Help A Bitch Out - SOLVED!

HaBO: Witchcraft, Paraffin, and Time Travel

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

Sarina is looking for two books she read a long time ago: 

The first one was a Mills & Boon or harlequin or something (the cover had
been torn off) and in it the hero and the heroine are at a costume party at
a historic house when they get they get transported back in time via a
painting. He bets his watch at a poker game and gets them some money, then
they pretend to be a married couple. They can't leave until they solve the
mystery of who murdered someone in the house they got transported back in
time. I read it in highschool, so it would have been published before 1998.
The one thing that always stuck in my head is that they have sex in a
rocking chair.

 

The other one I'm much fuzzier on, it was one of the first I would have
read, and it was tattered when I read it, so published pre 1997 I think. It
was set either in Salem or somewhere salem-ish, and all I really remember is
that the heroine gets tried for witchcraft (because of her knowledge of
herbs? or maybe someone was trying to get back at her?) and the hero rescues
her from jail. He has an elderly mother with arthritis in her hands, and the
heroine rubs paraffin or beeswax on them to make them better.

Was it me, or were there a few historicals set in Salem that came out within a few years of each other? Or maybe I'm thinking of the Sunfire book set in Salem, which I read about sixty times. (Gosh, I loved those books.) Does anyone recall these books for Sarina? (Also, sex in a rocking chair? I'd remember that part, too!) (Also: Thanks to BigStock for the new HaBO image!)

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  1. LauraN says:

    Oh, those Sunfires!  How I adored them.  I got a couple for free as prizes at my library’s summer reading program for kids, and I read them over and over, especially the one set during the Revolution.  The heroine runs her uncle’s pharmacy and finds herself caught up in spying against the British.  Of course, her rebel contact is hawt.  But then, there’s her pro-British love interest.  (What, a Sunfire where she’s torn between two beaux?  Surely not!)  The heroine had to make an intrepid journey into the swamp to warn Francis Marion (and her lovah) that the British were about to do . . . something.  I wonder if I still have it somewhere.  I think there are a few boxes of books still in my parent’s attic.

  2. Tina Chaney says:

    I read a romance where the couple had sex in an armless rocking chair.  It was a western, though.  I’m not sure, but I think that the hero had been nearly killed by the villain’s henchmen and the heroine found him and was nursing him back to health.  I know that they were all hotty-pants for each other but they couldn’t do anything about it because of his broken ribs so one of them (I can’t remember which) came up with the idea to use the rocking chair so that he wouldn’t have to move too much

    (Okay, so that doesn’t have anything to do with this HABO but I wanted to point out that sex-in-a-rocking-chair scenes stick with a person.)

  3. Marina says:

    I don’t remember the title, I think I have read the first one. I remember the heroine had a heart condition and they were in a hurry to return to their own time, because she only had enough medication for less than a month. There was also a subplot; the hero’s brother (much younger and marrried) worked with the heroine and had a crush on her. The hero had gotten the impression that the heroine was a vamp out to seduce his innocent little brother and ruin his marriage and had originally approached her to confront her about it.

  4. Jenyfer says:

    I think the second one is Bewitching Kisses by Rainy Kirkland – I think it was originally published in the early 90s but I just read it on my Kindle last week 🙂

  5. Jenyfer says:

    PS – I am so totally excited that I FINALLY KNOW A HABO! 🙂

  6. cate says:

    Is the second one Bewitching Kisses by Rainy Kirkland….it’s a Zebra book, and the heroine is hounded by her brother because of her abilities( and the fact she’s inherited oodles over him !) & her neighbours in Salem think she’s a witch

  7. rebecca says:

    The first one sounds very similar to a wife in time by cathie linz. But, it says it was published in 2002.

  8. TMS says:

    Oh, how I loved those Sunfire’s too!!

  9. CarrieS says:

    The second book sounds like Witch of Blackbird Pond.  ONe of my fav.  I don’t remeber the wax, though.

  10. Cdb_393 says:

    A Wife in Time by Cathie Linz does sound like the first one and according to goodreads it was first published in 1995 and then reissued in 2002.

  11. Crankybeach says:

    Now that you mention it, I have a vague recollection of a time travel story that might have involved sex in a rocking chair. I think there was also a concern for how many condoms he “just happened” to have in his pocket when they went back in time (not nearly enough, probably) and they might have tried to figure out a way to reuse them…. Beyond that, though, not a clue, sorry.

  12. cleo says:

    Amen. I vividly remember reading about sex in a rocking chair when I was an impressionable youth.  It was one of those over the top 80s sagas – the scene I remember opened with the couple sitting in the chair – she was “fully penetrated” and he was stroking her back gently, and then he started more “strategic stroking.”  I swear – I remember the exact wording some 25 years later, probably because it didn’t make sense to me at the time. 

  13. Katherinelynn_04 says:

    The plot of Blackbird pond is very different. Kit is from Barbados, where she lived in a plantation house with her grandfather (?) until he dies and she has to move to puritanical New England to live with her aunt and uncle. She is already unde suspicion because she doesn’t attend church services, has flaming red hair, dresses in high fashion, and ends up helping the old woman who lives in blackbird pond. She doesn’t have a brother and the love interest is a sailor if I recall correctly, and I think his name was Nat or Nate. But it’s also VERY MUCH a YA book (as it is a newbury award winner), so no sexytimes to be had.

  14. CarrieS says:

    I’m familiar with the plot of Blackbird – as I said, it’s a fav.  Her synopsis of the Samen book doesn’t refer to sexy times, and it doesn’t specify if the heroine was born in Salem.  It does refer to the boyfriend breaking her out of jail (which happens in Blackbird).  The book isn’t set in Salem but is, as Sarina says, “salem-ish”.  The hero has an elderly female friend with herbcraft and arthritis.  It’s a long shot but, given the sketchyness of Sarina’s description, could over the passage of time been mixed up with a more traditional romance – the romance element is a central part of the book.

  15. Sarina says:

    Yay, I think people have found both the books I was looking for, thanks everyone!

    Crankybeach – I think they were worried about running out of condoms, and also someone finding them, so they burn them in the grate.

    I must have read that one a lot, because I remember I lot of the details from it (I’d forgotten about the brother though!)

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