Bodice Tipplers

It's time for our fourth annual check-in with Martha Waters! That does not seem possible! And yet! Her latest book in the Regency Vows series is To Swoon and to Spar.

Viscount Penvale has been working for years to buy back his ancestral home, Trethwick Abbey, from his estranged uncle. And so he's thrilled when his uncle announces that he is ready to sell but with one major caveat—Penvale must marry his uncle's ward, Jane Spencer.

When the two meet in London, neither is terribly impressed. Penvale finds Jane headstrong and sharp-tongued. Jane finds him cold and aloof. Nevertheless, they agree to a marriage in name only and return to the estate. There, Jane enlists her housekeeper for a scheme: to stage a haunting so that Penvale will return to London, leaving her to do as she pleases at Trethwick Abbey. But Penvale is not as easily scared as his uncle and as their time together increases, Jane realizes that she might not mind her husband's company all that much.

Check it out April 11 (or preorder!) at Print, Martha's local bookstore, and keep an eye out for her launch events in April!

Welcome to the second episode of our Valentine's Day 90's Bad Boys-a-thon! This time we read Lisa Kleypas' Dreaming of You, knowing full well that we dare the wrath of the Derek Craven fan club. He's a moody emo Cockney kid from the mean streets, made his money and unsure of what to do with it now that he's got it! She's a spectacled young authoress, fresh outta Green Acres - she wants to get a good look at the big city but what she mostly gets a good look at is him! She starts the book off by killing a man and ends it by beating the snot out of a mean girl! She's a Sara-without-the-h, objectively the best kind of Sara! It's great!

This one is generally safe for all romance readers, but it does have a brief sexual assault (it's so clearly not going to happen that we forgot about it until we started recording) and a throwback Evil Blonde.

Check out our show notes at bodicetipplers.com to see some fun international covers!

He's a rake, a dastardly dastard, a blackened heart in a big nosed body! She's Spunky and extremely wee! There's a really hot scene with a glove! It's Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels! This February for Valentine's Day we're reading all your favorite 90's bad boys. The spiritual heirs of Edward Rochester. The rakes, the scoundrels, the emo ones. Broody like hens! Inventing Hot Topic! Thinking they're ugly! Running around being rich, because their behavior is much more tolerable if it comes with plenty of money!

Hey check out the dumb modern cover, on which she's a giant and he's Tom Thumb.

The only content warning in this book is that it's got some weird fat shaming business going on - it's not intense, especially after Scruples (my god what isn't), but it's very strange and out of place here.

Billy Ikehorn-Orsini is IT. Extraordinary wealthy, profoundly chic, and her diamonds have names. Valentine is the next big couture designer. Spider is a photographer who somehow now is the guy who makes a store cool. Whatever, just go with it - together they are the minds behind Scruples, the boutique that sounds suspiciously like a Cracker Barrel that put Rodeo Drive on the map for women like your mom and your aunties and your grandma who read this book in 1978! It's Scruples by Judith Krantz!

There's a serious warning about this one. This is the most upsetting depiction of disordered eating that I've ever seen presented as aspirational in a mainstream book. This book almost certainly has a body count; it depicts an "awakening" in France with a specific calorie count, it makes anorexia sound extremely chic and liberating, it fetishizes iron control of food intake as much as it fetishizes women's clothing. If you're sensitive to this, do not read this book. If you can handle plenty of fat shaming and overvaluing of thinness but not the part of the book that's a literal DIY guide for acquiring an eating disorder, then when Billy goes to France skip until she comes back to the US. If you don't want to even hear discussion of it, we completely understand - don't listen to this episode, we'll catch you next time.

It also has everything else you're imagining in a 1978 trashy airport book (except, surprisingly, sexual assault) - it uses a lot of awful slurs, it has this whiplash attitude towards gay men and women back and forth between genuine familiarity and ugly sterotype, in an otherwise sexy scene it calls a man's testicles paunchy globes - it's a whole thing. This book is a lot and a lot of it is troubling - but a lot of it's amazing, it's an experience!

Honey is a figure of legend, a giantess astride the world! She is five feet and nine inches tall! She is a private investigator! Lance (YES LANCE) is a prince! His way hotter friend is sheik-adjacent! This all sounds awesome but in fact it is sadly very boring!

