Bitchin' Blog Posts
HaBO: Picnic for Charity
by SB Sarah | by SB Sarah | May 06, 2008 | Tuesday at 5:14 pm | 89 CommentsKim writes:
I’m looking for a book title and author. The book is set back in the 1700-1800’s in England or nearby and it’s about a girl not exactly accepted by the “ton” who is invited on a picnic auction (for charity). She hesitantly brings her basket to be auctioned off and as the auction takes place she watches the pretty ribbons blowing in the wind on the basket belonging to the “catch of the season” which is getting lots of bids… this girl’s (main character) basket was purposely getting no bids and one person(who was paid to) bid a humiliating low bid and he was the only taker.
She was so embarrassed…well the handsome man all the girls had eyes for caught on and bid an outrageous amount and had the picnic with her. They already knew each other and weren’t on good terms. I really want to know the author and title…Can anyone help me?
Charity picnic auction? Is that historically possible? And does anyone recognize that book?
Filed: Help a Bitch Out
Sarah Frantz said on 05.06.08 at 05:32 PM • [link]
Crap, I’ve read that book, I know I have, but I don’t remember what it is. Which is so not helpful, I know!
Stubby said on 05.06.08 at 05:34 PM • [link]
Bet not, and it’s one of the reasons I can’t (or rarely can) read historicals; I’m a history major, I know history, and the past was not that fun. It was dirty and smelly and disease-ridden; womens’ lives were tightly controlled and the things that we take for granted today - about life, about people, about our places in the world and our relations with others - do not apply.
So if you want to write a romance that women want to read, you have to include anachronisms like this - you just have to, because an historically realistic romance would be just icky.
And I say this even though my all time favorite romance - and I’ve read many - is The Windflower, by Laura London (IIRC, that’s a pen name of a husband and wife writing team) - wherein a handsome Duke, who happens to have a half-brother who is a famous pirate, and who happens to dabble part time in piracy himself, kidnaps an innocent young American girl during the War of 1812 and they proceed to raise hell on the Atlantic crossing back to England - stopping for a break at the Carribbean retreat of the pirate captain - before returning to England where he marries her and she becomes a Duchess. And she becomes best friends with all the pirates in the crew. So I don’t disapprove of anachronisms, I just recognize them when I see them.
I’m starting to write again myself, and I’ve always wanted to do a western romance, but I can’t do a real western because - ick. Totally non-romantic.
lijakaca said on 05.06.08 at 05:40 PM • [link]
I don’t know if this is right, but for some reason an Easter anthology is coming to mind - something with purple on the cover. Drat, I wish I was at my parent’s house, because I know exactly where it’s sitting!
Kimberly Anne said on 05.06.08 at 05:42 PM • [link]
Okay, am I the only one who read this HaBO and started singing, “Oooooooooklahoma!”?
Anyone?
LesleyW said on 05.06.08 at 05:49 PM • [link]
Hmmm, the only book I’ve read with a charity picnic auction is the 4th of Forever by Mary McBride I think. But it’s definitely not that, ‘cause FOF is set in America.
Good book though IIRC, the heroine fills her basket with apples which I think she scrumped.
Amie Stuart said on 05.06.08 at 05:51 PM • [link]
*sigh* I’ve read this one too but I’ll be darned if I can think of what it is!
Brandyllyn said on 05.06.08 at 05:52 PM • [link]
Off topic:
Scrumping is suck a great word for what is in fact fruit larceny.
Roslyn Holcomb said on 05.06.08 at 05:53 PM • [link]
Are you sure it’s England? It sounds like a Pamela Morsi book I read a while back, but I could be wrong? She only does American, though (at least as far as I know.)
BevQB said on 05.06.08 at 05:58 PM • [link]
FINALLY a book I recognize! I read that book! I KNOW I did!
Oh wait, you wanted to know the title and/or author too, didn’t you? Be damned if I can remember them. Even google books didn’t help with a “romance basket auction” search or a couple of others I tried.
And yes, it’s England during the Regency period.
Scotsie said on 05.06.08 at 06:07 PM • [link]
Oh crapping-damn, I SO know this one too. But I have to go staff the reference desk. Pray for no patrons and lots of Google time :)
snarkhunter said on 05.06.08 at 06:11 PM • [link]
I am positive that I’ve read this…but I think it wasn’t set in England. I think it might’ve been set in America or even Canada.
