Bodice Tipplers

Welcome to our fifth year of reading Anne Rice books for Halloween, with special guest Dr. Claire Mischker! He's David Talbot, nobody's favorite old man/young twink vampire! She's Merrick, too cool for these dusty losers, out here committing perfume crimes! In accordance with long-established tradition, this episode is rambling and yelly and has weird sound! Note: I promise we actually do know that Guatemala is in Central America, but once you make a mistake one time on a podcast it's really hard to not keep making it.

As usual there are a slew of real content warnings about anything our girl Anne writes - in this one there is some really gross sexualization of a child (although she is an adult when they actually bang it out); there's somebody letting Anne Rice write about race and colorism which was, let's say, a mistake; and there's quite a lot of talk about suicide. If you need support, the new 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by phone (just dial 988) or by text or chat at https://988lifeline.org/. You are not a fictional vampire; we are glad you are here and want you to stay here.

Aye lads and lassies and wee bairns (wait, this is no place for wee bairns!) This is our hundredth episode, to our vast surprise, so we're gonna make enemies and talk about Outlander! He's Jamie, the only feminist in eighteenth century Scotland! She's Claire, a time traveling nurse with a boring husband! Buckle up, sassenachs, because if you know this book you know you're about to trip over a giant content warning.

The book, the TV show, and absolutely this podcast have a great big neon "sexual assault" warning on them. There is no ignoring the rape in Outlander - it's an omnipresent (and equal opportunity!) threat, it's not something you could just skip a few pages and miss, they probably don't even have a word for it in the way that fish don't have a word for water. Forget it, Jake, it's Outlander. It's traumatic and has real emotional and physical consequences and if it's something you prefer to avoid you definitely should not read, watch, or listen here. There's also some... I don't know how to put this, some spousal discipline? It doesn't really read as abusive, but he does hit her with a belt, which half of us were kinda into and half of us were absolutely not into, so your mileage may vary. And of course there's quite a bit of beating and murdering and witch burning and torturing, just for variety.

He's Stephan, a time travelling good Nazi! She's Laura, a woman he will not leave alone! It's Dean Koontz's Lightning, the first of our summer road trip books! To explain the amazing graphic my husband ran up for this - I am almost certain this is Koontz's own Terminator fanfic, predicting Badass T2 Sarah Connor years before that movie came out.

If you didn't see this amazing profile of Dean Koontz in the Washington Post last year please enjoy this gift link! Why yes, it is weird! He really does wear his hair like that! Is it his hair? I dunno, I mean, I'm sure he owns it, yes. Every day! All the time! His wife just walks into a room and there it is! People's lives, man!

So if you're new to the Koontz, prepare for some damn content warnings - this one's got wack-ass ableism, Fated Child Sex Abuse, the strangest fat shaming I've ever seen, kids burning alive, oh yeah Nazis (at least they're the bad guys, never thought I'd live to have to say that!), I probably forgot some. I will say that when we call this guy a "good Nazi" what we mean is a traitor to the Nazi cause, not the other thing. We wouldn't be reading one with the other thing.

He's a bear. Like an actual bear. She's having a midlife crisis. This seems like a pretty extreme response. This is Bear by Marian Engel, which won the Governor General's Award in 1976 and is evidently the most controversial Canadian novel of all time. Sounds like a skills issue to me.

You know that joke about how you can build a bridge with your bare hands and they don't call you a bridge builder, and you can saw down a tree and cut it into boards and make these cabinets but they don't call you a carpenter, but if you fuck one bear... anyway this book is about Lou the bearfucker.

This is, of course, our addition to the discourse on "man or bear?" - if you've been living under a rock, there was a whole thing that started on TikTok but ended up in print media of all places about asking women if they'd rather be alone in the woods with a strange man or a strange bear. And then a whole bunch of men on Reddit very handily made it clear why women will pick the damn bear. The entry I found most interesting was this one I mentioned in the episode from a woman who does extreme wilderness bikepacking - worth a read if you haven't seen it.

