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If I could give it six or seven stars out of the allowable five, I'd do so , is what I recently wrote on Goodreads.com about this splendid historical novel that kept me reeling and squealing with pure reading pleasure last week while the rest of my life ground to a halt around it. Not that I'm exactly alone in my appreciation. The reviews have been rapturous, the accolades universal. Wolf Hall didn't only receive Britain's prestigious Man Booker Prize this year; it was the oddsmakers' favorite since the short list of (spectacular) finalists was announced. But I'm probably relatively alone -- if not in my pristine ignorance of its subject, then in my complete lack of prior interest in it. Because before I read this book, not only did I know absolutely zip about Thomas Cromwell, Wolf Hall's towering, tough, surprisingly sympathetic, and entirely absorbing subject (who was King Henry VIII's chief minister and active fixer during the period of his divorce ...

Pvt. George S. Gaines, First New York Mounted Rifles A young soldier, of two years' standing in the armies of the Republic, is desirous of conducting a correspondence with some American lady, not over 24 years of age, with the view that it may lead to a mutual desire to become personally acquainted -- that such acquaintanceship may ripen into love, and, by the consummation of our affection, two lives be blended into one; or, in the plain King's English, I am quite anxious to marry . . . None but those who are sincerely disposed to look this matter "square in the face" need reply. In regard to his personal appearance, qualifications and character, the advertiser prefers to say nothing -- a carte de visite, the contemplated correspondence and the future will disclose all that is necessary or desirable to be known on the subject . . . Address Charles P. Hanover, First New York Mounted Rifles, Suffolk, Va. May 27, 1863 That letter, with a few others dating from the second...

Susan Wilbanks won a signed copy of Improper Relations. Congratulations, Susan, we'll be in touch!

I'm writing today about my new release Improper Relations and early nineteenth century attitudes toward female friendship. Friendships between women in the Georgian era were often expressed in passionate language in frequent letters; it was the age of feeling, of sensibility. It was also an age of advancing female literacy and leisure among the middle classes, and the absence of men--whether it was to prizefights or war--led women to seek like-minded companionship. The Ladies of Llangollen are probably the most notorious example of passionate female friendship. In 1778, Lady Eleanor Butler and the Hon. Sarah Ponsonby eloped to live together for over fifty years of devoted bliss, enjoying literature, gardening, and a gorgeous house (which they decorated in Gothic splendor) in Llangollen, Wales. This charming portrait is of their cats in 1809 by artist Maria Taylor. They became celebrities who were visited by the likes of Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Wellington and Lady Caroline L...

There are some books I finish and I just sit there for a minute at the end and think "What was that?" That's what happened when I read the Reliable Wife , by Robert Goolrick. I must admit, I picked it up because I liked the title, and the cover said ROMANCE: A headless woman in a beautiful Victorian-looking red dress standing in front of a train. Now this was not the original cover, which was much more staid and literary looking (a simple title on a sign), so I figured the new cover was meant to target me, a romance fan. Well, was I in for an interesting read. I read the whole book in a few hours, with my eyebrows raised at the purple prose, the complete implausibility of the plot, and sex-obssessed characters that were hard to like and unsympathetic. But I kept reading. For some reason I wanted to know what happened. The ending had a sort of "happily ever after" ending, but without giving anything away, I honestly didn't buy it. Not after the extreme emotio...

I like to do a romantic moments blog around Valentine’s Day. This year I thought I’d focus on moments where a happy ending for the couple in question seems an impossibility. Sometimes they are the ending to a story. Sometimes they are the bleak moment before a triumphant ending. Either way, they can be intensely romantic, despite or perhaps because of the edge of sorrow. My examples are mostly historical and come from novels, films, and a Broadway musical. Venetia by Georgette Heyer . Damerel sending Venetia away for her own good. I feel a heart tug every time I read about him throwing her up into the saddle for the last time. Much as I want to shake Damerel, there’s something that always gets me about a guy trying to be noble. Atonement by Ian McEwan . Cecilia running after Robbie and embracing him before the police take him away. The fact that she stands by him against the seeming evidence, against her family, against the pressures of class prejudice stunned me the first time I read...