If it is the book I’m thinking of (which…I have no idea what book that is) , then I’m also thinking it might not be a romance novel in the traditional sense. Because I didn’t read them until my 20s, and I know I read this particular book in my teens.
Unless, of course, this exact plot has been used several times by several authors, which is entirely possible.
Tumperkin said on 05.06.08 at 06:14 PM • [link]
This sounds a lot like a Marion Chesney - possibly one of the Six Sisters series (Minerva, Annabel, Deirdre, Daphne, Diana or Frederica) maybe?
snarkhunter said on 05.06.08 at 06:15 PM • [link]
Oh, wait. I know what book I was thinking of, and I think it is NOT the book Kim is looking for. Mine was Joan Lowery Nixon’s A Deadly Promise, which is a YA historical/romance/thriller set in the Old West.
miaserene said on 05.06.08 at 06:19 PM • [link]
Seconding Tumperkin’s—this sounds like Chesney to me too. The description made me think of Minerva, but I’m not any kind of sure this scene was in that book.
heather (errantdreams) said on 05.06.08 at 06:19 PM • [link]
I’m amazed that there seem to be so many different stories that are close to this description and setting off people’s memories! I guess everything really has been done before, eh? :D
Roslyn Holcomb said on 05.06.08 at 06:23 PM • [link]
The pretty ribbons blowing in the wind really got me. Dagnabit, I know this book.
Aemelia said on 05.06.08 at 06:27 PM • [link]
could it have been SCANDALOUS LOVE by Brenda Joyce, it took place in Victorian England though, but I do remember a charity picnic…now I need to go find this again!
Naomi Libicki said on 05.06.08 at 06:35 PM • [link]
Stubby:
I dunno, a lot of women I know seem to like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, and I don’t think they included anachronisms in their fiction.
Victoria Dahl said on 05.06.08 at 06:54 PM • [link]
I dunno, a lot of women I know seem to like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, and I don’t think they included anachronisms in their fiction.
Touche. I think if you read contemporary letters of any time period, you’ll find that 100% of the people weren’t miserable and disgusting. Sorry. I’ve read wonderfully romantic, loving letters written between married couples.
When Charles Kingsley wrote of his wife-to-be: “My hands are perfumed with her delicious limbs, and I cannot wash off the scent, and every moment the thought comes across me of those mysterious recesses of beauty where my hands have been wandering, and my heart sinks with a sweet faintness and my blood tingles through every limb.” ... I don’t think he was talking about fish tacos. Or smelly pits.
He was a Victorian clergyman, btw. Fucking romantic as hell.
Victoria Dahl said on 05.06.08 at 06:56 PM • [link]
Also, upper class women LOVED charity stuff. It was a respectable way to fill their time. On its face, this doesn’t seem impossible, certainly not in the Victorian. You could feel good about yourself without mixing with the lower classes. Wait, that sounds familiar. *G*
Jeanette Johnson said on 05.06.08 at 06:59 PM • [link]
was it a Lyverle Spencer? I really think I read it
Stubby said on 05.06.08 at 06:59 PM • [link]
Naomi - you’re right, of course. I was thinking of modern romances - the “trashy books” that I like to read. I used to read a lot of Amanda Quick and other Regency romances, and I read a few Western-themed ones as well - and of course Laura London.
Jane and Charlotte would not have thought their time particularly icky and, compared to earlier periods, it wasn’t.
Esri Rose said on 05.06.08 at 07:04 PM • [link]
I think this is a Chesney (Amanda Quick) romance. Isn’t there a whole boat trip to an island part, too?
Esri Rose said on 05.06.08 at 07:05 PM • [link]
And a little brother?
Erin said on 05.06.08 at 07:06 PM • [link]
I would have sworn that I had seen it, except then I realized:
1. Gilmore Girls episode
2. Similar idea in The Quiet Man, except it was hats fluttering around with ribbons, not baskets.
So I think my brain invented a memory.
Stubby said on 05.06.08 at 07:12 PM • [link]
And one more thing, cause this is interesting and it got me thinking.
Whatever the circumstances of your particular time period are, that’s normal to you. A middle class or upperclass woman in Regency England would probably not complain about the state of modern sanitation, personal hygiene, etc., because that is all she knew. My mother, growing up on the Gulf Coast in the 40s and 50s, did not think she was going to pass out from the heat all the time - but now, in 2008, if she had to go without air conditioning for a week or more, she’d be some kind of pissed off. We are creatures of our environment.
