Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

HaBO: Prudence and the Mustard

Noelle writes:

For years I’ve been trying to find a book I owned probably 15 years
ago, and I hope someone can put me out of my misery. I’m starting to think
this book never existed.

The book could have been a Harlequin publication, possibly published in the
late eighties/early nineties. I think it was pretty short and might have
been red, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. (Of course I can’t recall
anything about the title, so I’ve come to refer to it as The Mustard Book.)
(Explanation to follow.)

I remember the heroine being described as cautious and a bit of a prude, so
because I don’t remember any of the names in this book, I’m going to refer
to her as Prudence.

Now, Prudence has a young daughter, probably 8 or 9 years old, and has just
divorced her husband. The marriage was an unhappy one for Prudence because
her ex was a total d-bag. I don’t believe he hit her, but he certainly
treated her poorly. After the divorce, she and her daughter moved into a
place by themselves and I… read more »

HaBO: The First Romance She Ever Read

You know my theory - you never forget the first romance you ever read. Paige is looking for hers:

So I’ve recently become nostalgic for the first romance I ever read, but
unfortunately, when my mom found it hidden under my bed many years ago, she
confiscated it and got rid of is, so I was hoping you romance aficionados
would help me out and be able to pull a title from somewhere so I could find
it and read it again.

Here’s what I remember:

It was a Harlequin published sometime between 2000-2003; and I’m pretty
sure it was a Blaze imprint or something of that ilk.

The plot is pretty fuzzy:
It took place in a beach town, and heroine goes there to solve the mystery
of a murder or kidnapping of a sister, mother, brother, uncle?
It possibly took place in the aftermath of the crime
Heroine used to go there as a girl and she might have had some bad memories
of the town.

Hero is a policeman or security officer or some sort of investigator who is
also connected to the crime.

He… read more »

HaBO: Crushing Woes and Harlequin Presents-Ish Plots

Kia writes:

I read a contemporary romance at the end of my very long first pregnancy
over 6 years ago, though I’m not sure when the book was actually published.

The protagonist was a photographer, who had a troubled first marriage with
an abusive husband. Financially she is struggling because she walked away
from the relationship without a penny, with only her quiet beauty and
dignity intact. Luckily she’s housesitting for a friend with a fabulous
place by the sea. Her neighbor is a handsome, wealthy playboy. He’s
emotionally unavailable because of some manipulative ex, who has tried to
snare him and his seed.

Our heroine has fragile health and believes herself infertile. After
breaking what she believes to be the terrific news of her miraculous
conception, she is given a soul crushing speech in which the love of her
life states he will pay for his issue but wants nothing to do with either of
them.

She refuses the money, I want to say she rips up an obscenely large check
in front of their adjoining ocean front properties, the tempestuous sea
swirling in the back… read more »

Help a Dude Out: Looking for a Holiday Gift

From a nice gentleman named Phillip:

Basically, I’m a guy that likes a girl, we’ve been dating for a month or
two, and I happened across the story of how she became known as Germaine.

Turns out, her mother was reading a romance novel in the hospital when she
was born and decided to name her after a character. For Christmas this year,
I want to find this book for her! However, no one knows the name of this
book, not even her mother! The only facts that I know are these:

- The main character’s name is Germaine,
- The main character is a nun who escapes or runs away from a convent for love.
- Printed before 1987

Unfortunately this is all I have to go by right now…

Anyone remember this book? It’s shopping time (what an awesome gift).

HaBO: My Hand! My Hand!

Bitchery reader JC writes:

I want to go back to the first
romance I remember enticing me.

I cannot remember the colour of the book, the names of the characters, or
even the year it was set in, though it was probably written in the mid 90s.
It was an historical, probably Regency. The only sure thing I can remember
was the scene that sold book for me: the Hero settling in for a quiet drink
in his study, self assured in his (mis-)assumptions of the Heroine, when a
close friend/father figure/trusted servant unknowingly blabs the innocent
truth about said Heroine’s past, and the Hero shatters the glass in his
hand. He has a great self-flagellating moment while he realizes what a dick
he has been, while his friend who just delivered the plot turn says
something equivalent to…Dude, your hand! And the book has a wonderful
description blood and glass everywhere with the Hero replying something
along the lines of “My hand, who cares about my hand! I was a Dipshit.”