Nightingale Man by Jane Toombs Available now! I love the idea of a WWI romance, so I'm very excited to welcome Jane here today. During World War I, Luke is recruited by the British Secret Service from the American pilots flying with the French Air Force. He's told his mission is to rescue Nurse Edith Cavell, captured by the Boche, imprisoned in German-occupied Belgium and doomed to be shot as a spy. All too soon his mission becomes a challenge to stay alive. Who's double-crossing him? Can it be the English gal he's falling in love with? Nightingale Man is set during World War I before the United States joined England and France to fight against Germany. Is there a particular reason you chose this setting? First of all, I was born between WWI and WWII, so the war I heard about as a child was the first, not the second. When I was twelve years old, my father was appointed to be Deputy Auditor General of Michigan, so ...

Jane Digby’s life in itself was an eye-opener; her life in the deserts of Syria was an eyebrow-popper! Six months of the year she and the sheikh of her life, Abdul Medjuel El Mezrab, spent in the palatial residence she built in Damascus; the other six months they lived in Arab tents in the desert. Isobel Burton, stationed in Damascus while husband Richard collected notes for his translation of The Arabian Nights (and his later Terminal Essay on Arabian sex life and customs), observed that: “When I say the men are riding djerid (the wild, plunging charge of Bedouin horseman),I mean that they are galloping about violently, firing from horseback at full speed, yelling, hanging over in their stirrups with their bridles in their mouth, playing with and quivering their long feathered lances in the air, throwing them and catching them again at full gallop, picking things from the ground, firing pistols, throwing themselves under the horses’ bellies and firing under them at full gallop . ....

Every one of my reference books has its own story to tell. Most of them entered my house to help a specific book but some came because I simply couldn’t live without it. And the books I’ll buy most often, whether or not I need them at that moment, are the ones about words. I have a hardcopy edition of the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus (American Edition), plus the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus that resides on my computer. Yes, I know there are websites but what happens when you can’t reach the Internet? Been there, done that, gotten so messed up! When it comes to dictionaries, I’m a girl who insists on having backups for her backups. I love foreign language dictionaries, too. Big, fat ones for commonly met languages like French and Spanish and German. Lots of smaller dictionaries on the same language – needed to ensure full coverage, of course – like Irish, Scots, and Galician Gaelic. If I ever found a dictionary for Breton (a distant relative of Gaelic), I’d ...

It gives me the greatest of pleasure to introduce debut author Rose Lerner, whose first book, In For a Penny , will be hitting the shelves on February 23rd. Rose discovered Georgette Heyer when she was an impressionable young miss of thirteen and never looked back-- fortunately for all of us! In the midst of book launch madness, Rose has graciously taken the time to stop by today to share with us some of the more fascinating bits of her research for In For a Penny . Welcome, Rose! When I started writing In for a Penny , about a rich brewer's daughter who marries an impoverished earl, I realized I was going to have to do some research to figure out how people in the Regency thought about class. I had general ideas, obviously, but if I was going to write about my heroine from the point of view of my antagonist, the snobby poacher-hating Tory Sir Jasper, or write about my heroine meeting the hero's newly-middle-class tenant farmers, I needed to understand more. I quickly disc...

"Just looking at its cover, would you guess that this is a very sexy romance novel?" A fellow romance writer held up a copy of my now out-of-print The Slightest Provocation at lunch last summer. And the answer, repeated 'round the table of history hoydens? Sadly (especially sadly in light of such a lovely, period-appropriate cover) the answer was a resounding NO! The consensus being that you'd more likely suppose The Slightest Provocation was a classy -- even an elegant -- historical novel, perhaps of the snobby "stealth romance" variety. "Ah, yes," a distracted shopper might tell herself as she makes her way past it on the bookstore shelves, "I think I read somewhere that Pam Rosenthal writes 'poetically.' "Maybe I'll check it out later," said shopper might think, "when I'm in the mood for something improving and uplifting." But sexy? No way. While as for hot (not to speak of hawt? ) -- not a chance. Which...

I’m so happy to welcome historical fiction author Christine Trent, whose debut novel THE QUEEN’S DOLLMAKER, is was released on December 29, and has garnered a tremendous amount of attention, including an interview that was reprinted in The Washington Post . On the brink of revolution, with a tide of hate turned against the decadent royal court, France is in turmoil - as is the life of one young woman forced to leave her beloved Paris. After a fire destroys her home and family, Claudette Laurent is struggling to survive in London. But one precious gift remains: her talent for creating exquisite dolls that Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France herself, cherishes. When the Queen requests a meeting, Claudette seizes the opportunity to promote her business, and to return home. Amid the violence and unrest, Claudette befriends the Queen, who bears no resemblance to the figurehead rapidly becoming the scapegoat of the Revolution. But when Claudette herself is lured into a web of deadly politi...