When I read a Western romance, I think about stuff like - makeup. Shampoo. Baths. Paved streets. A readily accessible source of fresh water. Lack of all of the above - or at least a regular supply of all of the above. This is not a problem of the author or the genre - it’s just me.
And I know that people in times past were just as romantic and sexually attracted to one another as they are today - cf. Napoleon’s instruction to Josephine not to bathe, because he was coming home - it wasn’t necessarily the sexual I was thinking of, just the day to day circumstances of life.
Oh well. Sorry for the threadjack.
Scotsie said on 05.06.08 at 07:19 PM • [link]
That was my first thought to, that it must be an early Amanda Quick. But Google-digging is bringing up nothing. So I changed tactics to Virginia Henley and Catherine Coulter. AQ, VH and CC were the majority of my early romance reading and I thought for sure I had read this in one of their books. OK, back to digging!!!
Victoria Dahl said on 05.06.08 at 07:25 PM • [link]
Bet not, and it’s one of the reasons I can’t (or rarely can) read historicals; I’m a history major, I know history, and the past was not that fun.
I was just very taken aback by your above statement. A charity basket auction seems like good, clean fun. I mean we’re not talking a bachelor auction in the Victorian! The past was fun enough, at least for rich people, and often fun for poor people, too, on special occasions like harvest celebrations or May Day.
fanny said on 05.06.08 at 07:31 PM • [link]
I am officially going nuts. Like all the posters before me, I KNOW I’ve read this. I think I even enjoyed it quite a bit. I have this distinct impression of chicken or something in the picnic basket. And eating it under a tree.
My Google skills are totally letting me down right now.
Stubby said on 05.06.08 at 07:37 PM • [link]
Victoria: again, you’re right and I think I expressed it poorly. People had fun; it’s just that I can’t imagine myself enjoying it, from my modern perspective. Does that make sense?
I just read a really good YA novel (I like YA paranormals) - Gideon the Cutpurse, about a couple of modern English kids who get whomped back in time to the 1730s. It was really well done - very vivid characters. But her descriptions of the clothing, the food, everything was well done as well. The weevils crawling in the bread; the stuff floating on top of the soup; the flies at the dinner table; the corsets that had the teenage heroine gasping for breath because she didn’t know how to move and sit in them; that’s the stuff I get distracted thinking about. Like I said, it’s not a genre or author problem - it’s a me thing.
It does not affect my partiality for pirate romances, when I know full well that life on a sailing ship was 5 times ickier than anything on land. I still want to live on a clipper ship.
Victoria Dahl said on 05.06.08 at 07:42 PM • [link]
The weevils crawling in the bread; the stuff floating on top of the soup; the flies at the dinner table;...It does not affect my partiality for pirate romances, when I know full well that life on a sailing ship was 5 times ickier than anything on land.
We’re in total agreement there!!! *g*
fiveandfour said on 05.06.08 at 07:55 PM • [link]
Count me as another person who’s read this one, but can’t remember anything much beyond the picnic scene.
That scene stuck with me because I remember thinking as I read it about how the basket auction was like an annual one we did in one of the youth groups I belonged to, but we did ours “blind”. No one was supposed to know who had prepared which basket so they were bid on by presentation alone. Though of course, where boyfriends and girlfriends were involved, somehow (oh, the shock!) the couples always seemed to end up having their picnics together. And in the cases where some terrific cooks had prepared the baskets, there was an active black market related to knowing who had prepared which basket so a good meal would be guaranteed for the bidder. Bribes and blackmail were not uncommon, but only the very best sort of bribes and blackmail since it was all for charity after all.
Kalen Hughes said on 05.06.08 at 08:03 PM • [link]
Something along these lines is why I don’t really read romances with contemporary settings. There are no REAL problems, just a lot of people who can’t get their shit together, pull up their big girl/boy panties, and GROW THE HELL UP. Or that’s how I frequently end up feeling when I attempt to read one (with certain exceptions, such as Nora Roberts *grin*). After wading though too many that left me annoyed by page 100 I just gave up on the subgenre entirely.
