Charity Girl

I think I'm burnt on Regency Romance, I didn't really love this one, and normally I love Georgette Heyer. The story was good: Viscount Ashley Desford finds himself in a pickle when a young girl named Charity runs away from her aunt's house and Des runs across her struggling to walk to London. Being a gentleman, he picks her up and tries to talk her into going home, but she won't. Her aunt has been very brutal to her, so she's trying to track down her grandfather in the hopes he'll take her in. Des takes her to her grandfather's London home, only to find it's been locked up for the summer. Having no other option, he imposes upon his dear friend Henrietta. Henrietta is a good sport and agrees to look after "Cherry" (as she prefers to be called) while Des tracks down her grandfather. The majority of the book was poor Desford going all over hell's half acre, trying to find someone decent to look after the girl. There was just too much of the Regency era slang for my taste, I normally love it, but this felt overboard. Oh well. Time for something new. Of course I picked up a Trixie Belden the other day and I've been rereading that, so we know how this is going to go :)

Blackmoore

I didn't like Julianne Donaldson's "Blackmoore" as much as "Edenbrooke", but it ended up being better than I thought it would be at first. It wasn't as straight forward a Regency Romance as "Edenbrooke" was, there were some Gothic elements, too.
Kate has always longed to visit Blackmoore, her friend Henry's (well, once he inherits it from his dying grandfather) country estate. Henry and his sister, Sylvia, go for a month every summer, but Kate has never been allowed to go. Her mother and Henry's mother despise each other, despite their children being good friends. But Henry is of age now, and he invites Kate to come and visit Blackmoore. Kate's mother, who is a truly despicable creature, refuses to allow Kate to go unless they strike a bargain: Kate must receive and turn down three proposals of marriage, and if she does, she'll be allowed to travel to India with her aunt. If she doesn't, however, she must do exactly as her mother says. Kate quickly agrees to the bargain. There are a lot of secrets going on, and once they finally got teased out of Kate (slowly, tortuously) the book got better.

The Storyteller Essays

Going about as far in the opposite direction of Regency Romances, we have "The Storyteller Essays" by Walter Benjamin. Benjamin is a favorite of Larry McMurtry's and so I decided to give it a go. They were just short little essays Benjamin wrote in the 1930s, and I was really amazed at how relevant they still are today (I don't know why I was amazed: Michel de Montaigne died in the 1500s and his writings still resonate). It was a short book, but packed full of interesting thoughts.

Edenbrooke

After Megan Walker's "Lakeshire Park", I decided to see if I could find another charming Regency, and came across "Edenbrooke" by Julianne Donaldson. I really liked it. Twins Marianne and Cecily lost their mother a little over a year ago. Their father, bereft with grief, sent the girls to live with relatives: Cecily to London to live with a cousin, and Marianne to Bath to live with her grandmother. Marianne is unhappy in town and yearns to be back home in the country. When Cecily extends an invitation to spend several weeks at the Wynhams's country estate, Marianne can't pack fast enough. She and her maid are attacked by a highwayman and their coachman, James, is injured. Marianne manages to get them to a nearby inn where she meets a mysterious man who will only give her his first name: Philip. But he does help them out and when Marianne finally makes it to Edenbrooke, she discovers Philip is one of the Wynhams's sons. Cecily hasn't arrived from London yet, so Marianne has the run of the estate and she and Philip become fast friends. It's obvious to everyone that Philip is in love with Marianne, but she's so used to playing second fiddle to her prettier sister she doesn't believe someone as dashing and handsome as Philip could possibly be in love with her. When Cecily does arrive, she tells Marianne that's she's in love with Philip and determined to marry him, so Marianne reluctantly backs away from their friendship. It was a very sweet story without being sappy or silly.

Lakeshire Park

I read an Advance Reader's Copy of this book a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. Amelia and her younger sister, Clara, are living unhappily with their grudging stepfather, who is dying and has told the young ladies they won't get a penny when he does. Desperate to make a successful match so they won't be turned out on the streets, Amelia is overjoyed when she and Clara are invited to a party at Sir Ronald's house. Clara took a shine to him when they met during the girl's London Season, but Clara has some competition for Sir Ronald's affection in the form of Miss Georgiana Wood. Miss Wood's brother, Peter, is a friend of Sir Ronald's, and Clara begs Amelia to distract him so she has a fair chance at Sir Ronald. Amelia really dislikes Peter at first, but she's willing to do anything to help her sister. It was completely predictable but very sweet and charming.
Now I want to read more Georgette Heyer :) I guess I can, since I'm done with Outlander!

A Longer Fall; Lord John and the Hand of Devils; Seven Stones to Stand or Fall; Richard III: Loyalty Binds Me

Okay, let's get caught up here! First up, Charlaine Harris's latest book featuring Gunnie Rose. Lizbeth and her new crew have been hired to take a crate into Dixie. The train they are on derails, and most of her crew is killed (not by the train, by other gunnies). Grigori Eli shows up and he and Lizbeth team up to figure out who stole the crate (and what was in it). I'm not a huge fan of these books so far, they feel a little rushed. But at least they're quick reads.

Three Lord John novellas (more Lord John, please!!). The first one, "Lord John and the Hellfire Club" finds Lord John entangled in a dangerous underground society. "Lord John and the Succubus" has him in Prussia, investigating a series of mysterious deaths that the locals (and the soldiers) are attributing to a female demon. And finally "Lord John and the Haunted Soldier": Lord John is badly wounded in battle when a canon explodes. After being questioned by the higher ups, he begins to wonder if maybe the canon exploding wasn't such an accident. They were all good fun.

"Seven Stones to Stand or Fall" is a collection of assorted Outlander short stories and novellas. There were some good Lord John ones in there (his mother is the BEST. I really want Starz to make a Lord John series just so I can see who is cast as Benedicta Grey), but also some that featured other characters, like Michael Murray (Jenny and Ian's son) and Joan MacKimmie.

And finally, having finished everything I could get my hands on about Lord John, I turned to a real British soldier, Richard III. Matthew Lewis is a Ricardian, but I felt this book was very fair and balanced: he really tried to strip away all the interpretations and rumors that have persisted over the last 500+ years and just judge Richard by his actual deeds. The only thing I didn't care for was how he left the original spelling of documents he quoted. I can't read them easily, so I'd be merrily chugging along and hit a block of text with that Medieval English and grind to a halt, trying to puzzle it out. Other than that, I enjoyed it.

The Scottish Prisoner

The last (besides the short stories) Lord John book was really fun (I keep saying that about these books, but seriously, so much dry, witty humor that just doesn't come across on the TV show). There's another Jacobite rebellion brewing and John's older brother asks John to go talk to Jamie to have a note translated. John refuses (their last face to face conversation did not go well), so Hal brings Jamie to London and tasks John with taking him to Ireland to arrest one of the men he thinks is a traitor. The book is told in alternating points of view between John and Jamie. In the end they are able to mend their friendship and Jamie goes back to Helwater. Can we have more Lord John books? Please??

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

The second Lord John book was a lot of fun. John's mother is getting married (for the third time) and Lord John has a new stepbrother--Percy Wainwright. Someone is sending John's older brother Hal and his mother pages out of his dead father's last journal, which went missing after the Duke's death some years earlier. The first Duke of Pardloe, Gerard Grey, was suspected of being a Jacobite traitor and his death was ruled a suicide. John knows better: he found his father's body before anyone else did and saw how far the pistol was from him. John has a lot going on in this book, and we learn a lot about him. Complicated man, Lord John Grey.