can’t get a review copy? Well, then I’ll just have to buy a copy and review it anyway. There’s even a reading challenge about reading one book a month just for fun!

But the books I’m looking for in 2012 are…drumroll, please!

When Maidens Mourn by C.S. Harris will be the next book in her Sebastian St. Cyr historical mystery series. What Angels Fear is the first book, and St. Cyr is a detective of the amateur and aristocratic variety. He should be the hero of a Regency romance, and in other circumstances, he might have been. But his service in Wellington’s army has left him much too tormented for that. His personal life makes him a tragic hero; the demons that drive him make him an ideal detective, if only to keep him from becoming a criminal. March can’t come soon enough on this.

Celebrity in Death by J.D. Robb. This is Eve Dallas’ 34th outing. I’ve read all of them. Usually in one sitting. I still can’t figure out how she does it, but Robb/Roberts does it really, really well. This book means there will be one warm night in February.

Restless in the Grave by Dana Stabenow. I think I will always have a fondness for Alaska stories. Heck, I still tell Alaska stories, and it’s been 6 years now since I left Anchorage. But living in Alaska is something that changed my perspective, probably forever. The situations Dana writes about in her novels are always a tiny bit familiar, even the ones set in the Bush. Because Alaska is possibly the world’s biggest small town, and there weren’t six degrees of separation, there were three at most. Even for cheechakos like us. Dana writes damn good mysteries, but I always read them for a taste of the place we almost called home.

Master and God by Lindsey Davis. I love Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco series. The whole idea of a hard-boiled detective operating in Imperial Rome has always been utterly delicious. And Falco’s wife Helena Justina is made of awesome. Master and God is not a Falco book. It’s historical fiction set in the same time period. Davis wrote one other work of historical fiction set during the Falco period, The Course of Honor. I read it years ago and it was fantastic. If Master and God is half as good, it will be well worth reading. Come to think of it, I hope people re-discover The Course of Honor. It was incredibly good and I don’t think it got half the attention it deserved.

The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green. This one has been teasing me every time I look at Amazon. The recommender can figure out I want to read this, so it sorta/kinda looks like it’s available, but it’s not. January 3, 2012. Come on already. For those fans of the Nightside, John Taylor is finally going to marry his long-suffering (in more ways than one) girlfriend, Suzie Shooter. He just has one last job to finish up before he meets her at the altar. But no job in the Nightside is ever easy, especially not for John Taylor.

Redshirts by John Scalzi. This sounds like it’s going to be really cool. And really, really funny. And yes, the redshirts in the title are those redshirts. Like in Star Trek. The ones that always get killed at the beginning of the mission. What happens if a bunch of them figure it out? And decide that they are not going to let it happen to them? This sounds like something only Scalzi could possibly do justice to. In June, we’ll all find out.

An Officer’s Duty by Jean Johnson is the next installment in her series, Theirs Not to Reason Why. I loved the first book, A Soldier’s Duty (reviewed here), and I can’t wait to see where Johnson next leads her time-travelling heroine, Io, in her quest to save the human race from utter extinction. July 31 is way too far away for this one.

Copper Beach by Jayne Ann Krentz. I knew that someday the Krentz was going to link the Victorian era Arcane Society of her Amanda Quick novels to her contemporary Jones & Jones psychic investigations to her futuristic romances under her Jayne Castle pseudonym. I read them all, but the links make for an added twist that I love. In January Copper Beach starts a new subseries, Dark Legacy.

Crystal Gardens is the start of a second subseries, Ladies of Lantern Street, that Krentz is starting in April under her Amanda Quick name. That means it’s a Victorian era story, at least for the first book. All of the Arcane Society books, both contemporary and Victorian, have been excellent romantic suspense.

Tangle of Need by Nalini Singh is the 11th book in her Psy-Changelings series, and the first to be published in hardcover. Although her Archangel series hasn’t wowed me, the psy-changeling books have never failed to please. I only wish that the release date was earlier than May. And I wish the US version had a better cover. The UK cover is awesome. (UK on left, US on right.)