Esri Rose said on 05.06.08 at 08:04 PM • [link]
FiveandFour: You’re cracking me up. Graft on the basket circuit!
Suzanne said on 05.06.08 at 08:05 PM • [link]
I agree with Amelia - I think it is Brenda Joyce’s Scandalous Love.
Anj said on 05.06.08 at 08:15 PM • [link]
Dang. I also feel as though I’ve read that plot line. I want to say it’s an LM Montgomery short story, but I could just be creating memories out of my childhood… Oklahoma and LM Montgomery were not strangers when I was a young tween.
But whatever book it is, I am very excited to read it!
(Sorry, not helpful)
AgTigress said on 05.06.08 at 08:22 PM • [link]
Absolutely definitely not an Amanda Quick. Not much help, I know, but at least it will save people searching under her name.
loonigrrl said on 05.06.08 at 08:32 PM • [link]
I’ve read Scandalous Love by Brenda Joyce a dozen times. If that isn’t it then there are two books out there with a very similar scene.
In Scandalous Love, Nicole Shelton brings a box lunch to auction off for charity. At the auction, the men bid on all the ladies lunches for around 10-20 pounds and then share that lunch, picnic style, with them. Nicole, who is not very popular due to an engagement she backed out on (I think), does not get any bids, at first, when her lunch is being auctioned. The hero’s sickly fiancee asked someone to bid on it so she wouldn’t be humiliated, but that person doesn’t show up. And instead of getting a starting bid of ten pounds or so, some drunk guy only bids ten pence, just to humiliate her. The hero, Hadrian the Duke of Clayborough, gets pissed off and bids 500 pounds.
fiveandfour said on 05.06.08 at 08:38 PM • [link]
Esri Rose, when I later read The Great Sermon Handicap I thought of those charity baskets. If only we had Wodehouse to write about those auctions; I could never bring out the hilarity of that juxtaposition between the charity event and the black market goings on with even a portion of the humor it deserves.
Oh, the things people will do for good fried chicken and potato salad! (Or, it must be said, to avoid the wrath of a girlfriend.)
Roslyn Holcomb said on 05.06.08 at 08:42 PM • [link]
Okay, if somebody doesn’t answer this one soon I’m going to be forced to unpack 15 boxes of books I’ve just packed for our move. Then there will be one hellaciously ugly scene with my husband as to why I’m online at all today I’m supposed to be packing. Aaarrrghhh!
Jessica said on 05.06.08 at 08:58 PM • [link]
Third Scandalous Love, Brenda Joyce.
Helen M said on 05.06.08 at 09:08 PM • [link]
Kimberly Anne, you weren’t the only one.
MamaNice said on 05.06.08 at 09:20 PM • [link]
Don’t know the answer to the HaBo - but the whole picnic basket auction but made me immediately think of So Big by Edna Ferber…considered more an American classic than strictly romance, but still.
AgTigress said on 05.06.08 at 09:32 PM • [link]
The whole thing sounds so completely American to me, anyway: we just don’t do this sort of thing, and I honestly don’t think we did in the 19th or 18th or earlier centuries.
I love, in Kim’s original description,
What’s ‘nearby England’? Scotland? Wales? France?
:D
Julie Leto said on 05.06.08 at 09:34 PM • [link]
Kimberly Anne, you definitely weren’t the only one!
I think it was Brenda Joyce. Like everyone else, I remember reading this scenario, though I think I only read an excerpt and not the book.
Silver James said on 05.06.08 at 09:51 PM • [link]
Uhm…do I get points for actually knowing all the words to “Oklahoma”....and the hand gestures used when it’s sung at Girls State?
Like everyone else, I know I’ve read this book but it’s been absolutely ages and I think it was something I picked up in a waiting room to read. When this gets figured out, I want to know so I can get it to read again.
This is one of those “universal themes” that gets recycled a lot, which is why I’m sure it triggers everyone’s memories.
nina armstrong said on 05.06.08 at 09:56 PM • [link]
It’s definitely not one of the Six Sisters books, and i’m quite sure it isn’t an Amanda Quick either.
Colleen Gleason said on 05.06.08 at 10:13 PM • [link]
Me too! I’ve read this book too!
But I can’t remember the name of it either. Or author. But I’m 99% sure it’s an American setting. Old West. Could be an early Linda Lael Miller, really early. Could be a LaVyrle Spencer, but I don’t think so. Or maybe a Jude Devereux?