If any of your readers can remember a book based on this scene I would… read more »

HaBO: Amazon Headhunters

No, they’re not looking to hire you away for a job at Amazon.com - they’re looking for your head. Or the heroine’s head. Adrienne read a romance from the YA section and can’t remember the title - but wow, does it have some crazy plot:

I am looking for the name of a romance novel I read when i was in high
school. It was in the young adult section of our library, and so its pretty
tame. An american girl goes to the amazon in brazil to meet her father. Her
father is the CEO of some company doing foresting or something in the
amazon, but he’s an honest person although other people in the company are
not, and so they’re trying to get rid of him. She flies into the jungle
supposedly to meet him, and then is abandoned there by the same group that
has kidnapped her father.

A scientist/guide/environmentalist/hunk finds her
and she tags along with him, but he hates her because of the
terrible/illegal things her fathers company are doing (which kidnapped
father doesnt’ know about). At one point, a boa constrictor nearly killsread more »

HaBO: A Lost Bargain

Erin asks:

I was wondering if you and the Bitchery could help me remember a book I read, probably the mid-to-late 90s. I remember I bought it in one of those cheap-o romance novel sets you could get at Waldenbooks. Two or three bound together with cellophane for about $3. Anyway, this one in particular was so cool, but I got rid of it because my mother frowned upon romances. I remember it had a silvery glittery cover, with just the title—no people on the front. It was about a woman who for some reason was seeing a therapist, and she agreed to be hypnotized. She ended up going back to her past life while under hypnosis (I want to say her past self was living in the 1800s, maybe early 1900s), and was involved with a cult of some sort that worshipped some ancient Egyptian god. It ended up that the story went back and forth between her present and past self, and the villain (the head of the cult, I think) was able to follow her to the present. So she was in danger in both lives. The hero was there to help her fight the cult,… read more »

haBO: Fumes!

Ming Qi writes:

It’s always amazing how people on this blog are able to identify obscure
books on the HaBO posts, and I was wondering if you can help me figure out
the title of a book I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know much about it.
It is a contemporary. I read it in 2005 so it’s published before then. I
don’t remember the cover well and even if I did, it might not help because
I’m pretty sure it was a large-print version of the book. I think the hero
and heroine are close friends/neighbors. The two things I remember the most
about from the book are:

1. the hero learns that people can become attracted to each other when they
are exercising together, so he exercises with the heroine to get her to be
attracted to him.

2. he also learns that attraction can happen when two people mirror each
other’s moves. He tries to mirror the heroine’s breathing while she was
painting her nails, and I think he almost passed out because he was
breathing in nail polish fumes so deeply.

I’m not sure… read more »

HaBO: Time Travel with Horses

Trudy writes:

There was a book that came out, maybe in the 80s or early 90s - the basic
plot is:
It’s a time travel. An earl, during Regency era, is attacked by someone
and travels thru time to the present. He meets up with a gal from Virginia
(I think) and she tries to help him solve what happened to him. They do all
this research and find out he was murdered (unsolved) and was the end of his
direct line to the earldom. At first he’s anxious to get back but the two
fall in love. She arranges for him to get identification, his only skill is
training horses so they buy a horse farm so he has something to do.

They go
to England and tour his ancestral home. There’s a desk with papers hidden
in a secret drawer. He discovers his cousin murdered him because he was
financially desperate. Anyway, they go back to America and have a baby or
she’s pregnant, when he is whisked off to some other time. The author also
wrote a sequel to the story of… read more »

HaBO: Not So Much Fecundity Please

One of the aspects of romance that some folks LOVE and some folks loathe is the emphasis on children upon children and pregnancy as part and parcel to the happy ever after. For some people, a romance novel isn’t complete without a baby, either in the plot, or in the future, or a secret in the plot to be revealed in the future. For others, babies in romance are distinctly not-romantic (especially when one is tired to the point of blindness from taking care of one at all hours of the night) or, in the case of those going through infertility treatments or facing the inability to conceive, terribly painful.

