Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

HaBO: Y2K Romance

We’re in the middle of the post-apocalyptic romance boom, but what about all the Y2K romances that started it all, huh?! HUH?! What about them?!

Hannah’s looking for one:

I don’t know the name of the book or the author of the book, or the name of the heroine. In fact, I haven’t read the book. It was talked about in one of my classes a couple of years ago and intrigued me and I forgot to write it down, of course. I do know that the Hero’s name is Damion. (Possibly spelled differently) The book was probably published in 1999. How do I know this? Because it’s Y2K romance. I know that Damion has a chiseled chest, because it says so on the back of the book. The heroine is a computer program rewriting code and somehow she writes time-traveling code and ends up back in time. I believe she literally lands on Damion’s chiseled chest. And that’s really all I know. The class was on Millenarianism and my teacher says (knowing this teacher I doubt that) he stopped reading when he realized that she was going to stay in the past with Damion. The other two random things… read more »

HaBO: Is this a Lindsay, from Lindsay?

Lindsay writes:

It was a historical single title that I read around 2003/04. The heroine is a Saxon lady, and the hero is a Norman knight who has been given the land that used to belong to her family. She’s hiding out at a nunnery, and he seeks her out to offer her marriage - I think because he thinks it’s the decent thing to do, and also because he doesn’t speak the language and needs someone who can actually communicate with all the people he is now in charge of. They get married and have a few weeks or months of hot sexxoring, until she gets knocked up, and he gets called away to serve his king. They’re both secretly in love with each other by this point. All of this is backstory that is explored later in the book.

When the book actually starts, the hero is still off with his king, and the baby has been born. The heroine’s brother comes to visit a lot, to tell his sister how much he hates the Normans and how she should too. Then the hero comes home, but he brings some pregnant chick with him (I think he tries… read more »

HaBO: On the Porch, Going Undercover

Harriett has come up empty in her attempts at Google-Fu, so she’s pleading for the help of the Bitchery:

I have a HaBO request, and I’m hoping you’ll help me find a romance novel that I checked out from a library while on summer vacation about 15 years ago and it’s stuck with me ever since:

Like I said, I first read it in the mid-1990s, and the book was either a Silhouette novel or Harlequin Super-Romance. I think the cover had a painting of a man and a woman sitting on porch steps, with the woman leaning back in his arms. Here’s the plot as I remember it:

It opens with the heroine who lives in Appalachia and works as a nurse/midwife. She used to work in the big city, but moved to the Appalachian mountains for the quiet and to work with a community in need. Then one day, a stranger suddenly knocks on her front door and asks her if she knows where her brother is. She says that the last time she heard from her brother, he was going on a research trip in South America.

It turns out that the stranger is government agent from… read more »

HaBO: Welcome Back, Hotter

Amanda has a two-part query:

I need help finding a book! I checked it out of the library a few years ago and now I’m dying to read it again but I can’t remember much about it.

It’s one of those books where the heroine was weird/ugly in high school, left town, got pretty and is now coming back. I think for her younger sister’s wedding? And she bakes cakes for a living, so the plan is she will bake everything for the upcoming wedding. Lucky her.

The hero is a guy who was Mr. hot-shot in high school (of course) and never left town. The heroine had a huge crush on his in high school and the scene I remember most vividly is the flashback of when, in high school, she went so far as to lie down in front of his car in protest of him dating some other girl.

Beyond this I can’t remember much. The sister’s wedding breaks off and the hero and heroine get their HEA. I think this books was published by zebra sometime in the 90s?

P.S. I love these novels where the girl comes back to her hometown completely transformed and… read more »

HaBO: Carrots!

Hannah writes:

I’m looking for a book that I believe might have a rather generic title, like “Rogue” or “Rake” or something broad like that. The hero and the heroine are childhood pals, even though he’s 10 years older than her. She has (you guessed it) red hair so he cleverly nicknames her carrot then gives her golden carrot charm for her charm bracelet. Then, when he’s 18 and she’s 8 or something like that, she gets mad at him for some reason, throws the carrot charm at him and he keeps it on a gold chain around his neck for the rest of his life.

I believe the heroine also has purple eyes and is French. At one point, she and her grandmother let seven French aristocrats fleeing the Revolution stay in their home, and they’re called the “Seven Deadly Cyns” for their wicked and lascivious behaviour. The cover was quite camp, so I hope someone can tell me the title!

