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!
This Help a Bitch Out request comes from Erin, who is seeking a historical she read that is…really memorable:
I’ve decided to bite the bullet and ask the Bitchery a HABO. It’s one of the first romance novels I ever read and I’d like to go back and take a peek at it, to see if it is in fact, as bat-shit insane as I remember.
It would be a single title, historical, probably published around the late eighties or early nineties and as I know you like these little details, Sarah – I believe there was a huge, pink, fluffy dress on the front cover.
The Plot Of Insanity: Our Heroine, whom I feel compelled to refer to as Miss Priss, is betrothed to a fat and aging but very wealthy and well connected man. I get the impression that her family is genteel, but poor. An absent, missing or dead father, a highly ambitious mother and a light-skirt sister (twin?). Much fuss is made over the wedding, and I distinctly remember the wedding night for the reason that her new husband was extremely familiar with the workings of a woman’s undergarments. The wedding night is predictably uncomfortable but Miss Priss falls into her place as the Perfect Wife shortly thereafter.
Then, a business dinner is held and we meet the Hero, a dashing naval captain. Some shenanigans later, Miss Priss catches her recent husband with her Strumpet Sister along with some undefined shady business. The upshot is that Miss Priss finds herself sedated, dressed up like a hussy and stashed in the cargo hold of Captain Hottie. A case of “two birds one stone,” I think.
After that it gets weird.
She is, of course, discovered and, of course, she and the Captain have a lovely time contributing to the motion of the ocean. Then- Pirates! The crew is all captured and since Miss Priss appears to be healthy and in possession of all her teeth, she is taken by the pirate captain. And is raped. As you do. Again, since she has had the magic hoo-hoo, she has somehow managed to wear out the pirate, slip away and head down to the brig where Captain Hottie and his crew are being held. Where she seduces BOTH of the guards AT THE SAME TIME. Memorable for not just the fact that she had sex with them two steps away from the brig door holding Captain Hottie, who is listening to everything, but because there was double penetration. Holy shitballs, Sarah! The first time I ever encountered anal! Loooooong before the erotica stuff made it into the mainstream, there’s this book I found at the OpShop.
Anyway, clever Miss Priss has smuggled a knife in a chicken carcass and kills both
the guards and rescues the whole damn crew and promptly becomes a badass. I think the ship explodes, and Miss No-Longer-Priss makes it to shore where she tries to make it back ‘home’, is found and raped (Again!) by two or three random guys (seriously?!).
At best guess she has sex with seven or eight people (at least!) I can’t be sure, because I can’t remember the end.
Sorry about the length of the letter, but I hope someone can recognise this Unbelievably Crazypants story.
Many thanks in advance.
I know someone will recognize this book immediately, which is good, because I can already hear RedHeadedGirls’ clamor of, I NEED TO READ THAT RIGHT NOW.
Oh, god, please tell me what this is because I live in VT where we have had snow for 6 mos and it is snowing now and will probably snow forever so I NEED TO READ THIS RIGHT NOW!!!
You had me at “chicken carcass”.
I swear, it’s not one of mine, but I’m dying to find out whose book it is.
Second favorite line: “After that it gets weird.”
It sounded (very) vaguely like Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss but there are not a lot of details that fit. Now I’m also curious.
Most definitely NOT Shana. Can’t imagine Woodiwiss even conceiving of DP. 😛
@Sarah Strohmeyer Vermont represent! It’s not actively snowing in my corner of the Green Mountains but I agree, must read now. We can have a secret club of woodchucks with batshit crazy bookshelves!
The plot description makes me think Bertrice Small because she seemed to follow a pattern of marrying off the heroine to either a loser or a One True Love, and then having her stranded/kidnapped/captured by pirates or white slavers (and ending up in a harem) where she ends up having lots of hot sex with either her Real One True Love or a second guy who she falls in love with because her first husband is dead or she thinks he is. The exotic bit with the pirates or harem was important because that’s where the heroine encounters some kind of non-missionary slightly kinky sex and liiiikes it. I know there was one that had anal and one that had bondage and I read those books to bits because where else could one find kinky sex stories in the 80s?
So the specific details of this book don’t sound familiar but I never read all of Small’s books; the general flavor sounds like her style.
Are you sure this is a romance?? At least the chicken carcass was used only for arms smuggling, right?
Bertrice Small was the first person to pop to mind…..Rapes. Forced marriage. Rapes. Pirates. Rapes. I’m there for you @Caro Line. This be brutal.
If not Small, then maybe Thea Devine. I never read her, but her name always comes up when someone is looking for books like Small’s…
1. I read throught the description thinking “HOLY SH**” Then saw the suggestion of Bertrice Small and thought “oh, of course.”
2. I am at work and have to get things done so I can go on vacation, and all I want to do is go to Goodreads and read the description of every Bertrice small and Thea Devine book until I find this one.
I’ve basically read everything Beatrice ever wrote…I don’t think this is one of hers. Closest match to my memory is Adora, but I don’t remember the sister (who was most definitely a ho) sleeping with the first husband. There was definitely some kind of pirate shenanigans that went down though.
Could this be a Rosemary Rogers? She also wrote some crazy stuff.
