Bodice Tipplers

Happy lunar new year! We rang in the Year of the Ox with Butterfly Swords, which was Jeannie Lin's first book. It won the Golden Heart Award back in 2009 and started her illustrious career.

Ai Li is to be married to the powerful and hawt Li Tao, a scheming jiedushi. When she discovers his treachery and his murder of her brother she escapes to warn her father, the Tang Emperor. Except her father isn't really all that fussed about it? She's helped along the way by Ryam, Noted White Guy. They travel all around China meeting people and running away from people and hitting people with swords, which is delightful.

There's really no content to be concerned about in this book - if you dig action packed historical romances there won't be anything in here that's an unpleasant surprise.

Y'all, it's our first Loveswept! She's a children's librarian, he's stripping to fund his owl-rescue habit! It's incredibly sweet and just wonderful in every possible way, there are no major content warnings, just read this one - trust us.

Are... are you actually ready for this? (We were not.)

Get ready for some Jackie Collins all up in your face-parts! Lucky Santangelo is a boss businesslady who Has Sex. A whole lot happens in this book - everybody gets married six times, at least one hotel is opened, dirty deeds are done on yachts.... I honestly do not know how I could possibly describe the plot. I can tell you that if you are sensitive to literally any content whatsoever you should not read this book because it has it all. Child brides! Rape! Child rape! Gratuitous dead babies! Everybody has sex with everybody else's dad! Racism! Fat shaming! The idle rich! One of these people has so much cocaine she has to have a special cocaine panic room in her house to keep her cocaine in! So if any of that sounds like something you definitely do not want to hear about, by all means do not listen to this. If all of that sounds like something you absolutely need to hear about.... by all means, join us.

We were asked if we'd like to interview Melissa Croce about her new book, Single and Forced to Mingle - a guide to what to do if you're unattached and have to go do things. (Somebody remind me what doing things is like? I think I've forgotten!) It comes out today, so go get a copy wherever you buy your books!

Happy holidays, y'all! We all needed something a little... lighter. Something a little more... snowy. Something with a mustache. Enter Diana Palmer's The Humbug Man, the tiniest little book that packs the most chest hair! He's another ranchin' Tate (why is that a trope?) who hates kids and loves ranchin' (childfree.) She's a secretary who moved to Arizona to be close to Montana who needs some deep dicking, stat, but isn't going to get any until the last two pages. It's really sweet and has almost nothing in it that's disturbing!

He's a cat burglar, she's an ethnobotanist, they both get their cardio in and it's Medicine Man has a weirdly paced baby with Romancing the Stone! On this special Thanksgiving episode we give genuine thanks to Stacey Abrams for her tireless work flipping the state of Georgia oh my freaking god you guys! And if you'd like to thank a black woman for doing a hard grimy job nobody else wanted to do, don't give her more work to do - give her money! Go buy her books!

No major trigger warnings for this episode except that it's romantic suspense, so there's some torture-murder in it. And a lot of instant oatmeal.

It's spooky season you mofos! That means a creepy book. This year we leave the world of ghost banging and half assed witches to deep dive into vampires! Buckle Up because we are riding the Vampire Lestat train. The follow up to Anne Rice's 1976 book, Interview with a Vampire, is all about that vampy rock and roll lifestyle. Published in 1985 this book is a bedazzled and spandex approach to what to do when you are undead.

Featuring special guest Dr. Claire Mischker, we take an EXTREMELY DEEP DIVE into this cultural phenomenon. Trigger warnings include nonconsensual biting, mass murder of blonde guys, witholding mothers, wolf attacks, excessive eyeliner, and skinny jeans. And so many pirate shirts.

Ever get super horny for Alexander the Great, conqueror of worlds? You will. Join us as we get classical up in here with Mary Renault's 1972 The Persian Boy, a book about a traumatized teenager whose vast ambition centers entirely on jumping Alexander's bones. Heads up - this book's got all sorts of traumatic historical stuff in it including but not limited to forced castration, rape, enslavement, and up close and personal war.

We are honored to have a special guest for this episode - John Kinard teaches English at the University of South Carolina, is a librarian at Allen University, believes in the ultimate triumph of the proletariat, and still thinks a great deal about Elisabeth Shue's coat/scarf combo in Adventures in Babysitting. Check out a piece John wrote for us on our show notes at BodiceTipplers.com!

She's a public menace, he's trying his best to be a devil may care rake but keeps landing on "that cat in the Pepe le Pew cartoons" - it's Dreaming by Jill Barnett, a book with surprise witches, a shocking number of shipwrecks and kidnappings, and a cautionary tale about staying away from people who are "clumsy as a character trait".

No major warnings for this one unless you count "didn't know this was a sequel until halfway through" and "oh my god somebody save this man".

We have a very special treat for you this episode! Miss Honey Analverkehr of My Mum is a Pornstar joined us all the way from Australia to talk about a book that had a big impact on her as a young person, John Norman's Kajira of Gor. Note: unfortunately, we had some audio issues with this one (we keep trying different things for these pandemic episodes but they keep on having different problems!) but we felt the content was so great we had to release it even though every time we talk over each other it sounds like we're bobbing for apples. It's fine, they were great apples! Miss Honey is fantastic and much more charismatic than we are, so you're not going to want to miss this one.