Oh, it’s going to drive me NUTS!
Madd said on 05.06.08 at 10:38 PM • [link]
I have also read this book and haven’t a clue!
Rosemary said on 05.06.08 at 10:46 PM • [link]
Is it an old-school Christina Dodd?
Or that one author who writes about uncut wangs….oh, she wrote a bride trilogy….what was her name…
Feather! Jane Feather.
liz said on 05.06.08 at 10:47 PM • [link]
I second the Pam Morsi suggestion - either by her or very in her style. But that wouldn’t be in England. So I’m going to fourth the Brenda Joyce. Because I’ve read two like this, and in on the thing I recall most was that she’d made chicken. I really wanted chicken more than I wanted to finish the book at that point, and some BJ books are a struggle for me.
Chrocs said on 05.06.08 at 10:49 PM • [link]
It has to be Scandalous Love, it has everything as described. And Fabio on the cover…
Chrissy said on 05.06.08 at 10:51 PM • [link]
You know, it’s just my luck… I got so hooked by the premise that I got up from my spot in Barnes and Noble’s cafe and went to buy Brenda Joyce’s Scandalous Love.
Dangerous Love had 8 copies on the shelf. Scandalous wasn’t there.
Now I have to stop on my way home. LOL
pressure83 lol
Scotsie said on 05.06.08 at 10:52 PM • [link]
Just searched the Jane Feather archive and didn’t come up with anything picnic-baskety. Have to close up the reading room and head to class, but if anyone else wants to search under Heather Graham, that might also be a possibility?
At this point, I’m willing to side with the Brenda Joycians. :)
Lucia said on 05.06.08 at 11:29 PM • [link]
Memorable novel if all we can remember about it is the peek-a-neek basket with a fluttery ribbon.
MplsGirl said on 05.06.08 at 11:35 PM • [link]
Like almost everyone else, I remember reading this one . . . no idea who it might be, but it sure does seem like an American sort of story, maybe in the South, doesn’t it seem like a southern thing to do?
Can’t wait till there’s agreement—I’ll go check it out of the library.
Chrissy said on 05.06.08 at 11:44 PM • [link]
Lucia I heart you so for the Yogi moment.
Joanne said on 05.06.08 at 11:58 PM • [link]
Once I had the vision of The Quiet Man in my mind (and I can’t get it OUT) I was done guessing.
The mention of Pamela Morsi brought back some great reading moments, even if, or maybe because, they weren’t “rock your world” romances. She wrote some of the most interesting and unusual characters doing nothing special—- just being great characters in sweet romances. Her Simple Jess about a mentally slow hero was a heart-string tugger. And Wild Oats was another wonderful vere off the ordinary path.
AND: could I get more off topic? Sorry!
Tae said on 05.07.08 at 01:03 AM • [link]
well if it is Brenda Joyce it’s going on my to be read list
damn you all, me without a public library and having to buy all my books now!
Becca said on 05.07.08 at 01:21 AM • [link]
There are 5 copies of Scandalous Love (well, 4 now - I just mooched one) over at Bookmooch.com.
Virginia Shultz-Charette said on 05.07.08 at 01:25 AM • [link]
Can’t remember the title or the author of the one that happens in 19th century Texas, but I do remember the plot - it starts off with a group of men who are trying to hang the hero in the front yard of the school marm (I think that is who she is) but she goes out with a shotgun to save him because she doesn’t want a dead body hanging in her front yard. But hers is the only tree in the area!
Later on she brings her picnic basket to the charity picnic and he bids a great deal on it. Actually in this book, she is a very good cook - I can’t remember if others bid on it or he paid a hellacious amount for it- but she has to eat the picnic lunch with him (that’s the catch).
Chloe said on 05.07.08 at 01:50 AM • [link]
I hope this is solved! It sounds great… I love when there is antagonism between the h/h right off the bat!
Christina Lee said on 05.07.08 at 02:16 AM • [link]
Good luck
Laura Kinsale said on 05.07.08 at 02:42 AM • [link]
Picnic basket auctions were common in Victorian era. Here’s a description of a re-enactment put on by the American Civil War Society.