Reader C. has asked for romance recommendations that aren’t about babies, and may even involve infertility as part of the plot- preferably a known condition that isn’t magically healed with frequent and dedicated applications of the spooge of healing from the Wang of Mighty Lovin™.

I’m hoping for some book recommendations, but I am also fairly sure it’s
a lost cause. Also, I don’t want to start a shit storm.

What I would really like to find are some romances (preferably historical,
but contemporary, sci-fi/fantasy, etc.… read more »

HaBO: Remembering a Book with Fondness

Annie writes:

I’m looking for a really special book. When I was a freshman in high
school, our school library was full of old books from the sixties and
seventies that no one had read or even leafed through since 1987. When I
found this book, I spent 10 minutes out of my lunch period for weeks reading
it, not checking it out, just a few pages then putting it back. It was about
a British or American daughter of a painting restorer who, after her father
died, had to travel to France to fulfill her father’s last contract. Her
employer was, I think, an extremely handsome, wealthy widower with a young
daughter who didn’t really want this presumptuous miss to handle his
damaged works of art. He relented after a while, of course. And then fell in
love with her (duh). The plot turned to some missing family jewels, and I
think the widowers’ brother had something to do with their disappearance.
It was a romantic, dreamy book that I remember with a lot of fondness.
Please help me find it!

This was how I… read more »

HaBO: Virgins are So High Maintenance

Bitchery reader Janie writes:

I read a book in 2000 I believe and I’ve been trying to find it since. I
think it was written in the 90s, but here’s a detailed summery of it. I
hope someone can help! I’ve been searching for it for close to 10 years!

I don’t know if I’m mixing my books but this girl who lived with her aunt
or uncle[George?] and is given to the king to marry his son. She refuses so
the king ties up her and drags her by the neck to marry her to his son by
proxy because his son is still away in battle. When he comes back he is told
he is married. He’s excited to goes to meet his new wife. He sees her tied
up and the servants are hitting her. He was outraged and demanded an
explanation. They showed him the scratches and bite marks she inflicted on
them while they were getting her “ready” for him. He unties her and see
the rope burns on her neck and is even madder at his father. He cut his arm
or palm… read more »

HaBo: Stuttering Loveswept

Becky writes:

I know it was a Loveswept romance and the heroine had a stutter and was shy. The hero had a son and they were neighbors. I read this when I was just a pre-teen (stolen from my mom’s collection) and really liked it. It was one of the first romances I ever read. Can you please identify or providme with some resources that might be able to help’?

I have a theory that everyone can remember the first romance they ever read. Do you remember yours? And do you remember this one?

HaBO: Younger Man, Lost Dog

Bitchery Reader KsMom writes:

Trying to find the name or author of a Harlequin American (back when they
first came out and had the silver border) about a poor, broke caterer with
two kids (boy and girl, I think), and she falls for a younger guy (in
college, I think) who worked at a grocery store she shopped at.

The heroine had a dog that got sick or disappeared at the end, and the hero
rescued it. The heroine’s married sister was a fashionista type who didn’t
want kids because they were messy. But in the end, the sister did decide
that maybe kids weren’t so bad. The sister’s husband was British, maybe?

Can’t remember any of the character names or who wrote it, but it was one
of my keeper books way back when. I loaned it to my mom, who packed it up
and gave it away to Goodwill. Needless to say, I have NOT loaned out any
more keepers since, as, if you can’t trust your MOM, who CAN you trust?

Much obliged if anybody can help me find this book, because I would SO buy
it.

… read more »

HaBO: Reminiscing Over Romance

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… read more »