As always, a wonderful read from one of my favourite writers, with a very unconventional hero and heroine, a lovely slow-burn romance and a villain thoroughly redeemed.

Here’s the premise: Miss Belinda Morrison is settling contentedly into permanent spinsterhood with her aunt, carefully tending their small farm for her absent brother. A new vicar with an eye to acquiring both Belinda and her prosperous property sets her a challenge, which she sees off in outrageous (but very funny) style. And this sets the tone for the rest of the books – I‘ve rarely laughed so much at a Regency romance.

But there’s another new neighbour, a mysterious and reclusive single gentleman, living at a neighbour’s house while the neighbours are away. When Bel’s cat disappears, she gets to meet Mr Nigel Lymington, who has been pampering the cat with ham and lots of stroking. Bel is happy simply to rescue the cat, but Nigel is intrigued by this self-sufficient woman who manages her farm and isn’t remotely interested in him or society generally.

Readers with a better memory than mine will know that Nigel appeared in an earlier book as the villain and got deposited here in Derbyshire, far from his usual haunts in London, by the tides of the plot. Needing to rusticate because of some shenanigans in that book, he’s hiding not just his person but also his identity. I had forgotten all that, but it doesn’t matter at all, and the locals soon find out that he’s actually the Duke of Warrenton, avoiding both a creditor and his ancestral responsibilities as duke. I confess, I’ve never found tales of an impoverished duke terribly plausible. All those vast acres they invariably own (because dukedoms weren’t handed out without land) produce a fabulous income, as a rule. But let that pass.

From this point on, the romance unfurls at a steady pace, although with characters as unusual as this, there are constant surprises along the way, all of them delightful. I have to say, I love a story that surprises me, and this one does it in spades. Eventually, it dawns on Nigel that he’s never going to win his lady unless he follows her example and takes care of his own land and tenants. Well, he knows it because she tells him very clearly – ‘Fix it,’ she says, and off he goes to do just that.

This is the only (very, very small) niggle I have with the book, that Nigel disappears off to Lincolnshire for months on end, without making any contact with Bel to reassure her that he is coming back and yes, he still wants to marry her. All this while the avaricious vicar is still hovering around Bel. It would have served him right if she had married the vicar in the meantime.

There are some surprising (that word again!) twists at the end before the romance wraps up neatly. A beautifully written book, redeeming a previous villain in splendid style, with a charmingly eccentric heroine and an honourable mention for the cat. Five stars.

The one word which summarises this book is charm. It’s a delightful, gentle read, which the author describes as an homage to Georgette Heyer and it really does work pretty well, so for anyone yearning to find a new Heyer, while there’ll never be anyone quite like her, this book is a very acceptable substitute.

Here’s the premise: Mrs Audeley is a widow living a quiet, lower gentry life in Derbyshire with her son Gyles, who is obsessed with roses. She’d rather like to visit London again some time for a little recreation, but Gyles isn’t interested. But one day, a girl appears and tells Mrs Audeley that she’s running away from her tyrannical guardian. Mrs Audeley is quite happy to go along with this idea, pushing her out into the garden to be looked after by Gyles, for who knows what may come of that? But when the tyrannical guardian appears, he’s not a monstrous, wicked sort of man, but the rather handsome and well-mannered Earl of Kendall. And in no time he has persuaded Mrs Audeley and Gyles to accompany his niece Penelope and himself to London to help bring her out. Which fits Mrs Audeley’s plans very well.

And so to London they go, where various things happen, both good and bad, but that isn’t really the point of the book. It’s the gently managing manner of Lord Kendall and the pragmatic and easy-going ways of Mrs Audeley and their wonderful conversations that make the book. I love these two, and the fact that they’re both the shady side of forty makes their romance all the more wonderful.

A perfect Regency read, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I was that Mrs Audeley was (very correctly) called that almost throughout the entire book, and Lord Kendall had to ask what her Christian name is when he proposes. Five stars, but I’d have given it more if I could.

The third in the Pevensey series, and another corker. The author is exceptionally skilled at drawing characters with deep family secrets, and at classic murder mysteries; this book (indeed, the whole series) is a stunning combination of both.

Here’s the premise: the Aldine family has gathered in London at Christmas for an unexpected celebration – the heir to the viscountcy, Will, just twenty-one, is betrothed to the lovely and besotted sister of the Duke of Tilbury, Lady Helena Angiers. Will’s older sister, Maud, is as surprised as anyone that flighty Will is prepared to settle down at such an early age, and Helena’s brother, the duke, is clearly not pleased about it. But Maud has her own problems. She’s a widow, only recently escaped from the depths of Devon, but past events threaten her future, and finding an unwelcome attraction springing up between herself and the duke only complicates matters. And then there’s a sudden death and things get *really* complicated.

