Bodice Tipplers

For those of you not "in the know", Jayne Ann Krentz (actually Jayne Castle) writes under a ton of pseudonyms and this is one of them. We wanted to read another one of hers since we HATED Ghost of a Chance. This one does also feature a very alpha dominant male, but other than the Romance Novel Peril and some kind of questionable breaking and entering there's nothing gross in this book.

This episode is sponsored by Kensington Books and The Rebellious Rancher by Kate Pearce, available wherever fine books are sold.

She's a feisty hoyden disguised as a boy! He wears pantyhose and makes it look good! It's the court of Louis XV (we totally get it wrong in the podcast!) We're still on Zoom and we apologize for the audio quality! That's right, it's a real romance classic - we read Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades, a book with a skeevy age gap, some grossly flippant talk about miscarriage, a good old Romance Novel Kidnapping, and the kind of people who are obviously aristocrats because they are attractive in a very specific inbred way!

We have a little first edition of this book - it's not fancy or anything but we're giving it away! So if you're seeing this post when this is a new podcast, hop on over to our social media and comment on the post letting us know what your favorite historical romance is and one of you will win this book!

This podcast is brought to you by viewers like you! But also by Crushing It by Lorelai Parker, published by Kensington Books. Wherever fine books are sold!

Welcome to Sandra Brown's Fanta-C, which should have been a sweet contemporary romance from the 80's but is actually kind of fucking disturbing in the weirdest and most unexpected way. Meet Elizabeth, a prissy lady who wears pantyhose and slips and owns a store that sells potpourri for your mistress, and Thad (THAD!), a silver fox who has puppies at his house. This is actually a great little book about a lady who has a rich dirty fantasy life but struggles with real life, except WARNING there is a big fat out of place ravishing in the middle of it, which we'll discuss.

NOTE: This episode formerly aired on YouTube; you can view it there if you want to see our beautiful faces.

Jamie is fiery! She has a horse named Wildfire that she likes to ride bareback! She is beloved by all and has zero flaws except... a terrible sense of direction! Alec is... large! And rude! And none of these people know a damn thing about medieval Scotland! You got it, it's Julie Garwood's The Bride!

In this episode we take a timeout to reflect on the ghastly history of racial violence in America by doing a deep dive into South Carolina's ugliest past and inviting Leslie from Geeky Girls' Night In and Geeky Girls' Guide to Life to speak. The first two segments carry strong content warnings about murder, legal lynching, and a police shooting mischaracterized as a riot. If you'd like to skip to Leslie's emotional segment, you can start around the 35 minute mark.

Irish Thoroughbred is Nora Roberts' first book - we wanted to see where one of the richest, most popular authors around got her start. Well. It is something.

Adelia lives in 16th century Ireland and has lost everything, so she gets on a plane to 1980 and becomes a horse trainer! Horse girl alert: THIS IS NOT A HORSE GIRL BOOK. I have read a lot, you guys, a lot of books with horse races in them and I can assure you that these horse races are the least exciting horse races in the world. Nora. Please.

We had the opportunity to try something new - we were asked if we'd like to interview debut author Martha Waters about her book To Have and to Hoax, you know, back then when the world was young and we were allowed to leave our houses. Martha was really nice and we feel really bad that all her fun book release party stuff got cancelled - however, she's doing a virtual launch Tuesday April 7th on Instagram at 7 PM EST so maybe go join her there.

To Have and to Hoax is a Publisher's Weekly starred Regency romantic comedy about... well, about somebody who fakes contracting a fatal respiratory disease so, like, timely! This is a great time to support your local bookstore, so we've linked to Martha's local Chapel Hill bookstore Flyleaf (where her party was supposed to take place) if you'd like to buy a copy. Looks like they're doing $1 media mail shipping if you spend $25!

Let us make your social distancing easier with tits and dragons! Join us in your isolation suite with my last 4 for 40 - Anne McCaffery's Dragonflight.

This isn't really a romance novel - for you young people, this is an extinct breed. It's an airport book. It's about rich people doing awful rich people things and it never forgets to mention a brand name. It's about Poor Little Rich Girl Elizabeth whose father seems to have accidentally set up a tontine in the family business - only one of her cousins is actually trying to murder her but honestly, they all want to and it might as well have been any of them so does it really matter which one it is?

Avoid accidentally making eye contact with Paxton Andrews. If you absolutely must enter a room with Paxton Andrews take extreme precautions so you don't die horribly in the Vietnam War. It's pretty good for her career as a journalist tho.

This one has no sexual assault but it does have a horrible pointless war, an awful murder-suicide, bombings, screaming, howling, and a mammy. (YES A MAMMY. Yeah I wasn't expecting that either.)

You got it, we're reading Message from Nam as our second 4 for 40 book for Sara! I would like to apologize to the Academy...