I read this because the author is coming to our library in August. The three books in this series are based on Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost as well as Verdi's opera Don Carlo. I did not know this before I read this book but it helps explain the sense of coincidence and humorous situations...
This book had a slow start, but once I got a few chapters in, I positively devoured it in an afternoon. I loved the hero and heroine. He's a complete engineering geek, working on an early "horseless carriage." She's a titled widow. Somehow, it all works out, and in a partially ruined Italian cast...
I absolutely LOVED Ashland, even though I didn't feel it was necessary for the author to maim the hero as much as she did. I read one other book like that and, at times, found it to be a little disgusting. I also read a book where the heroine dressed as a man and gave the book one star because th...
The story came off as a fun romantic comedy in the beginning, started to veer towards mysterious and serious when the unlikely couple Abigail and Wallingford acknowledges their love for one another and went all meta and spiritual towards the end. Whaaaat? It's like drinking a shot of espresso and...
His Grace, the Duke of Olympia, who happened to be crossing the threshold of the first-class saloon at that moment, felt the triumphant surge of the engines through the soles of his shoes and smiled. A casual observer––say, one of that multitude of well-bred faces turned hopefully toward the new ...
he said, observing the steady disintegration of the apple in his gloved palm. When it had disappeared, he removed the glove and scratched the horse’s forelock. “I shouldn’t be here, of course. It’s liable to lead to all sorts of trouble.”The horse snorted and pushed at his chest, leaving a dribbl...
The other had been blown from his face in the mountains of Afghanistan over a dozen years ago, and the empty socket sat beneath a black leather half-mask that lent his formerly handsome features a distinctly piratical flavor.The remaining eye, however, was keen and blue and missed nothing. He rai...
Every evening, the ladies sat along one side, and the gentlemen lined up on the other, a configuration that proved ideal for sparring. Lilibet, her spirits still in disarray from the disastrous exchange with Roland in the peach orchard, could hardly be bothered to ask for ...
He looked up and threw down his pen. “There you are! Damn it all, Markham, where the devil have you been? I sent for you ages ago.” “Walking outside.” The room was hot under the full glare of the morning sun. Luisa removed her coat and tossed it on the armchair. “What’s th...
I ought to go with him; could there be any act so singularly unprofitable to our investigation as that of sitting at a table, drinking coffee? He would not hear of it. I had no training or experience in these sorts of confrontations, nor had he any time to prepare me. &nbs...