We wanted to read one of the Sedikhan books that everybody seems to really like - but we did not like this one. Please let us know which one we should have read instead!

You can probably guess from this that there's some bullshit Fraudia Arabia-style blue eyed sheikh business going on here; other than that the only content warning is that Honey gets real dumb real fast for no reason whatsoever.

Chag sameach! Welcome to our traditional holiday episode, where we do a modern gay Hanukkah romance ever year! This one is Eight Nights in December by Keira Andrews, where Lucas meets Nate and then everybody around them has to go buy a new mop! It's very sweet but also very sticky.

Check out our previous years' holiday episodes - there's only enough podcast for one night, but if you delve into the archive it will entertain you for four nights! (I don't know what happened in 2020! Wait maybe I do know what happened in 2020!)

2021 - His for Hanukkah - a trans man dom and an anxious Jewish sub!

2019 - Holiday Outing - snowed in with a dude... and the whole rest of your family!

2018 (well, we actually released it in January 2019) - Hearts Alight - sexy golem!

Lady Emma has two weeks in American to lose her reputation and not be forced to marry the dastardly duke. Kenny has to drive her around Texas to get back in the good graces of the PGA Tour so he can play pro golf again. Why yes, this does seem radically mismatched stakes! It's Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips!

This is one of those wild Susan Elizabeth Phillips joints, so all of the content you should be aware of is simultaneously 100% for real and also 100% ridiculous - everybody in this is incredibly over the top. The two that feel actively distressing is a major deception by the hero and this whole "blackmailed into marriage" business; on the "less realistically portrayed" side you've got a well-intentioned roofie-ing, a woman struggling with infertility who is cured by a big dick, emus in peril, a SEP-trademark parking lot throwdown, some family trauma drama, and a state fair baby race gone bad.

If you like this one, check out our previous Susan Elizabeth Phillips episode about a book that shares some characters with this one, Fancy Pants! Until I went looking for that link I forgot that Eva Peron fat-shames somebody in that one! That's wild!

Welcome to our All Souls Day Spoooooooktacular Tradition! In accordance with the ancient scrolls, every Halloween we read another Anne Rice book and invite Dr. Claire Michker to drink too much and talk about it! This year, we read The Tale of the Body Thief, and we have nobody to blame for it but ourselves.

If you're watching the show but haven't read the books, or if you've read the books and haven't watched the show, or whatever your situation is, know that this episodes has book spoilers up through, obviously, this one, and that Claire and Sara had watched the show up through episode 5 and may have dropped a spoiler or two. If you have no idea how it works out with Claudia and do not want to know, you might want to hold off on this episode.

This book is a smorgasbord of trigger warnings including sexual assault, colonialist racism, attempted suicide, sort of a sideways kind of body horror? and a little light nun bangin'. If that sounds titillating, don't worry, it is also the most boring thing. It's just Lestat talking about God to people, forever. That's the curse of eternal life; you get to keep living but Lestat comes in your window and drones at you about religion at night.

This could have been a really fun, tight novella - Lestat is bored and godlike, and this guy Raglan James comes by and makes him an offer - James can body-swap, and he'd like Lestat to pay him 10 million bucks to be mortal again for the weekend. Everybody is like "don't do it, Lestat!" so of course Lestat is all "I'mma do it, y'all!" and then of course it does not go according to plan and then Lestat goes and begs for help and everybody says "We told you that was going to happen, Lestat!" and Lestat is all "Poor Lestat!" Anne Rice then gets to expense a cruise. This should not take 500 pages, but don't worry - Lestat fills all 500 with words.

If you want to see some fun international covers for this book, check out the show notes at our website!

If you'd like to check out our previous Vampire Chronicles episodes you can listen to them wherever you get your podcasts, obvs, or here:

The Bodice Tipplers Meet the Vampire Lestat

The Bodice Tipplers Bow Before the Queen of the Damned

It's a happy Halloween in Bodice Tipplers land! Get your spooky season on with Vivian, who's 16 and a pain in the ass and a werewolf! She doesn't care what you think, Mom! He's Aiden and he's that kid you thought was so deep and mysterious and hot in high school! Other He is Gabe and he's... 24, and has a job, and is also a werewolf! It's Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause!

