NB: Welcome to Flashback Friday! Because of Carrie’s Four Weddings and a Sixpence anthology review, we wanted to run another anthology with a similar grade that we enjoyed. The Brightest Day has one of Sarah’s favorite novellas of 2015! This review was originally published June 17, 2015. Reviewing anthologies is always difficult for me. I’m never sure if I should give a grade for the collection as a whole, even if some of the stories didn’t grab … Continue reading The Brightest Day: A Juneteenth Anthology by Kianna Alexander, Lena Hart, Piper Huguley and Alyssa Cole →
For Love and Liberty is an anthology of romance novellas that take place during the American Revolution. It’s notable because of its attention to diverse couples, including an African American couple on opposite sides of the conflict, a gay interracial couple, a Native American woman and a British soldier, and a Sephardic Jewish couple. I loved the attention to diversity, but the writing quality didn’t match the ambitions of the collection. The stories feel incomplete … Continue reading For Love and Liberty, by Alyssa Cole, Kate McMurray, Lena Hart, and Stacey Agdern →
This is such a great topic for a Rec League and we’re so thankful to Jacquilynne for sending it in: Over on Metafilter, there’s a thread happening about romance novels and professions therein, and someone mentioned that they wished there were more working class historicals and I agreed whole-heartedly. I read a lot of regency era historicals, and sometimes one half of the couple is working class, but there’s almost always a peerage title involved … Continue reading The Rec League: Working Class Couples in Historical Romance →
Too steamy for the penalty box… The New Orleans Cajun Rage professional hockey team just won the Cup. No one thought they’d do it: they were a team of shoulda beens, never coulda beens and a star or two. They’d only been in the Crescent City for three years before this year’s Cinderella run that had them skating off the ice with the championship. Over the following summer, each player gets to keep the Cup … Continue reading Hot on Ice →
As we near the end of this long national campaign (I’m sorry, non-USAians, someday this ridiculous campaign will end and it might even be November 9th), and the historic choice in front of us, it’s important to remember that while women in the US gained the right to vote in 1919, the movement championed by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton was at the expense of Women of Color. Black women fought their own … Continue reading Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology →
The fight for suffrage was long, hard, and carried out on many fronts. In Daughters of A Nation, Kianna Alexander, Alyssa Cole, Lena Hart, and Piper Huguley bring you four novellas full of spirit, hope, and, most importantly: LOVE. IN THE MORNING SUN by Lena Hart With the election of 1868 underway, Madeline Asher’s mission is clear: educate and enlist the freedmen of Nebraska to vote. After losing the man she loved to war—and a … Continue reading Daughters of a Nation: A Black Suffragette Historical Romance Anthology →
Continuing with the year of “everything goes back to Hamilton,” Alyssa tweeted that this novella took place around the point of “Guns and Ships.” It does not feature America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman (LAFAYETTE), but it does touch on a facet of the Revolutionary War that isn’t often mentioned: Black soldiers and how the British used the promise (sometimes illusion) of freedom to get Black people to…well, not so much fight, but to basically be slave … Continue reading Be Not Afraid by Alyssa Cole →
It is a truth universally known by introverts that an introvert in the midst of a four-day conference must be in want of an isolation booth. I mean, I was. At a certain point, I reach maximum introvert stimulation levels and my brain stops using words correctly. Or giving them to my mouth in the right order. It’s embarrassing, but it’s standard operating procedure, so I’m used to it – and I know I’m not … Continue reading RWA 2015: A Sleepy, Non Chronological Wrap Up →
The Brightest Day: A Juneteenth Historical Romance Anthology, with a foreword by the inimitable Beverly Jenkins, brings you four novellas highlighting love, light, and hope set over a period of history that’s often left in the shadows. Amazing Grace, by Lena Hart: It’s the year 1866—the Civil War is over and slavery has ended. Life for 18-year-old Gracie Shaw takes an unexpected turn when she is “encouraged” to marry a man sight-unseen. Boarded on a … Continue reading The Brightest Day →
