Amanda has discovered some hidden gems during her first year of home ownership.
The title card is a man (it’s Jamie) carving a wooden snake. In Scotland, 1968, Roger has created a timeline murder board to try and find Jamie in the past – the plan is to establish that Jamie was alive 20 years after Culloden – that way Claire can go back and find him. Bree has been going through prison records, and found a bunch of prisons Jamie was NOT in. Fiona, the granddaughter of … Continue reading Outlander 3.04: Of Lost Things
It’s RecReq time! I asked the podcast Patreon community what types of books they’re looking for more of, and what they’d like to read next. Now, Amanda and I answer many of your book recommendation requests! So we start with reader requests for romances with beta heroes, friends to lovers, intelligent heroines, virginal characters, mystery romances and heroines in disguise. Along the way we talk about post-therapy food indulgences and both of our Very Large … Continue reading 267. Recommendation Requests with Sarah and Amanda, Part the First!
Mann Cakes by Mysti Parker is 99c at Amazon! Come on, with a title like that, you know I had to include this in sales. The heroes are two brothers who open up a rival cupcake shop in their small hometown. Readers really enjoyed the premise and thought it was cute and fun, but some felt they never really connected with the characters.
Grab a drink and have a seat, because here come some compelling and powerful words and numbers. Bea and Leah Koch of The Ripped Bodice have compiled an inaugural report on the State of Racial Diversity in Romance Publishing. From their press release: In their first year and a half in business, the Kochs grew increasingly aware of the limited number of options for customers looking for traditionally published books written by people of color. … Continue reading The Ripped Bodice Report on Racial Diversity in Romance
Did you know we have a Goodreads group? Because we totally do! It’s a rather relaxed place where we can talk about favorite series and tropes, gripe about reading slumps, and give each other recommendations. After the great success of the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo challenge, members of our Goodreads group wanting to keep the challenges going. I put together two challenges in which users can participate that span form October 1 to December 31. … Continue reading SBTB Goodreads Quarterly Challenges!
Bitchery member, Elizabeth, has a special request and time is of the essence! She has a lovely idea to pass out bookmarks with reading recommendations, so let’s help her out: I’ve gotten a lot of recommendations for great books from the Bitchery at large, so I now come seeking your help. I attend an annual Harry Potter convention called CONjuration every year (if you’re in the Atlanta area, it’s a seriously fun convention for all ages, … Continue reading The Rec League: YA Fantasy for Harry Potter Fans
It’s been a difficult week and we hope all of you have been taking steps to take care of yourselves. For this edition of Wednesday Links, we’re getting back to what brought us here in the first place: a love of romance. … Ana and Thea of The Book Smugglers posted a spotlight on the ladies of the romance store The Ripped Bodice, whom they interviewed about being ladies entrepreneurs, about kickstarting etc. Bea and … Continue reading Links: A Whole Lotta Romance Talk
RECOMMENDED: The Diviners by Libba Bray is $2.99! This is YA fantasy set in 1920s New York, so you can bet there are plenty of amazing clothes and fancy speakeasies. I personally loved the cast of characters, especially the heroine Evie and Evie’s uncle, who happens to curate an occult museum. However, some people found Evie to border on the TSTL category. Any readers care to weigh in on what they thought?
October is my favorite time of year. I love the perfect fall weather, the appearance of pumpkin/ apple spiced everything, and I totally love all the spooky stuff associated with Halloween. That’s why for this month’s book club, I recommended that we try a Gothic romance. So for October, we’ll be reading With This Curse by Amanda DeWees. I cut my teeth on Gothics written by Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney before I ever picked up … Continue reading Book Club October Selection: With This Curse by Amanda DeWees
Some of you know my love for Les Liaisons Dangereuses: it’s my favorite play (EVER), has spawned three of my favorite movies, and hands down, is the greatest epistolary novel of all time (OF ALL TIME). It’s got everything – love, sex, revenge, horrible people being horrible, comeuppance, banter, and no one learning anything, at all. Ever. So when Amanda (seriously, this was like SIX MONTHS AGO) said “Hey, there’s a retelling of Dangerous Liaisons … Continue reading Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott
This HaBO comes to us from Sara, who wants to find an older category romance: My google-fu is weak. Help me, Habo-wan? I’m pretty sure this is a book I read back in the mid-90s, as that’s when I did the bulk of my category romance reading, but it could have been as late as 2000-ish. I believe it would have been a non-specialized Harlequin romance – it didn’t have a super-involved plot. The book … Continue reading HaBO: Model Heroine Becomes a Teacher
