Bitchery reader Tamsin (Gosh I dig that name) writes:
I’m searching for the title and author of a book I read about ten years ago as a teen. My mother and I were discussing romance novels recently and both recalled this one but it has either been lost or trashed. As far as I remember, it would have been published in the early / mid nineties, likely as a Harlequin or Silhouette title. The book starts out with the heroine kidnapped and being held in some isolated cabin…. somewhere. Enter hero who has been sent by her family to rescue her. He may have been a hero of the clichéd Native American tracker kind, but not sure. He rescues her and they then start the journey away from wherever she has been held (if I recall correctly, a very remote, rural and I *think* snow-covered location) back to her family home.
I realize that this description is not all that detailed right now, so I offer up the very few random details I DO remember: at some point in the journey, they stopped at a diner and ate burgers. And apple pie. Also, once back at heroine’s family home, they get frisky in the stables (or barn?) and heroine’s brother walks in on them (the relationship was kept secret from her family). The threat to heroine and her family does not end once she has been rescued – I recall some ongoing mystery / suspense once back with her family. So yeah, this bitch would appreciate any help / hints / suggestions you smart bitches can come up with based on my very flimsy description… would love to find this again for my mother so we can reminisce.
I love that she and her mom are comparing notes on romance. Anyone else share a love of the genre with their parental unit? I love books as bonding items.
My mom had never been much of a reader until her most recent job required some travel and she needed something to do on flights. She discovered Nora Roberts/JD Robb and we’ve had some nice conversations about those books.
Mom’s contribution to my early love of romances was driving me to the library regularly. It was my grandmother’s best friend who fed my addiction when I was in high school. She had subscriptions to several category lines, and passed them on to me when she was done.
My mum doesn’t read romance, but after my great-aunt died we found a big box of old 1960s romances under her bed. She was a very severe old lady, never married, and used to tell my cousins and I off for wearing skirts that were too short. I wish I’d know the younger, romance reading version of her!
I’ve now got her collection of old books in a box under my bed. I’ve read them, though none of them grabbed me enough to warrent a second reading.
Here is a synopsis of C is for Cowboy. Sounds like the winner to me.
“Bent on destroying her powerful family, someone had abducted pampered Casey McKee and stashed her deep in the snowy Oregon wilds. Only one man could possibly save her: ruthless tracker Sloan Redhawk.
The brooding cowboy swiftly hunted Casey down-and the headstrong heiress made the blood sing anew in his icy loner’s heart. But Redhawk knew evil still stalked the mighty McKees, and Casey remained an all-too-tempting target. For a killer as well as a cowboy ….”
I’ve been thinking about this one… and while I’m not sure it is it, there are some similarities. Kiss and Tell by Cherry Adair?
I share books with my Grammie, but lately they need to be PG or even G. So she keeps giving me Christian books, and I give her Beatrice Small just to keep her on her toes ;0) I do remember my mom talking about how much she loved to read, and would mention her John Jakes series with reverence. Now I feel the same about my SEPs and Kinsales and Crusies, all neat and tidy on the shelf were I can admire them just like she did, and my Grammie does, and next to the tiny shelf that holds all my daughter’s Sandra Boynton books! I think reading should be made into something you can pass down from generation to generation, a passion for stories you instill in your children.
I started reading romances in the 5th grade. My mom had huuuge piles of gothic romances next to her side of the bed and it was easy to pull one out of the stack, read it, return it, move on to the next. The first one I read was THE FLAME AND THE FLOWER. I didn’t necessarily understand all the physicalness of the sex scenes but I read them, then, for the love stories. By the time she allowed me to read them, I had already moved on at that point in my reading to SFF and then mystery. I came back to romances a few years ago when I was doing research for a bookstore I wanted to open (and didn’t happen).
Reading in general comes from my Mom. She took us to the library regularly and read out loud to us. Dad wasn’t a reader though came to it later in life after retiring and I have heard him say he was glad she did that for us. Coming full circle, I somehow married a non-reader, just wasn’t done or valued in his family and to this day. We don’t have kids and the dog just doesn’t seem to like to be read to so reading is just for me. 🙂
As mentioned, I am pretty sure it is ‘C is for Cowboy’. I read that one too, and it sounds about right.
I remember finding Elizabeth Lowell’s “Winter Fire” at the tender age of 11 and being very curious about it, especially after mom told me not to read it. Naturally my friend and I stood watch for each other and read it within the week.
You know, this sound like a Dallas Schulze category book called Snowbound. He’s older, and she went out to the cabin when she shouldn’t, and he retrieves her, and I believe they get involved while at the cabin…
And then there is drama back at the ranch with the brothers, as she’s the youngest. I liked this book a lot. Dallas had a lot of good category, full of emotion. This one might be Snowbound or something like that.
My mom had Harlequin subscriptions from the time I was little until I married and left home. I was the oldest child and when I was younger, she would get the Harlequin Presents and the like. I would openly take them off her shelves when I was eleven or so and she never said a word about it. A couple years later, she switched up to the Super Romance line and then another year or two later, the Temptations came along. WOW, those were an education.
