Monthly Archives: October 2015

Christmas in Duke Street!

Updated on November 17, 2022 by carolyn

Christmas in Duke Street

Yay! It’s never too soon for a holiday anthology of wonderful stories by Miranda Neville, Yours Truly, Shana Galen and Grace Burrowes, am I right?

Four original holiday stories by four bestselling authors. My story is called A Seduction in Winter and I think it came out pretty awesome. In fact ALL the stories are awesome.

There’s a prize too! Details at the end!

Who doesn’t want Chicken Poop?

I will send three randomly selected commenters a copy of the summer anthology Dancing in The Duke’s Arms by the same authors.

But wait! There’s more! I will also send those same lucky commenters some of the best lip balm ever. Chicken Poop. Yes. Chicken Poop. In case you’re worried, as you can see from the photos below, there is NO ACTUAL POOP in the lip balm.

So don’t worry! You could end up with two fabulous books (one free and one for $4.99 or the nearest VAT inclusive currency eqiuvalent) for a total of 8 stories, plus Chicken Poop.

Chicken Poop

Contains no Poop

About Christmas in Duke Street

Christmas in London is a busy time at the little bookshop in Duke Street, for love, literature, and shopping. Four couples come and go and discover that happy ever after makes the perfect Christmas gift. A new anthology from the bestselling authors of Christmas in the Duke’s Arms and Dancing in the Duke’s Arms.

The Rake Who Loved Christmas by Miranda Neville

Sir Devlyn Stratton wants to save his brother from an unprincipled adventuress, especially when he meets Oriel Sinclair and wants her for himself. Oriel won’t marry for convenience or become a rake’s mistress. But succumbing to Dev’s seduction is all too tempting.

A Seduction in Winter by Carolyn Jewel

He’s an artist and a duke’s heir. She’s sheltered and scarred. Can he show her by Christmas that love can be theirs to share?

A Prince in her Stocking by Shana Galen

Lady Cassandra has always done as she’s been told. Meek and malleable, she’s lived a life devoid of passion. When she meets a handsome man rumored to be an exiled prince, she sees one last chance at excitement. Little does she know, too much excitement can be dangerous.

The Appeal of Christmas by Grace Burrowes

The best Christmas present is the one he didn’t realize he desperately needed.

What They’re Saying

THE RAKE WHO LOVED CHRISTMAS is filled with emotions, love, sadness, hope, bittersweet moments. Ms. Neville paints a Regency winter so authentic, you cannot help but be sucked in right into her world. And not all characters are always nice, but how delightful when they see the error of their ways and redeem themselves. Another glorious romance by the wonderful Miranda Neville!

A SEDUCTION IN WINTER is a perfectly magnificent book! Honora’s story is heartbreaking, and Ms. Jewell [sic] kept me enthralled with Honora’s fate. The art world is beautifully depicted, the dialogue is splendid.

A PRINCE IN HER STOCKING revolves around books, and a bookstore. There are surprises at every corner, fabulous plot twists, and terrific character development, especially when it comes to Cass. The writing flows beautifully, the chemistry between Cass and Lucien is palpable; what a wonderful story it is!

The characters are all splendid, and I enjoyed very much the little bit about Mr. and Mrs. Merriweather, of the bookshop. THE APPEAL OF CHRISTMAS is clever, superbly written, very romantic; another lovely story from Ms. Burrowes!
— Amazon

Where to Get Christmas In Duke Street

Giveaway!

Three lucky commenters will get a copy of the previous anthology, Dancing in the Duke’s Arms, AND their very own Chicken Poop. To enter, read the rules below and follow the instructions:

Must be 18 to enter. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. Multiple comments do not increase the chances of selection as a winner. All prizes will be awarded. If the winners do not respond to the notification within 10 days, an alternate winner will be selected. International OK. Winner randomly selected using the And The Winner Is plugin.

It’s not really possible or wise to gift ebooks anymore. I’ll email you your preferred file format. If you prefer print, that will be shipped to you.

To enter, leave a comment on this post by midnight Eastern October 17, 2015.

Posted in Former Riskies, Giveaways, Risky Book Talk | Tagged A Seduction in Winter, Chicken Poop, Christmas in Duke Street |

Risky for a day–guest Caroline Warfield

Updated on October 27, 2015 by Janet Mullany

Love is worth the risk. . .

If you have visited my Web site you’ve seen that tag line. But, what’s the greatest risk?

Risk can refer to physical risk. Romantic suspense thrives on it. Common Regency tropes associated with physical jeopardy include kidnapped heroines, pirate capture, War (Peninsula or Waterloo usually), or basic assassination attempts by villainous characters. We all love heroes—and sometimes heroines—who face up to these challenges and come out winners, especially the ones that get a little beaten up in the process.