The whole book plays out over the twelve days of Christmas, and the return of the eccentric Bow Street Runner, Jacob Pevensey, livens up the second half. Pevensey comes more to life with each book, and now that he’s apparently joined forces with the Cecil brother and sister, one can only hope for a long series to watch further developments.

This book is somewhat unusual in featuring a heroine several years older than the hero. It’s loosely based on real events in the middle ages, and frankly it seems to work pretty well. Maud’s reservations about Geoffrey’s youth are perfectly understandable, but given that he had inherited his title at an early age and was used to being in charge, his maturity was plausible. Although perhaps his propensity for duels might argue against it!

The murder was wrapped up rather neatly, the romance likewise and my only grumble was that the unworthy cousin got to inherit in the end. I was so badly hoping that there had been a secret wedding and a potential heir to cut him out of the inheritance! But the author stuck closely to the historical precedents and I can’t fault her for that. There are a smattering of Americanisms (bussing, passed, gotten and the like) but nothing that particularly bothered me. On the whole, the author’s portrayal of the Regency is very convincing, and I look forward to the fourth book in the series with great anticipation. Five stars.

After the surprise of the first book, this one came somewhat less out of left field, but it was just as enjoyable. The whole series is inspired by real events in English history, but don’t let that put you off, since the writing is firmly rooted in the Regency.

Here’s the premise: shy Elizabeth (Eliza) Malcolm is the unlikely recipient of marital attentions from Rufus, the Duke of Brockenhurst. Her impoverished gentry parents jump at the chance for such an illustrious match, and are delighted to be invited to the family estate, where the duke plans one of his deer hunts in the forest surrounding the house, and will, they suppose, propose. But the duke and his mother are not the only people present. The duke’s brash sister is conducting a fairly public courtship, his older half-brother is looking for more financial help, and then there’s his younger brother, the intriguing Henry Rowland, who is estranged from his brother and delights in making mischief between him and his intended. And so poor Eliza find herself in the house party from hell, with all sorts of undercurrents rippling beneath the surface, a future husband who takes very little notice of her but is uncomfortably proprietorial and his brother, who seems to be the worst kind of scoundrel, but is surprisingly gentle and thoughtful towards her.

And then there’s a sudden death. Knowing something of the historical events on which this story is (loosely) based, I was expecting it, but after that, when eccentric Bow Street Runner turns up to investigate whether this is, as it appears to be, a hunting accident or whether something more sinister is afoot, things become delightfully complex and tangled. I have to confess that the author is a master at unravelling the mystery, clue by careful clue. I loved the way it was revealed, and that everything made perfect sense.

The romance wraps up rather neatly and very plausibly. In book 1, it was the hero who found the strength to push back, but here it’s the heroine who ‘finds her voice’, as the hero puts it, and snatches her own chance of happiness. I love a heroine who displays some gumption. Another wonderful tale. Five stars. And now on to book 3.

One of the joys of reading a book for the first time is not knowing precisely what lurks within its pages. Sometimes, in fact most times, if I am being honest, the plot unrolls smoothly and predictably, and that’s fine, too, but sometimes – oh, a glorious few times! – it veers off into unexpected territory. And so it is here.

Here’s the premise: Harold (or Haro) Emison has, at the tender age of twenty-three, come into his inheritance as Earl of Anglesford, only to find that the coffers are empty. The options are to sell the ancient family home or… what? His younger brother Torin proposes the time-honoured solution – marry an heiress. And within days, Haro has set about doing just that, betrothing himself to the elegant person of Arabella Hastings, only daughter of cotton mill owner William Hastings. There’s only one snag: Haro was on the brink of an engagement to his distant cousin who lives with the family, Eda Swanycke, who takes the new engagement in very bad part. When the Emison family and the Hastings decamp to the ancestral home, the atmosphere is somewhat soured by the subtle sniping between the two women.

Now, at this point, it was perfectly possible that this would turn into a variant of Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract, as Haro and Arabella got to know each other better and reached an accommodation. So, just another marriage of convenience story, then. But this is not that story, happily, as relations between Eda and Arabella turn to open warfare, a French architect turns up set about remodelling the ancestral home into a modern Palladian masterpiece, and Haro finds himself caught in the middle, trying desperately to keep the peace in order to save his family from ruin.