I was pretty sure I’d be able to find this one using the power of Google, but alas, not. My GoogleFu came up with poo-diddly. But is it me, or does this sound like a pastiche of two… read more »

HaBO: This was no Tea-Sippin Miss

Mia writes:

A while back you said you never forget your 1st romance novel. I’m embarassed to admit that I have forgotten, but I do know that it probably was one of those novels of the month found in Good Housekeeping,my mom loved ‘em. I’ve been thinking of those stories I loved to read, and one just sticks out, and I’d like to try to find it.

I don’t have much information except for 1 scene that is burned into my memory. It’s a historical and the heroine’s name is Amy. She married an older guy, and I got the impression that he was more into her than she was into him. Anyway, she’s just had her 3rd or 4th kid and the husband starts sleeping in the guest room w/no explanation. She thinks he’s having an affair, so one night she tells him she’s going to her mom’s house, but of course she comes back for some reason or another.

She goes into their bedroom and finds her nemisis naked w/a nightgown in her hand. Amy is furious and grabs the tramp’s suitcase and nightgown, flings open the balcony doors and throws the clothes onto the tree… read more »

HaBO: Air Force MP Needs Romance to Read

This request will make someone swoon. I already did, I freely admit it. Stephanie writes:

Help!  I have a friend who is an Air Force MP.  Big burly Alpha guy.  (pause for visual image to form) 

Anyway he is currently deployed overseas and asked me to send him some books.  I thought I was going to have to buy out the Tom Clancy section at the bookstore but then he admitted to me that he used to enjoy Jackie Collins’ books but now needs something else (along the same lines) to read.  He’s an undercover romance reader!  (I found him, get your paws off!)

I was never a huge fan of Ms. Collins’ so I need your and/or the bitchery’s help.  For someone who liked that style what would you recommend in current authors?

How awesome is that? I love requests like this. I asked for clarification as to what it was that he liked about the Jackie Collins books- the Hollywood, the smarm, the sex or the intricate wtf plot? Stephanie surmises that “it was the sex (#1) the intricate wtf plot (#2) and then the smarm.  Hollywood was probably incidental.”

I’d suggest Maggie Marr’s Hollywood Girl’s… read more »

HaBO: Wild West Pornstache?!

Leslie writes:

I just read my first Lorelei James western erotic romance and really enjoyed it - but it gave me a brain bug for an old, old, old-skool romance I think I read in high school in the 1980s (because I remember getting in trouble for having it after a piece on 20/20 or somesuch program about how racy romances were getting).

I keep thinking it is a Diana Palmer, but I have been on her site and cannot figure out what it might be. It is not a series title, but may be from one of those lusty 1980’s imprints. I am pretty sure the cover is a step-back with a really pink sunset.

Okay - it involves big-game hunting in Montana or Wyoming, a red-headed heroine (or I may be confusing that with another one from about the same time), and an uber-alpha hero with a Marlboro-man-style pornstache (that I believe he uses on the heroine’s nipples). I am pretty sure the heroine’s daddy is a major tool and that there is a Big Misunderstanding. There may be hot sex on a fur rug and in a sleeping bag (maybe with daddy in the next tent?), as… read more »

HaBO: She Read it in Swedish

Lisa writes:

I’ve been looking for this book on and off for the past years - the problem is compounded by the fact that I first (and second, and third, and fourth…) read it in its translated to Swedish Harlequin incarnation, so have no idea what it might have been called in the English original.

At the beginning, the woman is working as some kind of showgirl in Paris, when she meets this guy who’s been watching the show. Turns out he’s her step-brother, and he’s come to find her cause her mother, who by all accounts was a selfish bitch (and not in a good way), managed to persuade his father before her death to bequeath half of the inheritance to the daughter, to spite the son.

So naturally the step-brother thinks she’s a golddigging bitch like her mother, but despite this takes her to the chateau she now owns half of (or something like that). I remember that they together discover some hitherto unknown cave paintings on the estate, and that she manages to get lost in there, but he finds her and declares his everlasting love.

Would you be able to help me find? I don’t know… read more »

HaBO: Greek Secret Babies!

Anna writes:

The book is a romance novel, I think from the 90s, and it’s about a Greek woman who’s father has recently died. She marries a wealthy Greek man that she does not know very well(I think that the fathers arranged this to end some kind of family feud?).I think that the man’s name is Nic or Nico. They go on a cruise for the honeymoon and fall hesitantly in love.

But it turns out that the man’s cousin(Katrina) is jealous of the match and tries to break it up by making it look like the woman has cheated which makes the husband very upset and jealous. When his wife ends up pregnant he tells her that he knows it isn’t his but that he’ll accept it in public. Lots of heartbreak ensues on both sides until the truth is discovered. I think that in the end of the book the now happy couple has had their baby and they name her sofia. At least that’s the way I remember it. I read this one a quite some time ago and I could just be mixing up my books.