Sounds like a LaVyrle Spencer or Pamela Morsi book to me.
chiricahuagal said on 05.07.08 at 02:54 AM • [link]
Doing a search inside at amazon of SCANDALOUS LOVE by Brenda Joyce -
p1 Dragmore, 1898
p 118, “Every year she holds an American-style picnic… The young ladies bring a box lunch, which the gentlemen bid on.”
p 119 “...picnic baskets all merrily painted and decorated in ribbons…”
p 127 “... I only bought her basket to save her from embarrassment…”
It’s in the de Warenne series. http://www.thedewarennedynasty.com/scandalous_love.htm
Colleen Gleason said on 05.07.08 at 02:57 AM • [link]
I remember the chicken too!
I’m pretty sure the one I’m thinking of isn’t a Brenda Joyce, ‘cause I never read any of her books except the Chicago amateur detective series.
I did read some Morsi…that’s sounding possible. Or maybe Spencer. Or…Jodie Thomas?
Nadia said on 05.07.08 at 05:36 AM • [link]
This one is “If My Love Could Hold You” by Elaine Coffman.
Jeaniene Frost said on 05.07.08 at 05:56 AM • [link]
Could it be THE OUTLAW HEARTS by Rebecca Brandewyne(http://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Hearts-Rebecca-Brandewyne/dp/0505523604/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210132257&sr=1-1 )
This was set in the Ozarks in the US, but there was definitely a picnic basket bidding scene and the hero paid a big sum for the heroine’s basket when no one else was bidding. It came out in the late eighties, but looks like it was reissued and given a new cover in 2000. I liked this book. It was one of the first romances I read where the heroine wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, and she even had a limp from a horrible incident in her past.
If it isn’t your book, sorry, but this is the only one I remember with a picnic basket bidding war :).
Kaitlin said on 05.07.08 at 07:54 AM • [link]
I totally know this book….*thinking of title* I’m 99.9% sure it’s either a Rebecca Brandewyne book or something in that range. I’m dragging my mind. The heroine is a Plain Jane who has never fit in. And this book was based in the US, not England. It’s a daytime picnic & she’s not aware she’s supposed to have made her basket all pretty. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue…Crap!
I’m thinking it’s The Outlaw Hearts. The hero is a train robber who robs trains. The heroine is a schoolmarm w/ a bum leg. He shows up at the picnic & buys her picnic basket, even though a goober of a guy wants to buy it for a piddling amount. See, I knew I remembered this book.
Is it the right one? Here’s the blurb: http://www.brandewyne.com/titles/outlawhearts.html
endlessdesk said on 05.07.08 at 08:15 AM • [link]
I believe it is Brenda Joyce’s Scandalous Hearts. ^_^ I just read it.
AgTigress said on 05.07.08 at 10:30 AM • [link]
But in America - not in England or even ‘nearby’. The original description suggested an English historical setting.
;-)
From the replies, it would seem that there are scores of books with this plot point.
Gennita Low said on 05.07.08 at 02:31 PM • [link]
I loved that book (Scandalous Love) by Brenda Joyce. This scene was the highlight, especially when the hero bid $$$$ for it. It was also the first book I read where the “other woman” was a bitch.
I fifth or sixth the answer being Scandalous Love.
(indeed44!)
Roslyn Holcomb said on 05.07.08 at 03:33 PM • [link]
The problem is I’m fairly certain that I’ve never read a Brenda Joyce book in my life. I only read a limited number of historical authors, and more or less stopped in the mid-nineties. That’s why it was so easy for me to narrow it down. But I agree, apparently this is a plot device in a lot of books. Crazy frustrating because with my last move I lost all my keepers, and the keepers I’ve had since are packed up for my move. Otherwise I could at least identify the author of the book I’m thinking of.
Estelle Chauvelin said on 05.07.08 at 04:13 PM • [link]
I didn’t start singing it, but I definitely thought it. Of course, I also saw it twice last weekend as an usher.
Three words: John and Abby.
sandra said on 05.07.08 at 04:29 PM • [link]
The book in which the heroine saves the hero from being lynched in her front yard (because she has the only tree in the area) is called If My Love Could Hold You. I don’t recall the author, but I saw it at the UBS a couple of days ago and thought about buying it. But I didn’t because I’ve already got about 500 books in my TBR pile. Spamword “include52”. No thanks!