This book does have a lot of murdering in it, and a near-suicide, and a sixteen year old girl who needs to sit the hell down and listen to her mother, and a 24 year old man who has sex with her, and a bunch of gross other werewolves who want to.

Glynna is a beautiful teenager living on the Virginia frontier on the eve of the French and Indian War. Kane (seriously) is... what does this guy do, actually? He's a rich dude masquerading as a tutor but really on the hunt for a tiara his mom misplaced. Is that really a career path? Anyway, this is Fiery Virginia Jewel, by Elizabeth Leigh.... or is it? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out whether this author exists or not - we put Steve Ammidown at Bowling Green State University on it, even! Investigations were investigated! (Spoiler: maybe? It's murky?)

This book is absolutely chockablock with trauma - Glynna gets abducted and serially assaulted by a guy who keeps her tied up in a cellar, which is not great, but on the other hand it's actually handled pretty well by this book! Which is a surprise, considering this book! There's a serial killer! There a really dumb guy, which is its own agony! There's a ton of racism against enslaved African Americans and a little unwelcome bit in there about Native Americans! There's a total disregard for anything even remotely historical, which.. I mean why write this very specific period if you don't care at all?!

So, for that reason, we have a special guest - Adrienne is, believe it or not, somebody who listens to our podcast who isn't related to us at all! Not even a cousin by marriage! A genuine over-the-transom fan! She's a living history volunteer at Fort Dobbs and knows a lot about this time period. For those of you who don't remember your ninth grade US history any better than this Elizabeth Leigh lady does, here's a refresher via Fort Dobbs site manager Scott Douglas (heh, bodice ripping blockbuster):

England and France had been enemies for centuries before either claimed parts of the New World. In North America, several conflicts over territory in the early 18th century climaxed in the French and Indian War.

As a result of France's growing attempt to connect her extensive dominions in North America by uniting Canada with Louisiana, she took land claimed to be within the Province of Virginia and began a line of military posts from the Great Lakes to the Ohio Valley. Virginia responded by sending a unit of soldiers, commanded by 22 year-old Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington, into western Pennsylvania. Washington ambushed a party of French soldiers in 1754, thus starting the French and Indian War: a conflict what would prove to the beginning of a global struggle for empire.

Other colonies were quick to raise soldiers to send to Virginia's aid. These "provincials", or American colonists, would fight side by side with British Army troops in several major campaigns during the conflict. Both European powers formed alliances with dozens of Native American nations, whose aid proved critical for military success. The French had more numerous allies early in the conflict, which helped them defeat several early British assaults.

Perhaps the best known and most-romanticized of these campaigns took place in the along the Hudson River in 1757, which included the siege and surrender of the British Fort William Henry to French and Indian forces. James Fennimore Cooper used this as the setting for his 1826 novel "The Last of the Mohicans." This novel was adapted into the bodice-ripping blockbuster film by the same name in 1992, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and his flowing locks of hair.

By 1759, British generals brought more experienced and greater resources to bear on the French and tide of war turned in Britain's favor as they captured the Ohio country. By 1761, their armies had secured control of Canada, and had defeated the Cherokee in the southern colonies. The British also triumphed in their global campaigns, capturing territory in the Caribbean, West Africa, and India, and defeating the French in Europe itself by 1763.

The consequences of the French and Indian War changed the balance of power in the larger world in Britain's favor, but also strained political relations with her North American colonies. Just 12 years later, a new war, the American Revolution, would explode and lead to the creation of a new nation.

Look, that man is fine in that movie and I will fight you. Adrienne was a real champ, putting up with us and all kinds of nonsense - we literally had an earthquake during recording, she got kicked out of a library, it turned out that the author might not be a person... she was very generous with her time and knowledge and we had the best time.

She also shared this fascinating article that gives more context to the kinds of goods sold at these backcountry stores in this time period, which means that this silly book actually got some stuff accidentally right about the fabrics available to these characters! Who knew?! (Not Elizabeth Leigh, whoever she is.)