Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Help A Bitch Out
May 12, 2012 | Saturday | 7 Comments
Maria is looking for a book she read a very long time ago - and this HaBO may be quite tricky: I have the plot of a book I read ages ago stuck in my head, but I cannot remember either author or title. It is set in Australia (possibly New Zealand, but I am pretty sure it's Australia). The heroine's fiance elopes with her best friend shortly before the wedding. The best friend was also about to marry someone else, the hero. Hero and heroine decide to get married for practical reasons: he is about to land a big…
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May 12, 2012 | Saturday | 14 Comments
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…
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May 05, 2012 | Saturday | 3 Comments
This request comes from Kim, who is looking for a shipbuilder romance: I've got a HaBO for you. I've recently been reading Sarah Vowell's Hawaii book, and it reminded me of a book I read about ten years ago. The book was, if I recall, not particularly recent when I came across it (most likely in one of the bags of books that my mother traded back and forth with her friends and then passed on to me), but it was also not particularly old school, so it might have been published anytime in the 90s. I've tried googling around,…
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May 05, 2012 | Saturday | 7 Comments
Dee wrote in looking for two books from her sister's stash of Harlequins: I was inspired by the success of others at finding their first-read, life-changing romances, to ask about mine. These were gleaned from rummaging through my oldest sister's boxes after she had moved away to go to university. They were definitely 80s Harlequin or perhaps could be Silhouette, either way they were old. Young and impressionable as I was, even then I remember feeling a little scornful of both heroines, who seemed like they needed the hero's love or lovin to become "the person they were meant to…
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May 05, 2012 | Saturday | 17 Comments
Emily wrote in with a request for her friend, S. (Not me! I swear! I've never bought a book at Heathrow, even if my reading history is one big HaBO): I'm hoping this awesome site and its readers might Help a Bitch Out. There's a book I'm dying to read, as described to me by my friend S. She's been looking for it for a reread lo these many years, and this is her description: "I bought it in Heathrow Airport in 1988. It had a white cover with pink and silver lettering. An English upper-class daughter of a mine…
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April 14, 2012 | Saturday | 6 Comments
Ann is looking for a book she read long ago that was from an excerpt in a magazine. She's been searching for it for awhile, and is hoping one of you might recognize the description. I have been trying to find this romance novel where a woman is given permission by her husband to cheat, after she finds out he has cheated on her. He wants her to see it's just physical. So she goes to this skanky sounding resort. She almost hooks up with this random guy but then she realizes random guy is married. Then this older but…
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April 14, 2012 | Saturday | 18 Comments
Joanna writes in with this HaBO request for the first romance she ever read: I'm looking for my first romance novel, the one that got me hooked on the genre. I was a good girl in a parochial school when I discovered at a library book sale a mesmerizing Harlequin with a green cover. Inside, salacious descriptions of bedroom shenanigans had me hooked. Obviously, this was passed along from girl to girl in my 7th grade class, until one of the nuns confiscated it and we all got into boatloads of trouble. I read this book in 1986 or…
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March 17, 2012 | Saturday | 4 Comments
This request is from C, who is looking for a romance that's possibly from the 80s. I am looking for a romance novel that I never got to finish when I was younger because my grandma thought it was inappropriate. Now that I am all grown up, I want to find and finish this book whose title and author I do not recall. The plot is a young English heroine who has been recently orphaned. Her perverted Uncle is now her guardian and tries to force himself on her. She knocks him unconscious and flees to her former nanny. The…
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March 17, 2012 | Saturday | 19 Comments
This request is from Kim, who remembers more of the mystery elements than the romance elements of this book: The book I'm trying to find was a romance/mystery from the mid to late 1980s about a woman who finds a picture and/or a letter after her parents' death that leads her to a small town to investigate her past. Plot points include a big white house, a stolen ring (possibly emerald), a recurring image of a limp hand wearing said ring (which turns out to be a memory from the heroine's childhood of having seen someone pushed down the stairs…
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March 17, 2012 | Saturday | 19 Comments
This request is from Daisy, who is looking for an historical romance she read some years back. I'm looking for a historical, but I don't remember the title, author, or character names. I do remember a lot of the plot though and some random details, so hopefully someone will recognize it. So the hero is a lord of some kind and has a whole passel of illegitimate children who are forever misbehaving. He decides that the best way to solve the problem is to get married so the children have a mother. He gets his friend/relative/secondary-less-important-character-guy to go find him…
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March 17, 2012 | Saturday | 28 Comments
ItGirl sent me this inquiry, as she is looking for a book she read awhile back, and, alas, she can only remember certain scenes. Yeah, so I keep having flashes of this one book...and I want to figure out what it is. Do you or the other readers possibly know this? I have very little recollection except of the sex scenes. Because I was 17 years old and, you know. Sex. I read it in the early 90s, maybe around 1991 or 1992, so you know it's a treasure right there. It started at a prison in Louisiana during The…
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February 28, 2012 | Tuesday | 43 Comments
This request is from Shiloh Walker, who is really, really hoping someone can help her, and her daughter out: My daughter is getting into reading romance. I'm trying to keep her more to the YA, which is going well, since there is so much of it out there, butI was trying to remember two of the YA that I read in school, but I can't... I do remember they were in my high school library, but that's not much help. One of the them, the hero was a soap star who ended up to school like a regular kid for…
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February 28, 2012 | Tuesday | 24 Comments
This HaBO request comes from grad_grrl: I never thought writing to HABO would happen to me.. But I was delighted to receive an e-reader for the holidays, and I'm having a stressful time at grad school = reading a lot more trashy books. There has to be some kind of karmic balance maintained for all those research papers. Anyway, I vaguely recall reading an excerpt of a book with a heroine who has a fallen/cast out angel crash into her yard. She holds his hand as it 'dies'. I think it then comes back as a teenager with serious emo…
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February 15, 2012 | Wednesday | 9 Comments
Late last year at Posner's book signing for EIKAL, I learned about SuperAmit's battle to find a bone marrow match after he was diagnosed with acute leukemia. Through social media, he found a donor, but the facts I learned about the bone marrow registry and the lack of donor matches for minorities was eye-opening. You might have seen the Maccabeats' video for Hanukkah (I featured it here as a Friday video) also sought to raise awareness for the bone marrow registry and the need for more matches to help save the lives of people who have leukemia. Over the winter,…
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January 31, 2012 | Tuesday | 9 Comments
This request is from Cathy, who remembers so much crazy from this book, it's just amazing. I'm looking from the first romance I ever read, which I'm pretty sure I stole off my older sister. It was a category M&B (I remember it was a skinny book) and the more I think about the plot the more I realise how WTF batshit crazy it was. Now I don't remember any names, but I reckon publication date would have been 1978-1983 ish. So without further ado, here's the crazy I remember... Our heroine is a young stage actress about to break…
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