Reformed Rakes

Jessica Andover needs money to pay off the mortgage on her estate. Instead of capitulating to her blackmailing neighbor who holds the mortgage and marrying him, Jessica decides to go to London and act on the stage, under an assumed name. In Regency England, this is her way of soliciting a protector. Philp Romney, Earl of Linton is the clear choice for Jessica, though many men vie for her, as she is a sudden sensation on stage. Philip quickly suspects there is more to Jessica’s story, even as she closely guards her past. Unsurprisingly, they fall in love along the way, complicating things. In a genre filled with convenient marriages and “oh no I love my wife” revelations, Joan Wolf’s 1982, His Lordship’s Mistress, takes a path less trod.

Check out Sara’s writing about mistresses in historical romance.

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Today, we’re discussing the career of Mary Balogh. Balogh is a Welsh author who now lives in Canada and we’re recording this near the fortieth anniversary of the publication of her first Regency romance, A Masked Deception. A Masked Deception was a Signet Regency Romance published by New American Library in February 1985. Balogh’s most recent publication was Remember When, also a Regency Romance, published by Berkley and published just this January. Emma talks to Beth and Chels about the history of mass-market publishing in the United States, including category romances, and themes of Balogh’s work throughout her career. The story of Balogh’s work is a story of the last forty years of Regency romance outside the tent poles of romance history thinkpieces.

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The Warm Hands of Ghosts opens on Laura receiving her brother’s clothes in the mail in January 1918. Her brother Freddie fights for the Canadian army in Belgium. Something doesn’t add up about his supposed death so Laura, a discharged combat nurse, decides to go to Belgium herself to find Freddie. From there, the book alternates point of view chapters between the Iven siblings and timelines. Laura is the present timeline and Freddie’s timeline follows a few months behind. Freddie wakes in an overturned German pillbox with a wounded German soldier. In this hellish landscape both siblings find love. Freddie with the wounded German soldier Hans Winter, and Laura with the surgeon Stephen Jones. Arden creates a dark landscape with this novel’s explorations of, “Did you see a new hell too?”

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We would characterize Milan’s works as the best possible combination of historical research and alternative realities that serve her characters’ stories. She doesn’t fudge history out of laziness or received wisdom, but in order to tell a better romance and backs up her creative license with research into aspects of history that might go underdeveloped in a weaker author’s books. She says of her settings: “I try to write books that I say are historically possible, but not historically average.” The Countess Conspiracy is the third book in the Brothers Sinister series, which is linked together by two brothers, one the heir and one illegitimate and their best friend, who is their cousin, from school. This book’s hero is the best friend from school and the heroine is his childhood best friend, with whom he shares a deep secret about his career as England’s leading researcher on genetics in botany.

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In An Extraordinary Union, published in 2017, is the first in Cole’s The Loyal League series, both main characters are attempting to shape the politics of their time through espionage. Elle Burns is a freedwoman who has been living in New England with her parents after their enslaver died and his son freed them. She has an eidetic memory that has been treated somewhat as a party trick for most of her life, including by well-meaning, but thoughtless white abolitionists in the North. Elle joins the Loyal League, a network of spies aiming to aid the Union in the Civil War, to try and use her gift to help the cause. While Elle is working she meets Malcolm McCall, who has been sent by the Pinkertons to collaborate with Elle. He is also undercover—though he lives as a Rebel soldier, using his easy charm and good looks to ingratiate himself into Southern society. Cole takes a setting that has a history in romance, but one that ignores the people most subjugated by it and gives us a story that is part espionage thriller, part slow burn enemies to lovers.

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Last episode, we covered Fabio’s not-so-humble upbringing, his journey to America, his early romance career, and his rise to fame. In this episode, we’ll start at the height of Fabio Mania in 1994 and end in present day, thirty years later. We’ll be taking you through viking battles, chivalry lessons, an A-list celebrity beef, and, unfortunately, a right wing rabbit hole. As a spokesman, Fabio billed himself as “a gentleman,” but what did he become instead? 

This episode is dedicated to THE GOOSE. 1999-1999, RIP.

Some of the Fabio media from this episode will be on our Instagram! Check it out.

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In the 90s the face of romance was the Italian cover model Fabio Lanzoni, who broke out of the insular romance fandom into mainstream superstardom. Known briefly as “The Fabulous Fabio,” he and his managers parlayed his success in romance modeling into an internationally recognized brand. Fabio was no longer just a model, but a spokesman for romantic, courtly love.

But what some people might not know is that even during the height of his fame, he was a lightning rod amongst romance fans and authors. Some embraced him for increasing book sales, and others felt like they were being made a fool of.

This is going to be a two-part episode, and in part one we are covering Fabio’s rise to fame, the romance authors who loathed him, and how a conservative man uncomfortable with overt sexuality became synonymous with salacious book covers.

This episode is dedicated to Lizzy's Angelfire fansite of John DeSalvo. Thank you for your service, Lizzy.

Some of the Fabio media from this episode will be on our Instagram! Check it out.

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Hold Fast is a medieval Scottish romance and MacArthur invites and garners a lot of comparisons to perhaps the most famous romance novelist who wrote this subgenre: Julie Garwood. Hold Fast is the story of a woman who was handfasted to an abusive laird and once free of that arrangement, assumes she will never be in a relationship with a man again. Her love interest Ewan is laird of a nearby, rival clan whose lost members of his family in ways that made him anxious to fall in love, so he similarly assumes that he will never marry. Both assumptions get complicated when they meet each other and are immediately drawn together. Reni from @reniesan joined us for this episode and chose this book for us.

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Maybe a yearly tradition? Where we recommend books to each other. Chels recommended the first in the Psy-Changeling series to Beth because of their shared love of Heather Guerre. Emma recommended a Carla Kelly because she’s quickly becoming a pod favorite. Keeping with last episode, Beth recommended two contemporaries. Emma and Chels did like an uno reverse to each other and recommended two kind of heavy-hitter political histroms. A good time was had by all.

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Keeper of the Dream, published in 1992, has this real threat of danger throughout the book. Arianna is the daughter of the Welsh prince and Raine pledges his fealty to Henry II, who is currently invading Wales. In the first scene, Raine kills one of Arianna’s brothers in a skirmish and the book doesn’t really let up from there. Arianna is a seer and has visions, which include insight into the past and future. Raine is the unloved, illegitimate son of an earl and he is seeking power and status by trying to secure his own lands. Williamson writes an incredibly romantic and funny love story on top of this violent war. That opening scene doesn’t sound like it could be the beginning of what I could describe as a cute, miscommunication romance. Or I could describe it as a bodice ripper. Or one of the saddest romances I’ve ever read. This book is a lot of things as once, but Williamson pulls it off.

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