Books by Amanda McCabe

D+
The Shy Duchess

In Amanda McCabe’s The Shy Duchess, Lady Emily Carroll is expected to marry well because her parents have run out of money. Naturally, Emily is completely uninterested in social events because she doesn’t waste time on frivolities. So she hurries off during a ball and this happens : Emily lost ...

B+
The Queen's Christmas Summons

Some of my favorite Christmas romances have a blend of darkness and light running through them. In The Queen’s Christmas Summons, Amanda McCabe does this very well. This book is filled with adventure and intrigue and yet, among all the plot action, we can still see her characters’ emotions shin ...

B
The Demure Miss Manning

I’ve been reading Amanda McCabe for years. Her stories tend to be comfort reads for me, and I appreciate that she’s one of the few authors out there who employs a fairly wide variety of historical settings in her books.  The Demure Miss Manning is set during the Napoleonic War, and follows a di ...

B
The Governess's Convenient Marriage

I know this will shock you all, but this is a marriage of convenience story. I know! Harlequin is usually so cryptic with their titles! All kidding aside, this is one of those delightful books that does exactly what it says on the tin, but does it so very well. Our story opens in the past s ...

C
The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding

The Wallflower’s Mistletoe Wedding is a pleasant, light-hearted story set in an English country home at Christmastime in which two lonely people find love amid the hustle and bustle of a family house party.  It’s an easy read to which the word ‘nice’ can be frequently applied;  the hero an ...

C
Betrayed by His Kiss

The book reviews that are often hardest to write – as AAR staffers will agree – are those for books which fall into the middle range, the C grade books which aren’t bad, but which don’t really have anything particularly special to make them stand out from the crowd. If you love or hate somet ...

B-
Tarnished Rose of the Court

Oddly enough, while I was reading Tarnished Rose of the Court I also happened to be reading Meredith Duran’s At Your Pleasure - which has a very similar plot. Both have sisters whose brothers are or were involved in treasonous plots, both have heroes and heroines who were in love in the past and w ...

B-
The Winter Queen

If I were grading The Winter Queen on the setting alone, it would get an unqualified A. It's set in 1564, and the heroine is one of Queen Elizabeth's ladies in waiting. Better yet, all the action takes place during the Christmas season (from shortly before the holiday to Twelfth Night). And, McCabe ...

C
High Seas Stowaway

High Seas Stowaway has a unique time period and setting that might lend to something truly exciting. Regrettably, even the Renaissance, Venice, Hispaniola, pirates, codpieces, blood vengeance, and the Spanish couldn’t make this one completely interesting. For Bianca Simonetti, ...

B+
A Sinful Alliance

A Sinful Alliance is set in the too-little used Renaissance period, featuring intrigue at Henry VIII's court between two non-English leads, one an assassin charged with killing the other. Fun! Marguerite Dumas is The Emerald Lily, a spy and assassin who has worked for the French crown since she ...