Nico’s ex is on their honeymoon? Oy. This… read more »

HaBO: Memorable Pot Roast is Memorable

From Faye, you have to read this one to believe it:

Can you help a bitch out? I’m trying to track down a book with a contender for possibly the best internal dialogue of any hero I’ve read:

“Sure, he loved pot roast, but he was careening completely out of control here.”

Even my husband remembers this line.

I believe it was published with another short book (maybe by HQN? I think?). I’m pretty sure the hero is dating his secretary, and the above brilliance occurs when he goes to her house for dinner (pot roast, of course) and realizes he’s in love.

I think the other story in the book also featured a similar very wealthy hero falls in love with working class gal plot, but I’m not sure of that either.

Really, all I remember is the pot roast. The rest of the story was distinctly lackluster. I’m sure if anyone else has read this book, they’ll remember the pot roast too.

The pot roast! Remember the pot roast! Please - this is cracking me up so I hope SOMEONE remembers it!

HaBO: MIMES!

Leah writes:

I’ve waited a long time to send this one, because I have so few details, but maybe you or the bitchery can help.  Ok, I read this book around 1993, and it may have been published much earlier than that, because that was in the days of sneaking my best friend’s mom’s romance novels.  Anyway…

It is set in Italy, and the heroine is a mime.  Yes, a mime.  Who knew those annoying people could be so sexy. The hero is rich, and I remember a scene where she is demonstrating how difficult it is to be a mime by showing how her hands are so flexible that she does exercises where she sets her hand flat on a table, and then only lifts the palm (no fingers lift).  Try it- I have for years and it is impossible.  Anyway, I think it was a mystery, definitely a contemporary, and that is all I can remember. It was one of my first and favorite novels, and I think it might have been one of those ones where there are three stories by different authors in one book, which makes it even harder to find.  Any help would be… read more »

HabO: Western with three weddings!

Lura writes:

Looking for a historical romance I’d read a few years ago (mid-late 1990’s or early 2K’s) that *may* have “Cowboy” in the title. I had run across a large-print edition, if that matters. But onto the actual plot. The male protagonist is tangled up in dealings that may be somewhat shady (he might be a spy?) and then runs into the heroine. To continue his charade, he “marries” her in a ceremony that he doesn’t intend to be “real.” Well, subsequently, of course the two fall in love and while they’re hiding out with a wagon train the traveling minister “marries” them again (yet again only supposed to be half-real) and *finally,* when the young woman gets back to her hometown and realizes she’s *really* in love with the hero, they “marry” for real (although considering the bride’s “delicate condition” at the time I get the feeling her family may have desired she do so, anyway… ;) ) There are three wedding ceremonies in total. I forgot the first one, but the second is the one I mention above performed by the wagon train’s minister. The book ends with the spotlight on the heroine getting ready for the… read more »

HaBO: Romance Writer Heroine

Suzanne writes:

I was hoping that you could put the call out to the other readers, HaBO post because I’m having absolutely ZERO luck in locating a particular novel. Which shames me because my mad googling skills have earned me a reputation among my friends for finding obscure books from their past with only minimal information.

Here is what I can remember of the book, it is a contemporary romance possibly set in San Fransisco (I seem to remember them driving back and forth across the bay). The herione is a romance writer, there is a scene where she talks about how she came to write romance in which she describes reading a truly awful romance book and flings it across the room declaring that she could do better.

As for the hero, he is her new neighbor (at least I think he is.) Yeah, crap. That is all I can remember.

I know that is scant information on which to work, but I’m hopeful that SBTB will know what the bloody book I’m talking about is.

Is it me, or are there a number of romances featuring heroines who write romances? Anyone remember this one? And is anyone else… read more »

HaBO: She Does the Apologizing

Lisa writes:

I have beaten every bush in the internet trying to find this book. I believe it was a Silhouette Desire (but I could be wrong). She was a writer for a newspaper in San Francisco who goes regularly to a restaurant in Sausalito and sees this hunky guy whom she talks about (and calls “Sam” because she doesn’t know his real name) in her weekly column. He finds her and they have this tryst and she blows it by dumping him because she’s fallen in love with him but apologizes in her column and asks him to meet her at the restaurant if he still wants to make things work. Tons of people show up-and of course he does too. I love the fact that it’s the WOMAN who does the apologizing for once. Can anyone help? Please?

I was thinking this would be an easy Google but it so wasn’t. Anyone remember this one? I think I want to read it!