And then there’s a murder. Oh. I wasn’t expecting *that*. The book now veers off sharply into murder mystery territory, complete with the eccentric detective (a Bow Street Runner, in this case), one Jacob Pevensey, whose eccentricity consists of sketching the suspects instead of taking notes. This part of the book is note perfect, the events leading up to the murder being gradually revealed, and a last-minute revelation which makes everything clear to Mr Pevensey (although I’d spotted a key point earlier). And then the romance is wrapped up, along with another reveal which wasn’t too hard to predict, either.

I see from the reviews that a lot of people disliked the two part plot, some feeling the romance was unsatisfactory, and some the murder mystery. For me, I loved the whole book, and especially that it was (to me, anyway) totally unpredictable, and I just love a book that takes me by surprise. Highlights include the sparring between the two rivals for Haro’s affections, and I liked the slow but relentless uncovering of Arabella’s unpleasant nature. I liked, too, that Haro finally realised what he needed to do to be true to himself. Some reviewers thought he was too much of a doormat early on, but I really admired the way he tried his hardest to keep everyone happy and only gave it up when he realised that it was never going to work. A terrific read. Five stars and I’m straight off to the next book in the series.

It’s always interesting to revisit the bad guy from an earlier book and see him reformed and finding his own happiness. It’s a hard act to pull off, and I think the author cheats a little here – we don’t actually see Thomas reform himself, he just appears at the start of the book, several years later, so far reformed that he’s a curate in an impoverished rural parish, now living a blameless life. He’s then given the living at his old home, where everyone remembers him from his wild former existence, and he has an uphill task to convince everyone that yes, he really has changed. And it doesn’t help that a mysterious woman appears and deposits a boy of eight on his doorstep, before disappearing again. Is the boy Thomas’s?

It’s not surprising that everyone is suspicious. Mary Bates, eldest daughter of the smith and Abbey steward, is willing to believe in him, but her father isn’t and forbids her to have anything to do with him, thus providing basically the only obstacle to what would otherwise be a perfectly smooth romance. There’s a lovely moment when Thomas first sees Mary again, with one of her younger brothers in tow. He remembers her very well as the prettiest of the village girls, but he assumes she must be married, especially as he sees her with a young child in tow (her brother, as it happens). “Mrs… er?” he says, and it comes across as though he doesn’t remember her at all.

From then onwards, things unfold pretty much as expected, with both Mary and Thomas trying very hard to abide by her father’s strictures (which is completely in line with Regency mores, so no problem there), and Thomas trying both to do his best for the boy left in his care, while also convince the locals that he really has become an upright citizen. My only quibble is a legal one: no, you can’t legitimise an illegitimate child by marrying, not in England, at any rate.

A nice read, a suitably romantic ending and a good four stars.

A charming and sweet novella, too short in many ways, but a delightful read.

Here’s the premise: Eloise Blackburn is helping her young sister fly her kite when the pesky thing gets lodged in an ash tree. Eloise is persuaded to discard her shoes and stockings and climb the tree to retrieve it, but there’s a catch – a strange man is already aloft, hidden in the leafy canopy of the tree. He claims to be a cousin of the neighbouring Allen family, from the West Indies, called Crispin, but Eloise has never heard of him. However, her parents, it transpires, recognise him as the son of the eldest Allen brother, James, who was disinherited years ago. All he was left in his father’s will was a chest and the contents thereof. He’s come back to England now that his father has died to claim the inheritance, but the Allen family deny all knowledge of him.

So the mystery is laid out clearly – where is this mysterious chest? And why are the Allens so keen to disclaim all knowledge of their cousin? But alongside the mystery is the romance between Eloise and the flirtatious Crispin. The blurb describes him as ‘cheeky’, but actually he’s more than that, and Eloise is immediately smitten. It appears he’s equally smitten with her – or is he? Maybe he’s just amusing himself with a little light flirtation before disappearing back to the West Indies?

There isn’t much more to say about this, because frankly the book is too short to develop the characters beyond their initial positions, and the romance comes to the boil far too quickly for my taste. But I loved Crispin and his outrageous behaviour, completely understood why Eloise fell for him (I would have done too, like a shot) and only wished he had been a bit more open about some aspects of his history that caused his lady love some unnecessary grief. But then there would have been even less of a story without it, so never mind.

A lovely read from a new-to-me author. Five stars.