Risk can refer to social risk. The regency subgenre was built on dangers to women in particular if they challenged societal expectations or broke social mores. Common tropes of this kind include the young girl led astray to trap her into marriage, the family hounded from London in disgrace, the deb tricked into disgrace by a vicious rival, and, one of my favorites, the older woman in a small town with A Scandalous Past. The risk to the men? Always—shudder—the parson’s mousetrap. We all love the heroines who take a chance by thumbing their nose at convention and get away with it.

The greatest risks of all, however, are the dangers to the human heart, the most vulnerable of organs. Heroes and heroines might take physical and social risks, but still guard their souls and emotions closely. The ones who find it difficult to trust their hearts to another make for the most satisfying reading.

Dangerous Weakness, my newest work, abounds in all three, but the hero and heroine see them differently.

Lily Thornton, the heroine, is an intrepid young lady. As the daughter of a diplomat she has grown up in the great cities of Europe, speaks six languages, and socializes with gentlemen of all ranks and ethnicities. She is confident and independent. At one point in the story she even finds employment as a teacher in the Sultan’s Seraglio. The girl has spunk. She fears little, at least she didn’t until she made a colossal blunder in Saint Petersburg and almost succumbed to the charms of a weasel, one that follows her back to England.

When Lily finds herself thrown in with the hero, who is investigating her tormenter, and she succumbs to his lovemaking too quickly, she pulls back in panic. She can’t possibly trust him, especially since she knows he has no intention of marrying beneath him. When he subjects her to an insulting marriage proposal, she refuses to accept him. She will not trust her heart to a man who will step on it, hide her away in the country, and push her aside as an embarrassment. She would rather make her own way as a single mother. The risk to her heart is greater than social disgrace.

Richard Hayden, the Marquess of Glenaire has no fears. He manages his life in an orderly manner, at least until he meets Lily. His never puts a foot out of line socially, at least until he meets Lily. He plans a secure future with a socially correct and perfectly safe wife who will leave him to his work and be a proper duchess when he inherits. He knows the dangers the wide world presents because he works night and day to keep England and its interests safe. Therefore, he knows better than anyone what kind of danger Lily puts herself in when she disappears from London in the direction of the Mediterranean.

Richard doesn’t hesitate for a second—he sets out after the fool woman who has led him a merry dance, thrown proposals back in his face, and refuses to behave, as she ought. The Pirates that take them may be dangerous, but he manages them fearlessly. It is more terrifying for him to admit to Lily that he loves her. He doesn’t want a duchess, he wants a wife to love and protect. What if she says no again?

Love is worth all those risks, but especially that of opening your hearts, as Lily and Richard finally find the courage to do.

Have you ever taken a bit chance on a relationship? How did it work out? I will give one person who comments (randomly selected) a Kindle copy of either Dangerous Works or Dangerous Secrets.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Posted in Guest | Tagged Caroline Warfield, tropes | 11 Replies

tl;dr: I know in my heart Thomas Jefferson had this journalist killed

Updated on October 26, 2015 by Rose Lerner

[tw: rape, racism, violence]

Note: This got long, so I’ve moved all links for further reading/listening/viewing that couldn’t simply be hyperlinked in the main text to the end of the post.

Note 2: Jefferson’s party are Republicans, Hamilton and Adams’s are Federalists.

*It will surprise no one who’s been following me on Twitter or tumblr to hear that I’ve become obsessed with the hottest ticket currently on Broadway, Hamilton: the Musical. It’s a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton (the ten-dollar Founding Father) and it’s amazing.

As a result I’ve been reading extensively about Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the political scene of their era. And I noticed one name kept cropping up: James Callender. This British journalist seemed surprisingly connected to events: he leaked the first documents relating to Hamilton’s alleged insider trading (leading to the infamous “Reynolds pamphlet” in which Hamilton revealed in excruciating and excruciatingly unnecessary detail that…well, I’ll let him tell it:

“The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me”).

Title page of the Reynolds pamphlet, via Wikimedia Commons

Callender next appeared ruining John Adams’s bid for reelection. Callender had published, among other things, a pamphlet entitled The Prospect Before Us, in which he made statements like, “The grand object of [Adams’s] administration has been to exasperate the rage of contending parties, to calumniate and destroy every man who differs from his opinions. Mr. Adams has laboured, and with melancholy success, to break up the bonds of social affection, and, under the ruins of confidence and friendship, to extinguish the only beam of happiness that glimmers through the dark and despicable farce of life.”

Adams had him prosecuted for libel under the (deservedly) unpopular Sedition Act. Jefferson’s supporters turned the trial into a major campaign issue in the 1800 presidential election, and Callender’s conviction, instead of discrediting him, made him a famous martyr to the Republican cause. Moreover, he continued to write articles and pamphlets lambasting Adams from his Virginia jail, where the authorities were sympathetic to his plight.