His job is Amish! She's an accountant with an ulcer and a bad case of second chance romance! Will they fall back in love? Can she get over that weird beard thing? Find out in Cheryl Reavis' A Crime of the Heart, another of our "five heart romances"! If you're new to this, we're doing episodes on the list of books that Romantic Times reviewer Melinda Helfer awarded five hearts to (there are sixteen, out of ten thousand!)

This one is very sweet but their problems are real and grounded - if "I had your baby and I gave it away" adoption stories or religious communities shunning family members are an issue for you, they're discussed here in a way that's pretty realistic and therefore troubling to some people. Spoiler - they do not go find the adopted child.

He's Alex, an Oregon gentleman farmer with a very bad brother! She's Annie, a Deaf woman who's treated like garbage by literally everyone! Welcome to Annie's Song by Catherine Anderson!

There are some pretty strong content warnings for this one - it won't surprise you that it's full of ableism, both Original Recipe and Extra Paternalistic, of course. There's also a pretty harrowing sexual assault that starts the book off - it's not graphic on the page but it's very traumatic for the character.

This is our first intentional entry in a little project we're doing - friend of the podcast Steve Ammidown posted this fascinating spread with a list of all the books Melinda Helfer, a Romantic Times editor, awarded five hearts in a review. Sixteen books out of ten thousand! Well, it turns out we'd already done two of them - Lightning that Lingers and The Windflower, both by Sharon and Todd Curtis (sometimes writing as Laura London.) Go check out those episodes, they're fantastic books! So every now and then going forward we're going to do one of these five heart books.

This is a mercenary book, but it's surprisingly gentle - there's that hostage situation, but nobody is seriously hurt and it doesn't feel incredibly perilous. There's later a bit of a threatening situation but it is also pretty low key. The author makes up some fake South American rebels but goes to real Northern Ireland in 1987, bold move! This is a delightful romantic suspense book for its time period.

He's Pierce, a hot guy with a secret (and it's not that he's part of the military industrial complex, he's proud of that part!) She's Alicia, a widowed mother of two who works in a romance novel boutique! Welcome to Send No Flowers by Sandra Brown - if you'd like to listen to our previous book by her way back in Episode 36, which believe you me is equally head shaking, try our episode on Fanta-C!

This book is an absolute roller coaster, and I don't just mean the bobsleds at Disneyland that these two are trying to dry hump on. He literally kidnaps her kids in the woods! Her best friend stole her fiancé! She very sensibly takes a huge promotion and never feels like a bad mom about it, which is so unexpected in a book like this that I spent the rest of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop! (The other shoe is that Pierce is extremely cagey because he may or may not have a disease. Whatever.) The content warning that I forgot to mention is that her kids are realistically awful to her and any parent is going to be wincing hard at it. Too close to home, Sandra.

He's Ben, a cinnamon roll who bakes cinnamon rolls! He's Adam, a hockey coach and a pain in the ass! It's our annual modern gay Hannukah book - chag sameach, y'all! This year we read Ben's Bakery and the Hannukah Miracle by Penelope Peters.

This one does have some serious religious gatekeeping - we mention it because it is really upsetting because this dude is not the catch he thinks he is to be such a damn asshole telling other people how to do their own damn religion right. Argh! (We liked Ben so much that we had absolutely zero time for this Adam guy.) Also, advanced moppet warning!

He's Tagg, a Christmas-obsessed single dad! She's Leslie, a woman immobilized by a broken leg who cannot escape the holiday despite driving several states away and telling everybody she would prefer not to! He would probably be okay except that he's always "smirking" or "mocking" or whatevering his dialogue at her! For some reason his hair is very virile!

Warning: this book has intense levels of moppet. "My daddy will teach you to believe in Santa Claus!" which in another book would be hawwwt but in this one... There's also some pretty pushy sexual manipulation, when she says she wants to stop and he tries to pressure her and then freezes her out when that doesn't work. Ugh.

Also, I only just now realized that his name is Tagg as in "gift tag". I'mma go back up on this nice quiet private mountain with my cute dog and sexy furry green boots and have a drink. Happy holidays, y'all.