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Wild Rain
RECOMMENDED: Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins is $1.99! This is part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals. Catherine wrote a Lightning Review for this one and gave it a B+:
I enjoyed this story a lot. It contains many of the elements that feel like a traditional Western to me – scenes of blizzards and horse-breaking, confrontations in the local saloon, slick shysters from out East come to take advantage of the locals – but the central characters buck the stereotypes in numerous ways.
The second novel in USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins’ compelling new Women Who Dare series follows a female rancher in Wyoming after the Civil War.
A reporter has come to Wyoming to do a story on doctors for his Black newspaper back east. He thinks Colton Lee will be an interesting subject…until he meets Colton’s sister, Spring. She runs her own ranch, wears denim pants instead of dresses, and is the most fascinating woman he’s ever met.
But Spring, who has overcome a raucous and scandalous past, isn’t looking for, nor does she want, love. As their attraction grows, will their differences come between them or unite them for an everlasting love?
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Sisters in Arms
Sisters in Arms by Kaia Alderson is $2.99! If you were eyeing this one in my latest Book Beat, well now it’s on sale! I saw an ad for this one Goodreads and had to check it out, because come on…look at that cover composition.
Kaia Alderson’s debut historical fiction novel reveals the untold, true story of the Six Triple Eight, the only all-Black battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, who made the dangerous voyage to Europe to ensure American servicemen received word from their loved ones during World War II.
Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.
As these courageous women help to form the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing with more than just army bureaucracy—everyone is determined to see this experiment fail. For two northern women, learning to navigate their way through the segregated army may be tougher than boot camp. Grace and Eliza know that there is no room for error; they must be more perfect than everyone else.
When they finally make it overseas, to England and then France, Grace and Eliza will at last be able to do their parts for the country they love, whatever the risk to themselves.
Based on the true story of the 6888th Postal Battalion (the Six Triple Eight), Sisters in Arms explores the untold story of what life was like for the only all-Black, female U.S. battalion to be deployed overseas during World War II.
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Plain Bad Heroines
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily A. Darnforth is $1.99! This was another Book Beat mention! I haven’t read this one but the description boasts lesbians, Gothic horror, and some dark humor. I’d also check for trigger warnings on Goodreads or another source you trust.
The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls—a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit.
Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.
Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.
A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.
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A Certain Age
A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams is $2.99! This is a historical fiction novel set in New York’s Jazz Age. This book was released earlier this summer and readers loved the sense of place Williams created. It’s also a retelling of an opera, which is pretty cool! However, others found the story a bit underwhelming compared to the jacket copy.
The bestselling author of A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.
As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young paramour, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. An intense and deeply honorable man, Octavian is devoted to the beautiful socialite of a certain age and wants to marry her. While times are changing and she does adore the Boy, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question, and there is no need; she has an understanding with Sylvo, her generous and well-respected philanderer husband.
But their relationship subtly shifts when her bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the sweet younger daughter of a newly wealthy inventor. Engaging a longstanding family tradition, Theresa enlists the Boy to act as her brother’s cavalier, presenting the family’s diamond rose ring to Ox’s intended, Miss Sophie Fortescue—and to check into the background of the little-known Fortescue family. When Octavian meets Sophie, he falls under the spell of the pretty ingénue, even as he uncovers a shocking family secret. As the love triangle of Theresa, Octavian, and Sophie progresses, it transforms into a saga of divided loyalties, dangerous revelations, and surprising twists that will lead to a shocking transgression . . . and eventually force Theresa to make a bittersweet choice.
Full of the glamour, wit and delicious twists that are the hallmarks of Beatriz Williams’ fiction and alternating between Sophie’s spirited voice and Theresa’s vibrant timbre, A Certain Age is a beguiling reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set against the sweeping decadence of Gatsby’s New York.
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WHITE SMOKE by Tiffany D. Jackson is $2.99. YA haunted house story. (Do note Jackson leans toward “adult” themes, regardless of character age.)
THE SUN DOWN MOTEL by Simone St. James is $1.99. Elyse gave it an A here: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/the-sun-down-motel-by-simone-st-james/
I adored almost all of Plain Bad Heroines, but it didn’t really “stick the landing”. The ending felt underwhelming after the intense build-up. However, I know other people who thought the ending really worked, so YMMV.
Dr. Jen Gunter’s Menopause Manifesto is $1.99 on Kindle! I turn 45 next month, and I loved reading this as it covers everything I was wondering about; I really feel more prepared. Also it just came out this spring, so it’s a great deal; I had checked it out of the library and then just waited patiently as publishers will eventually drop prices.
Also I saw The Thorn Birds at $1.99 today too, so for anyone wanting to go old school priest forbidden love there you go. 😉 I only ever skim read for the romance parts, but I’m still a big fan of the original miniseries which I watched again through Hoopla this year.
A STROKE OF MALICE by Anna Lee Huber is on sale for $1.99 today. This is the 8th book in her Lady Darby Mystery series. 9 books have been released so far and the 10th is due out on April 26, 2022.
SBSarah gave it an A- in her review:
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/a-stroke-of-malice-by-anna-lee-huber/
Spring is one of my favorite heroines of the year – I went with an “A” for Wild Rain.
The audiobook for THE MENOPAUSE MANIFESTO is also on sale — Apple Books has it for $3.99.