This series by Waite is smart and subversive. If that’s your jam, we liked this one a lot.

Sophie Roseingrave is a piano teacher, tuner and composer with a problem.  All she wants is to make her father proud of her, but with the whole family forced to flee London after they were fleeced out of their music shop, the most important thing is to make sure they manage to keep bread on the table. The large Roseingrave family has started over in the small English town of Carrisford, and they simply hope they can live without losing their shirts.

Ribbon weaver Maddie Crewe is trying to get out of her old life as a thief, but with wages so low and the need to fund her weaver’s union (The Weaver’s Library and Reform Society) she’s tempted back into the world of the light-fingered for one more heist.  The entire union agrees that her selected mark – Mr. Giles, a greedy draper who’s betrayed all of them in some manner or another, stiffing them on money and taking credit for their work – makes a perfect target

Maddie and Sophie meet at the shop where Maddie sells her wares, and it’s lust at first sight.  But Sophie – able to sniff a scam out with ease after being a victim of one herself – is suspicious of Maddie while Maddie decides to protect her plan to take down Giles by seducing Sophie – but she doesn’t expect her heart to become involved.  Let the games begin.

It’s on sale at Amazon for 1.99 here.

I like this Scottish romance a lot. The leads have smokin’ hot chemistry. (Here’s our review.)

Impoverished and untitled, with no marital prospects or so much as a single suitor, Beatrice Sinclair is forced to accept employment as governess to a frightened, lonely child from a noble family – ignoring rumors of dark intrigues to do so. Surely, no future could be as dark as the past she wishes to leave behind. And she admits a fascination with the young duke’s adult cousin, Devlen Gordon, a seductive rogue who excites her from the first charged moment they meet. But she dares not trust him – even after he spirits them to isolation and safety when the life of her young charge is threatened.

Devlen is charming, mysterious, powerful – and Beatrice cannot refuse him. He is opening new worlds for her, filling her life with passion … and peril. But what are Devlen’s secrets? Is he her lover or her enemy? Will following her heart be foolishness or a path to lasting happiness?

It’s on sale at Amazon for 1.99 here.

This early work by Hannah got a B+ from us.

Kristin Hannah’s latest, her first in hardcover, is definitely more mainstream fiction than genre romance, despite the fact that one of its main components is a strong love story. At its core, it’s the story of self-discovery. It’s a beautifully drawn portrait of a woman going backward before she can go forward, once her world is shattered after her husband utters a single phrase.

On the day she puts her only child on a plane, Annie Colwater’s husband of 19 years tells her he’s leaving her for another woman. Annie’s self-identity is based on being a wife and mother, and now she is neither of those things. With nowhere else to go she returns to Mystic, the small town on the Olympic Peninsula where she grew up, hoping that Blake will call and tell her it’s all been a cruel joke. Fighting against a slide into deep depression, she offers to help look after the small daughter of her first love, Nick, now the town policeman.

Nick has demons of his own to battle. He blames himself for the tragedy that’s engulfed his family, and the lure of the bottle is too strong for him to resist. He was raised on the streets of Seattle by an alcoholic mother; only the sheer will to survive has taken him this far. And now he’s running out of reasons to hang on, until Annie shows up. How these two wounded people rediscover each other and manage to build a fragile shelter for their hearts is a story that will grab your attention and not let go until the last page.

 

It’s on sale for 2.99 here.

We miss Jill Sorenson. This one is one of her best.

Badlands reunites Owen Jackson and Penny Sandoval, two of the most fascinating characters from Aftershock. When readers last saw these two, they were trapped together in an earthquake – an ordeal which drew the young, very pregnant Hispanic mother and the convicted felon member of a white supremacist gang together. I enjoyed seeing them dance around one another and open up to having their assumptions about people challenged in that first book and I longed to see them get together.

This novel picks up five years later. Owen has completed his prison sentence and now works security for Penny’s wealthy father. Penny is now the mother of 5 year old Cruz and finds herself more in need of security than ever as her father runs for President.  As the book opens, Penny is on the verge of speaking at a campaign event when she and her son are kidnapped.  While trying to protect Penny, Owen gets swept up by the kidnappers as well.

To his horror, the gang holding Penny and her son for ransom are led by Owen’s older and more hardened brother.  So begins a story that took me not only on a wild chase through the remote badlands of California, but also into the darkness of Owen’s past.  In some ways, this book is a bit more raw than others in the series. However, considering the journey taken by the characters, particularly Owen, I think it needed to be.

The suspense portion of the book is tightly plotted. Like many criminal schemes involving multiple players, this one does not go off without a hitch.  As Owen tries to escape to safety with Penny and Cruz, what ensues is a cycle of the bad guys trying to hold their scheme together while Owen and Penny each try to find the cracks in the plan and push through them. Even though I knew I was reading a romance and that it would presumably have an HEA, there were times that I honestly wondered whether these three were going to make it back home….

Badlands is one of the best constructed romantic suspense novels I’ve read in ages. And though it’s a 2014 release, I found it oddly prophetic, too, as the presidential election described in Sorenson’s book features tensions between establishment politicians such as Penny’s father and a hard right-wing faction with ties to racist groups and violence. I don’t know why I didn’t read this sooner, but I’m glad I picked it up now.

It’s on sale for 1.99 here.

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