Dragon Ship by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. I want to go back to Liaden. I want to catch up on the books in between (there are several) that I haven’t read, and I want to finally find out how things are going. Liaden is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, space opera science fiction romance universes of all time. Dragon Ship is due Labor Day. I think I have enough time to get caught up. It will be so worth it.

This last book is an absolute flyer. It sounds really cool, but who knows.

The Yard by Alex Grecian. What if, after Scotland Yard failed to capture Jack the Ripper, they started a Murder Squad? 12 detectives specifically charged with investigating the thousands of murders in foggy, grimy, crime-filled London. How much luck would they have? When one of their own is murdered, the Yard’s first forensic pathologist is put on the track of the killer. I love historic mysteries, and this sounds very, very cool. In May, I’ll find out.

 

These are the books I’m looking forward to this year. I wonder how many will end up on my “best books of 2012” list.

What are your most anticipated books for 2012?

Beauty Dates the Beast

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

I’ll be honest. I read Beauty Dates the Beast for pure fun. And it absolutely totally was. Pure fun. In the middle of moving it was exactly what I was looking for.

Jessica Sims’ Beauty Dates the Beast is about an escort service. But this isn’t your usual sleazy escort service. This isn’t even your usual swanky escort service, although it is very expensive and has a very select list of clients, and an even more select list of escorts. This agency caters to the fanged, furry and finny among the population. Talk about special requests! Vampires, werewolves and other creatures that go bump in the night apparently aren’t willing to do the old bump and grind with just anyone. At least the high-rollers among them aren’t.

Bathsheba Ward works for Midnight Liaisons. Bathsheba is a human, so she is not one of the escorts. She only arranges the liaisons, she doesn’t go out on them. Until Beauregard Russell gets stood up by his escort. Beau Russell is head of one of the cat-shifter clans, and Bath doesn’t have a substitute she can send, so she goes in person to apologize. When Beau wants her for herself, human frailties and all, Bathsheba’s world starts to unravel.

Beau is in town for more than just a date, and Bathsheba has way, way more problems than just keeping her boss from discovering that she’s interested in a client. When a member of Beau’s clan is kidnapped, and Bath’s secrets are exposed, she’s not sure who she should trust with her secrets. Because when Beau learns what Bath has been keeping from him, she’s afraid he might have to make a bargain that she can’t live with.

Will love conquer all?

Escape Rating B+: This was a great escape read. I was looking for something to take me out of the middle of moving, and this was absolutely terrific for that. The only problem was the whole move was still waiting for me when the book was done. I would definitely recommend Beauty Dates the Beast for anyone looking to get whisked away for a few hours!

No Proper Lady

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper appeared on a number of “best romance of 2011” lists, including Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and RT Book Reviews Seal of Excellence and Finalist for Best Book of the Year. It had been on my TBR list for a while. I was reminded of it last week when The Galaxy Express reviewed the movie Time After Time, because both No Proper Lady and Time After Time are time travel stories, and I wondered how much they would resemble each other.

First, if you haven’t seen Time After Time, stream it on Netflix or Amazon. Then come back. I’ll wait. Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells takes his quite functional time-machine from Victorian London to San Francisco in 1979 in pursuit of his former BFF Dr. John Stevenson (played chillingly well by David Warner) who HG has just (in 1893) discovered is Jack the Ripper, just after Stevenson “borrows” his time machine. HG follows Stevenson to the future to bring “the Ripper” back to face justice. Wells is much more of a “fish out of water” in the late 20th century than the violent Ripper. The veneer of civilization had changed in nearly a century, but violence is the same. Wells finds a guide to help him navigate the 20th century, and true love makes all things bearable, even though it provides him a hostage to fortune.

No Proper Lady has elements of both Time After Time and Sheri S. Tepper’s Beauty. The comparison to Beauty is good but frightening. We’ll come back to that one. There’s even more than a hint of the Terminator if you squint.