Then I read this, in A Magnificent Catastrophe by Edward J. Larson:

“Ironically, Jefferson later felt Callender’s sting, when, two years after the election, the acerbic writer broke the story that Jefferson kept his slave, Sally Hemings, as a mistress. ‘Human nature in a hideous form,’ Jefferson wrote to Monroe in 1802 about Callender, whose body was found floating in Virginia’s James River a year later. An inquest ruled that Callender had drowned accidentally while bathing drunk.”

Jefferson totally had that guy killed, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t that make a great political thriller? You could open it with them fishing that guy’s body out of the river, and then cut to “Five years earlier”…

At first it was a joke. But the more I read and research, the more convinced I feel that this was exactly what happened. While all the evidence is circumstantial…well, I’ll let the facts speak for themselves: Continue Reading

Posted in Risky Regencies | 6 Replies

My God, there is a nose

Updated on October 22, 2015 by Janet Mullany

V0001016 Joseph Constantine Carpue. Stipple engraving. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Joseph Constantine Carpue. Stipple engraving. Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Those were the words, spoken in deep awe, by surgeon Joseph Carpue when viewing the results of his first nose reconstruction, performed on this day in 1814. Plastic surgery was born.

Warning, heavy ick factor lies ahead.

His surgery is thought to be the first plastic surgery in the west but it was based on a procedure for nose reconstruction in India published in a book twenty years before. Nose reconstructions had been performed in India since 1500 BC. Carpue published an account of his procedures in a book snappily entitled An Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose from the Integument of the Forehead.

Why nose reconstruction? Accidents could happen. The sixteenth-century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel and wore a brass facsimile and he also had gold and silver models for special occasions. But generally, people lost their noses through syphilis (well, I did warn you…) , or to be more specific, from the mercury that was the only treatment for the disease at this time. So you might have to wear something like this number from the mid-nineteenth century:

Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

This is a silver nose painted to match the owner’s skin color. Astonishingly, the owner of this fake nose remarried and sold the device back to her physician for three pounds, claiming her new husband preferred her without it. Hmm. True love.

And apparently there were a lot of people around without noses (and with syphilis), so much so that later in the century No Nose Clubs were formed.

The Star reported in a February 1874 article entitled “The Origins of the No Nose Club”:

Miss Sanborn tells us that an eccentric gentleman, having taken a fancy to seeing a large party of noseless persons, invited every one thus afflicted, whom he met in the streets, to dine on a certain day at a tavern, where he formed them into a brotherhood … This club met every month for a whole joyous year, when its founder died, and the flat-faced community were unhappily dissolved.

I think the only question I can have after this, is what is the strangest club you have ever belonged to and what were its activities?

Posted in Research | Tagged ick, Medicine | 6 Replies

Democratization of Fashion

Updated on October 19, 2015 by Mary Blayney

Yes, that’s a pretentious title, a phrase I borrowed from the book COSTUME by Rachel Kemper for a blog I first wrote on the subject years ago. For Kemper fashion became available to the general populace, the masses, with the introduction of mail order catalogs. (Kemper’s book was first published in 1977 so Internet shopping had not yet become a factor in the retail world)

I don’t agree that fashion became available with the intro of catalogs. I think fashionable styles for everyone began with the invention of the sewing machine and, to some extent, before that with the use of machine produced cloth. Since the sewing machine did not come into common industrial usage until after 1850 be advised that this is a departure from my usual Regency based blogs.

Elias Howe patented his machine in 1846. Despite the difficulties of securing financial backing and suits for infringement of his patents, the sewing machine eventually became a significant element in the production of clothes. The sewing machine remains an easily recognized staple of fashion and craft work. I would not say “every home has one” but I think most who have easy access to the Internet would recognize one.

Shopping is my great escape (note: shopping, not buying). One of my favorite things to do is check out designer items at Saks and Neiman Marcus and then follow the styles down the economic scale to Kohls and Target. The phrase “knock off” is the current inelegant description of this process.

The dress with pink trim is by Missoni and cost more than $1,000. The Dress with the navy bodice is a “knock off” that costs $98. The difference, which is not apparent in the photos, is the quality of the product. The $98 dress will probably not last more than one season while the true Missoni can be worn for years, a veritable collector’s item.

Making that trend their own, designers like Vera Wang, of the fabulous (and expensive) wedding dresses, have designed clothes for Target, making stylish clothes available at an affordable price.

Here’s a look at this from a different perspective. The brilliant monologue on how a specific color made its way to the masses in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA delivered by Meryl Streep is one of my favorite illustrations of the “democratization of fashion.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL-KQij0I8I

Wearing clothes with a sense of style transcends economic status as the blogger www.Sartorialist.com illustrates. But the clothes have to be available. The sewing machine made that possible over one hundred years ago as has the mail order catalog and now the Internet.

After the printing press I think that the sewing machine was one of the great social equalizers of all time.

Your thoughts?

Posted in Clothing, History | 21 Replies