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Review: The Masque of the Black Tulip (Pink Carnation #2) by Lauren Willig
If the Pink Carnation left you feeling a little wilted and longing to drink in the next flowery caped crusader….look no further, Lauren Willig’s The Masque of the Black Tulip, is sure to quench any lingering thirst readers had! Ravishing and bewitching, the whole Regency era upper-class turned spies with cute horticultural names thing is a force to be reckoned with…these books are simply amazing. I am reading them as part of the Regency & Victorian Reads Challenge over at the Royal Review’s blog. As I was about thirty or so pages out from finishing the first book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, I had to stop myself,…
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Review: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (Pink Carnation #1) by Lauren Willig
I feel like I just entered the most interesting florist shop in London. I am surrounded by flowers….the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Purple Gentian, and of course the Pink Carnation….but wait I’m in a book! What the deuce are all these flowers doing in a book?? Granted…it’s decidedly less fragrant in the book than in a florist shop but still–what the deuce is going on here? Oh wait….I am reading Lauren Willig’s novel The Secret History of the Pink Carnation! Pink Carnation is just the beginning of the flowery Regency era series. We begin with Amy, born in France she and her mother flee the French Revolution across the Channel to…
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Review: The Rebel Wife by Taylor M Polites
Saturated in rich, golden prose Taylor Polites’s novel, The Rebel Wife, oozes engrossing detail and with such a commanding voice/tone from the first page….I found it difficult to put down. The novel contains whispers of literary delight from beloved American classics such as Gone with the Wind and is told with a dark edge which echos William Faulkner. This book was listed on Goodreads as a giveaway ARC, and this was one of the novels I was most hoping to win. The cover is striking and elegant with blazing sunset and a dark, decaying house….the cover alone beckoned me to read it. I was over the moon when I won…
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The Lit Bitch has entered the 2012 Death by Gaslight Reading Challenge
Challenge #4 has been entered! This might (yes MIGHT) be the last challenge for the year….not sure yet though but as I am hosting two other reading challenges of my own (Outlander and Game of Thrones) it might be time to call it quits for the moment anyway but we aren’t quite into the new year yet so who knows I might have more challenge entries on the way 🙂 So here you have it, the Death by Gaslight Reading Challenge hosted by Simply Challenging who is quickly becoming one of my fav book bloggers, she is super ambitious when it comes to reading challenges hence the name LOL :).…
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Review: Devoured (Hatton and Roumonde Mystery #1) by D. E. Meredith
To have one’s ideas be heard, isn’t that what all scientists want? That is certainly what forensic scientist, Professor Aldolphus Hatton, wants in D.E. Meredith’s thriller, Devoured. In the budding world of Darwinism, botanical study, forensics, and science in general– Hatton is using early forensic science to solve crimes all around Victorian London hoping that this new manner of solving crime will catch fire and blaze a new path of crime fighting. I recently read the second book in the Hatton series, The Devil’s Ribbon which I thoroughly enjoyed. Meredith and I are friends and she offered to send me a copy of Hatton’s first mystery since she knows I hate…
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The Lit Bitch has entered the 2012 Historic Fiction Reading Challenge
It’s that time of year again, reading challenge time! I can hardly believe it! Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting my entries for various challenges here as I sign up and I will also have a special page/section devoted to my entries which will have lists of books I plan on reading. As per usual I’ll post my reviews throughout the year and add the buttons on my sidebars. So here is the first challenge sign up of 2012: the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Historical Tapestry. For more details about my entry and goals please see my the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge 2012 page. If…
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Review: The Mischief of the Mistletoe (Pink Carnation #7) by Lauren Willig
Tis the season for purloined pudding! Christmas pudding, bonnets, love, and mystery are all literary in the air in Lauren Willig’s book The Mischief of the Mistletoe. This book is #4.2 in Willig’s wildly popular Pink Carnation series. I saw this book advertised on Goodreads a few weeks ago and fell in love with the cover and….suddenly I had to read it! So I picked up a copy and then I saw the Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge hosted by the True Book Addict and suddenly I couldn’t wait for it to be Christmas season so I could read this book! Biding my time, I started the book the day the challenge started and finished the book…
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Review: The Devil’s Ribbon (Hatton and Roumonde Mystery #2) by D. E. Meredith
Green, the symbol of Irish pride and a symbol of Irish rebellion–this is what forensic scientist and doctor Adolphus Hatton is thinking when he pulls a green ribbon from the mouth of cadaver. In D.E. Meredith’s latest thriller, The Devil’s Ribbon, London is a pressure cooker….the searing July heat of 1858, the wretched stink of the Themes, deadly diseases lurking in every inch of filth from Highgate to the Rookeries of the East End, and….feuding Irish and British tensions are at their breaking point. Hatton and his assistant Albert Roumande, are knee deep in a spike of cholera deaths when Inspector Grey of Scotland Yard approaches them with a curious case….a predominant…
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Review: Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynne Shepherd
Hold on to your bonnets, there’s been a Murder at Mansfield Park! In this charming Jane Austen spin off, author Lynne Shepherd takes a classic English novel and turns it into a classic ‘who done it’. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park is the only Austen novel I have not read ironically, for some reason it just never appealed to me. Everyone says that Fanny Price is the worse Austen heroine ever, though I cannot claim my own opinion of the original Fanny Price, I can say with confidence I didn’t care for the Shepherd version of Price in this book which was the obvious point of her novel. I’ve only read a…
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Review: The Fleet Street Murders (Charles Lenox Mysteries #3) by Charles Finch
I can feel fall in the air which means it’s time for another mystery book! This time I read the next book in the Charles Lenox mystery series, The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch. I started reading the Lenox series as part of the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge. When I started the series, I didn’t really know what to expect…I had heard mixed reviews about it. But after finishing the first book, A Beautiful Blue Death, I was pretty much hooked. I guess we can still consider this book part of the Historic Fiction Reading Challenge though it’s technically ‘over’ for me, my goal was to read just two…