And it only occurred to me when I had to have the sex talk with my boy-child that my mom did that so she could avoid the same with me. I would almost swear on it. Though now she kind of hints around that I should send her any erotica that I thought “appropriate” for her. What do you suppose THAT would be????? I’m still looking.
Dont know anything about the book, sorry.
My mother is not much of a reader but I come by my love of romance honestly even if I didnt know it till I was an adult. Both of my grandmothers lived romance novels. My paternal grandmother who was blind would get recorded books through a program with the state of Indiana and I was always recommending books to her that she loved. My maternal grandmother who passed away when I was to young to know this also loved romance novels as did her mother. There is a story in my family about my great grandmother being ill and having a bunch of romance novels on her bed that and the family’s minister stopping by to visit her and she threw them all under the bed before he could see what they were.
I also have made many friends by seeing some one reading a romance and asking them how the book is. Right now Im living in Cairo and have found several fellow romance lovers and we are passing books back and forth all the time since they are so expensive here.
My Mom isn’t a romance reader at all. However, in middle school I had a friend and her mom had boxes and boxes of Harlequin Presents. I think they must’ve been early to late 80’s versions. Back when Nora Roberts wrote for them.
We barely saw her mom, she’d be spending most of her time reading the Presents books. Eventually we snagged some and that’s history. I recall most of the books featuring Alpha Males who were extremely mean and sometimes slapped the heroine. (I recently picked up some old Penny Jordan reprints and they feature the same sorts of heros).
I took a long break in my 20’s from romance novels and am back reading voraciously. I’d love to share some of my favorites with someone so we can talk about them. But it seems I’m alone in my Regency, Harlequin Presents favored genres.
My mom started me on Romances very young. I was about 5th/6th grade also. For some reason I had Boxes full of these little magazines that had shortened versions of what I later found out was a Harlequin-esque monthly publisher.
My dad’s reaction was priceless though. The cover of one of the books was rather racy (for a 11 y/o). He took the book from me and with a finger pointed in my face told me how my mother would have a talk with me later. (ominous dad voice implied) Mom’s reaction was “yeah? so? I bought it for her”
My SIL and her mother share romance books, including the steamy stuff, and I think that’s so cool. My mom’s an avid reader but way too prudish to read romance – I remember her reading Judith Krantz (remember Scruples? Princess Daisy?) and being appalled at the sex. She insists that my sister and I read porn. If she’d only known what I was reading back in junior high, in the 70s – I read ALL the Old Skool stuff.
Mom wants to read my book, no matter how many times I’ve told her – no, you really don’t. Everyone knows that whoever tells Mom my pen name is gonna regret it. Cause holy shit, I can’t even begin to imagine her reaction.
Sorry can’t help with the book. I only just recently started reading contemporaries.
My grandmother and I shared romance novels.
She used to volunteer for her local library in Rutherford, NJ. She’d help with the book sales back in the 1970s. Her particular specialty was romance, which she called birdbrains. One of the romance sub-genres (and marked as such) was “Women in Nightgowns Running from Castles.” I think she gave me a leg up in the Smart Bitch realm.
A few years back, I visited her at her new place in New Hampshire. We made our regular pilgrimage to an almost all romance used book shop in Concord called ?Annie’s? It was near the capitol building. We hit the ground running and ended up looking at the same shelf. She asked if I’d read a particular novel. I had, and added that it was rather explicit. She said, oh, and put it back on the shelf. Next time I came around, the book wasn’t there and Grandma looked mighty smug.
That rocks.
Security word? defense81. Yeah, I think she was about 81 when the Annie’s incident happened. 🙂
Count me in as another voracious reader—while other kids were carrying around stuffed animals and “Linuses”, I always had at least one book with me, preferably all I could carry. My introduction to Romance came via my maternal grandmother, who only had an eighth grade education. The shelves of “my” room were stacked with all kinds of 1965ish through 1980’s Romance…Harlequins, bodice rippers, smutty bestsellers like Peyton Place, and the aforementioned Women in Nightgowns Running from Castles (the last being a favorite genre for me—but they’re hard to find anymore!) We never talked about the books though or passed them back and forth—they were more like a household supply, like food or toilet paper, if that makes any sense at all.
My mom started me off on romances when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was always a voracious reader, and by that age I had already read most of the kid books in our small town library. That young she started me on definitely G or PG books, like Phyllis Whitney, (I’m named after one of her heroines) and old ones like Elswyth Thane. (fantastic author, by the way) When I was in high school, Mom got me hooked on Regencies with the Zebra Regencies. I’ve moved on to a love of paranormal, and slightly, or not so slightly, smutty romances. Mom still keeps hers pretty PG. She learned her love of romances from my grandmother, who for as long as I can remember has kept hundreds of old Harlequins around the house. I even have books that I’ve kept just to pass on to my daughters someday.
My mom caught me reading her historicals when I was 10 or 11, and pointed me in the general direction of Victoria Holt as an OK alternative. I loved Holt, but kept sneaking mom’s more hard-core romance novels when I could. I remember loving Woodiwiss in particular. We still share and talk about books—I love it.