Book ‘Em!

I KNOW! A post every day this week! If you've started to look for the Four Horsemen, well, I don't really blame you.

I should warn you from the start this post may have a hillbilly tone to it. That's because I'm still reeling over the awesome episode of Justified Tuesday night. I have a habit of internalizing the tone of something I've watched or read when it's really strong and really good, or when I've spent too much time in that world. This is why I start rounding my vowels and may let out a gar-rhage or two when I've been watching too much BBCAmerica. Also, because I have a tendency for pretentiousness but that's a post for another day. Know that in my head today at least, that opening line came out as "Ah doont rally blame yew." Yes, the inside of my head does get scary sometimes.

Book 'Em! is TLS Friday feature. With a long weekend stretching before you, wouldn't you like to know of a good book worth reading? Or conversely, one not?

Maybe I can help. Though probably not by leaps and bounds over the past few months. These are titles from writing friends, well-reviewed new books that intrigue me, and the newest endeavors by proven masters of the game. Only yesterday I picked up Meredith Duran's Wicked Becomes You and Carrie Lofty's Scoundrel's Kiss.

Meredith is one of three newish romance authors whose work I think heralds a new and exciting resurgence of the historical romance genre. The other two authors of this triad are Joanna Bourne and Sherry Thomas, both with new books in the next 2 months. Huzzah!

Not only are their books tightly plotted, their characters full-bodied, and their settings visually evocative, but the prose is quite simply glorious.

Unfortunately, I am desperately, desperately, desperately attempting a full court press on my own work and if I dive into the lush verbiage of these ladies, I am doomed 1. not to work and 2. to get their (excellent) voices stuck in my head and sifting through my work. And let me tell you, a prithee does not work/fit into a biker gang face off.

Whoops, I short shifted Carrie Lofty there. The first book I read by Carrie was What a Scoundrel Wants, a turn-it-on-its-head re-imagining of Will Scarlet of Robin Hood fame and there is almost nothing heroic about him. And then he meets his match. Carrie's writing is fierce and quick and wickedly entertaining. I'm looking forward to sinking into Scoundrel's Kiss, just as soon as I write my way through an antiheroic journey of my own.

I have no qualms recommending both these authors and the upcoming and backlist titles of Bourne and Thomas too. Start with Bourne's The Spymaster's Lady and Thomas' Private Arrangements. With any luck, somewhere down the line I'll be back with reviews of all.

Happy reading!