Joan has been sent back to 1888 to change history. In the future that she comes from, humanity is about to be exterminated, and the events that lead to its demise happen in 1888. When Joan comes from, the demons have destroyed nearly everything, and the humans they do not control are almost gone. One last ceremony, one final burst of energy, sends Joan back in time. The circle was breached even as she was being sent through it.

But even if she didn’t feel the others fall, Joan can never go back. If she succeeds, she changes the future for the better. Her future will never happen, and good riddance. But the people she knew, her parents, her friends, will never be born. She is utterly alone in a totally foreign world, two hundred years in the past.

All she has is a name. She has to stop Alex Reynell and destroy the book of demon summoning spells that he has written. Now. In this year 1888 that she has been sent to. Or the human race is doomed.

Joan, like H.G. Wells, finds a contemporary guide. Her guide is Simon Grenville. He, too has a problem with Alex Reynell. Simon and Alex used to be best friends, until Alex took the magic powers that they were both learning and started summoning demons. Now they are enemies. Simon and Joan become allies in the fight to save humanity.

But first, they have to find a way to introduce a woman who has spent her entire life fighting tooth and nail for her very survival into the upper crust of Victorian society at the height of its fussiness.

Joan discovers that learning to kill demons was much easier than learning etiquette. Which she has to learn. Because she needs to sneak up on Alex Reynell and steal that book. Destroying the book is paramount, and it must be found, no matter the cost. Her life, her heart, her soul. Or Simon’s.

Escape Rating A-: The story grabbed me on multiple levels. The fish-out-of-water time travel story is very reminiscent of Time After Time and even Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander a tiny bit, although Joan is much less sure of herself than Claire, and it is one of the things that makes her interesting as a character. One way in which No Proper Lady reminds me of Outlander is that the romance does not need to be seen as the primary motivator for the story. There is an HEA, but that’s not necessarily the only reason this story exists.

I said this reminded me of Sheri Tepper’s Beauty. One piece of that story that still chills me is the portrait of the mid-20th century as the “last good time” on Earth. Whether one agrees or disagrees, the word-picture sticks. No Proper Lady, with Joan’s intense reactions to the pastoral beauty and plenty of the English countryside and relatively safe living conditions after her horrific experiences, evoked that same response. To her, the late 1880’s had been the “last good time” before Reynell “broke the world”.

No Proper Lady is absolutely not a typical romance novel. And that’s the beauty and the wonder of it.

One Perfect Night

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

One Perfect Night by Rachael Johns is an office romance. In real life, fishing off the company pier is generally considered a bad idea. In this story, it not only turns out to be good advice for the participants, but it is great fun to read.

Peppa Grant usually works as voice talent at Lyrique Recordings. But for the company’s Christmas party, she had agreed to entertain the staff’s children, dressed in a fairy costume, after the regular entertainment called in sick.

This was not her lucky day. On her way into the party, she had side-swiped the Head Honcho’s vintage Lamborghini, and there was no way her insurance was going to cover the damage. And she was going to have to ‘fess up to her “crime” dressed up as an “elf” to a man the female employees nicknamed “McSexy”.  And Peppa was in no way immune to his charms.

Cameron McCormac didn’t need any financial assistance to help repair the damage to his Lamborghini. Money was not a problem. What he really needed was a date to his family’s Christmas party that evening to stave off his relatives well-meaning but futile attempts to fix him up with someone. He hadn’t been interested in anyone since his wife died three years ago, but he was definitely interested in the fairy girl in her too-short tutu and red fishnet stockings. Very, very interested.  Cameron offered Peppa a deal, accompany him to his family’s annual Christmas, and he’d forget about the car. Peppa couldn’t even afford to replace the hubcaps on a Lamborghini. She took the deal.

Nothing that evening was what either of them expected. Especially when the evening ended in Peppa’s bed. But after one perfect night together, what happens when both of them want more, even though neither of them expect that it can possibly work out?