Rosemary Rogers would explain the pink puffy dress.
Dang it! Totally thought I had found it, “Rapture’s Beauty” by Wanda Owen, big pink dress and all, but reviewer on Amazon says description is false. :p
http://www.amazon.com/Raptures-Bounty-Wanda-Owen/dp/0821710028
I am totally keeping this open and refreshing periodically so that I can find out what on earth this book was – and whether I can get it in the UK. It sounds utterly, utterly, bonkers!
Was it set in England, or could it have possibly been set in America or British colonies?
It’s definitely not Thea Devine. For some reason I thought of Bertrice Small’s “Lost Love Found.” Is it possible that the OP is mashing up more than one book? Because this is SCREAMING Bertrice Small’s name.
I can definitively cross Shanna by woodiwiss off the list of possibilities. That is an all-time fave of mine, and I have read it many times (including within the last year). While there is plenty of crazysauce in Shanna with fake marriages, boorish false suitors, pirates, and kidnapping, at no point is she carnally beknownst to anyone but the hero. But if you can’t find your book, Shanna is always fun for some old skool lolz 🙂
It is not Adora. I cannot scrub that book from my memory, and this ain’t it.
Respectfully disagreeing with @Darlene Marshall: “Second favorite line: “After that it gets weird.””
That was The Best line!
@LML–It was my first choice until I saw the chicken carcass. Now I’m dying to work “You brought a chicken to a gun fight?” into my WIP.
“After that it gets weird.” So before it was normal?
And considering how most romance novels seem to be the instant “hero and heroine are the only ones for each other, at least this crazy book has a threesome/DP scene in it. I wonder hat sort of conversation the hero and heroine had after that:
HERO: So, how did you get past the two guards?
HEROINE: Well, they say you can open any lock if you only have the key. Well some doors have multiple key [pause] holes…
Ugh… Please let this masterpiece be found! I can’t wait to read it and I quit reading bat s$&@ crazy awhile ago. Somewhere between ” then it got weird” and chicken carcass this book hooked me. Throw in sex with guards and it’s like whoa I need some red wine and M&ms STAT! Thank you I needed this 🙂
IF it hasn’t been written, it needs to be.
Could this be Shirlee Busby’s Lady Vixen?
A previous HaBO with a similar plot turned out to be “Aurielle`by Annabel Irwin. According to the back Aurielle is a tavern wench with dreams of wealth and upward mobility (because that happened often in the early 19th century). The cover is a glorious affair of purple bodices, blue eyeshadow, pouty red lips and a really hairy hero with gold chains!” Can’t paste the link to cite, sorry!
I remember the name Shirlee Busbee but never read any of her books, that I can recall, anyway. So I went off down the Amazon rabbit hole looking up book descriptions and OMG the glorious 80s covers on some of the older ones!!
It’s not Lady Vixen. Even though I didn’t like it (among other things I don’t like bones-breaking hero when the bones are the heroine’s), it doesn’t match this HaBO.
While a Shirley Busbee book would have plenty of rape, I don’t recall ever reading about the backdoor boogie in any of her Old Skool stories.
Guys, you are all so very awesome! I’ve checked out a few of the titles suggested and the closest is the Shirlee Busbee ‘Lady Vixen’. Maybe? I’ll have to have a look at it to find out if it is indeed, this exceptionally looney book.
You guys TOTALLY ROCK.
I’m kind of late to the party, but I was going to suggest “A Pirate’s Love” by Johanna Lindsey. There’s arranged marriages, pirates, abductions, and rapes. Plus the very old cover had a girl in a red puffy dress. Here’s a goodreads review- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/724994.A_Pirate_s_Love
@Kara: Its definitely not “A Pirate’s Love.” JL heroines never sleep with, or are raped by*, anyone but the hero.
*APL is really bad for this.
Not ringing any bells with me, but my vote would be for Rosemary Rogers. Also has elements of old Catherine Coulter, I think.
Gah! Someone please ID this book!
There was an author who included a lot of these eighties crazy-sauce elements in her books. Can’t remember the author’s name, but one series was about a Spanish girl (Regin?) who was sent to the tropics to marry a Dutch guy, was attacked and raped en route by the villain (although hubby proves to be a real asshat in this respect later on), and secretly adopts the persona of La Sirena the pirate queen to get her vengeance. A lot of the vengeance-seeking was complicated by hubby, who was also sailing around. To the best of my recollection, it pushed enough boundaries for that time that it might be by the same author as your book. Good luck.
Description reminds me of author Susan Johnson. http://www.susanjohnsonauthor.com/booklist.html
Nicole, the author you are thinking of is Fern Michaels. Her early romances could easily be this book, though I can’t place this specific HaBO.
Fern Michaels now writes dull formulaic wish-fulfillment books, but her early stuff was crazy in an awesome way.
Frankly, if this book doesn’t exist, can someone make it happen?
I am still checking in here to see if this was ID’ed! I have got to know.
Nicole, the book you were thinking of is apparently Captive Passions by Fern Michaels. A paragraph into this review and it’s already crazysauce. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/105294469?book_show_action=true&page=1 It doesn’t look like there are any other pirate books (outside of the Captive series) by her, though, so she wouldn’t be the author of this.