Jeanette Johnson said on 05.07.08 at 06:23 PM • [link]
I haven’t read Brenda Joyce either. I have read a book with chicken and a picnic basket auction I really thought is was Spencer but couldn’t find it. maybe it was a Linda Lail Miller, I’ll search there. I just remember the one I read as a sweet story. This is driving me insane!
Gail Dayton said on 05.07.08 at 08:42 PM • [link]
HUMMINGBIRD by LaVyrle Spencer. Yes, she did use the plot.
Now, it takes place in Colorado, not England. Not even “nearby” England. The hero is a railroad owner who is mistaken for an outlaw and shot by a shoe salesman who thinks he’s holding up the train. The heroine is a rather prim spinster who volunteers to take care of the injured man until he’s well enough to be tried for his crime. They do not get on well at first. There is a charity picnic basket auction in it—but I think the shoe salesman and the railroad man bid each other up for hers… But maybe this isn’t the one she’s thinking of…
sandra said on 05.08.08 at 06:43 AM • [link]
The book in which the heroine saves the hero from being lynched in her front yard ( because she has the only big tree in miles) is If My Love Could Hold You. I don’t recall the author’s name. I actually found it at the UBS two days ago, skimmed it, but didn’t buy it, because I already have 500 books in my tbr pile, and I’m trying to cut it down.
pissed off one said on 05.08.08 at 10:42 AM • [link]
This is totally out of place, so I apologize in advance.
Where is Candy, why am I not seeing more of her? Candy, when will you be back? Are you working on that book of yours or do you not want to come and chat with us no more? Please, please come here more often or I will commit suicide very soon. We all miss you so much! ïŒ
lizziebee said on 05.08.08 at 03:22 PM • [link]
I think I’m going to have to get out Scandalous Love by Brenda Joyce from the library!!! *grin*
Hmm I’ve studied history (just finished my bachelors, hoping to do a honours year at some point) and this by no means puts me off reading historical romances. In fact, they may be my favourite type. Maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic :) :)
Amy said on 05.08.08 at 05:22 PM • [link]
Am I crazy, or was that in Anne of Green Gables?
Anj said on 05.08.08 at 05:43 PM • [link]
If that was Anne of GG that would explain why I think the plot device sounds familiar, but have never read any of these other books…
CSzego said on 05.08.08 at 05:45 PM • [link]
Amy, Anne was my first thought too. Can’t remember who bought her basket: was it Gilbert or Matthew?
snarkhunter said on 05.08.08 at 07:38 PM • [link]
Amy—you’re crazy. :) Never happened in Anne of GG, or in any of the other books. There were picnics aplenty, but never any kind of auction for charity.
ILuvLA said on 05.08.08 at 08:40 PM • [link]
Heeey, Boo-Boo ...
I know I’ve read or seen this scene, but I haven’t read any of the books mentioned. The cold chicken was what really had me saying, “Hey! I remember that!” OTOH, cold chicken seems to have been pretty standard as a picnic item of this sort. I get the feeling that this plot devise has been used (or “re-used”) by a lot of authors. It’s too good.
But there’s also an historical incident with the Duke of Wellington tossing a half-eaten cold chicken leg over his shoulder, so maybe I’m mixing that in with my “memories.”
TaraGel said on 05.08.08 at 10:03 PM • [link]
This also sounded familiar to me the other day, although I really don’t think I’ve read the Brenda Joyce. (Maybe the Elaine Coffman but not sure.)
I was actually thinking it might be a Deveraux book. Possibly Wishes even, as I remember something about a picnic and I remember the heroine was a chef, but not sure.
KristenMary said on 05.09.08 at 01:04 AM • [link]
Definitely not in Wishes by Deveraux. Recently read that one so I’m fairly sure. But my first thought was this sounds Deveraux-ish. I’m fairly sure I’ve read something very similar if not this exact book. How crazy that this plot line has been used many a time.
Virginia Shultz-Charette said on 05.09.08 at 01:43 AM • [link]
You guys are right, it is If My Love Could Hold You by Elaine Coffman! For those of you who are interested in this western, check out her web-site and look up the book- I think the first chapter is on there, attempted hanging and all.It was a pretty good book!
MayDarling said on 07.29.08 at 04:58 AM • [link]
It is Scandalous Love by Brenda Joyce. I used to love that book, aside from the fact that the dude’s name was Hadrian. Utterly corny and pretentious at the same time.
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