Escape Rating B: This story turned out to have much more to it than I expected, especially for a 100 page story.  Peppa and Cameron are both characters who have been hurt badly, and both have come to expect absolutely nothing from relationships, even to expect not to have relationships. They know they should not get involved. And yet they do. Everything is tentative and scary for both of them, and the author does a very good job of portraying the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of this type of relationship. Well done.

Lady Seductress’s Ball

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

With a title like Lady Seductress’s Ball, I was expecting Eliza Knight’s novella to be a steamy novella without much plot. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that this short erotic story concealed a happily ever after.

Olivia, Countess of March, has been having erotic dreams of Tristan, the Earl of Newcastle… while she’s been waiting for her husband, the Earl of March, to just up and die already.

Her behavior isn’t quite as vulture-like, or maybe harpy-like, as it sounds. Her parents’ deathbed wish three years ago was that she marry the much older March. They thought it was safe. Olivia has found it stifling. She behaves with exacting propriety, but is miserable inside. And she is utterly alone.

Tristan, the man she dreams of, also dreams of her. Olivia doesn’t know it, but he would have offered for her. But in the midst of her first season, her parents’ sudden death and her subsequent marriage to March quashed all his hopes, too. Three years later, he still burns for a woman he cannot touch.

Until one evening, when March is feeling a little better, Olivia holds a dinner party, and invites several friends. Daringly she invites Tristan. For a few brief moments in the garden, they acknowledge their mutual desire for each other, but go no further than heated caresses.

Weeks later, Olivia receives an invitation from Tristan to Lady Seductress’s Ball. One night in the country when anyone who is invited can indulge any sexual fantasy with whoever they choose. The only requirement is that she arrive masked.

Will she go? And after an entire night indulging in every fantasy she has ever dreamed of, can she return to a life of duty and obligation? Can love (and lust) conquer all?

Escape Rating C+: The story was trying to have its cake and eat it, too, in the romance vs. erotica sense, and squeeze it into 70 pages. There wasn’t quite enough space. That Olivia might lust after someone other than her husband, made a lot of sense. He wasn’t much interested or interesting, even before his illness. But there isn’t enough relationship between Tristan and Olivia to show them falling in love with each other. I’m glad there’s an HEA, but why does it happen? There’s just not enough space to develop the “sex into love” plot, and we don’t see enough of their previous acquaintance to see why they might have already been in love before the opening scenes of the story.

Demons who must not be named

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | About> reading

There’s a long-standing trope in fantasy of the evil that must not be named. Think of Voldemort in Harry Potter. Although if my name were Voldemort, I’d probably rather not be named, either. Why did he pick that? Wikipedia says it translates as “flee from death”. More like he was scared of death. I prefer the Discworld version of Death.

But I digress. Mostly because I feel like crap on toast.  Which returns me to my original reference of demons that should not be named.

Last week, I was talking with a friend about various rituals for handling who does what when either my husband or I has a cold. My friend apparently gets relegated to the spare bedroom whether he or his spouse is the sick party. This topic came up because my friend was, of course, currently under the weather. I was not.

I should never have discussed the subject. Now I’m sick. But germs can’t be transferred via email. The demon was invoked, and that’s all it took.

My household operates slightly differently. Whoever really can’t sleep moves elsewhere if necessary. But the excellent thing about iPads is that they generate their own light, so no more keeping the light on (and your partner awake) to read all night.

Having a cold is a great excuse to get lost in a good book (or two, or three). Also a good excuse to play video games. But I read endlessly. It does change my tastes. I want to be lost somewhere far away. I’ve finished the first two of Laura Anne Gilman’s Paranormal Scene Investigations books back to back and I’m ready to start Tricks of the Trade, which was on my list.

I have zero interest in romance books at the moment. But then, I have not very much interest in the real thing at the moment, either. A cold will do that to a person. On the other hand, one time I had a migraine and read the entire collected works of Amanda Quick in about three days. It gave a whole new meaning to that old Victorian instruction to newly married ladies to “lie back and think of England…”

Tomorrow will be better. At least, I sure hope so.