Jul 31, 2011
8 1/2 Stars: The best gentlemen are improper ones!
Improper Gentlemen seduces and rakes its way into your mind with three tales of men who work against the grain of society standards, but love fiercely.
Whiteside offers up the tale of gunman, Justin Talbot and his fierce determination to protect wrongly accused Ace Moreland. Ace is a female on the run from rumors that have destroyed her reputation and put her in the position of gambling for her freedom. Love is the last thing Ace Moreland believes she will find in an ex-confederate gunman with no worries about killing.
Robinson provides a tale of a woman scorned by the Scottish love of her life, Simon Grant. Simon ran from Lucy Dalhousie to escape persecution for his youthful thievery. Now he’s a gentleman, knighted by the King. He finds his Lucy set up as a mistress, and strives to regain her love. He wants to make her proper through marriage, but to do that he’ll have to conduct himself in the most improper ways.
The final tale by Marlowe, which was a favorite of mine, is a tale of love between Irish convict Aidan, the recently hailed Lord of Stonemere, and Roselinde Burke. Aidan stole her innocence years ago on the island of Bermuda, and Rose stole his heart. Now, years later after his crimes have been cleared in the eyes of the aristocracy, can she forgive him for what he was wrongly accused and accept this rakish lord’s love or move on to a worse villain?
All three stories were engaging and lively; extremely sensual and filled with enough improper to make a lady swoon. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about these assumed dark heroes, who in all actuality have more honor and love for their women then proper gentlemen. Each author gives you a different brand of improper from the notorious gunman, to the pardoned convict. With excellent story lines and secondary characters that give a good chuckle. No spoilers, but let’s just say Robinson weaves a merry faux gentleman. If you’re looking for a book that has a little bit of everything you love about historical stories, Improper Gentlemen is a sure win.
For readers who like Elaine Levine.
~ Landra
Jul 29, 2011
Thanks to Carrie from Seductive Musings for alerting me on this amazing deal! You can download THREE books—my Mistress by Mistake, Mia Marlowe’s Touch of a Thief and our Improper Gentlemen for only $16.49! Link.
Jul 26, 2011
It’s release day for the Brava anthology Improper Gentlemen! There’s a little bit of background on how I came to write “To Match a Thief” for it on Vauxhall Vixens, and I’m also giving away a copy at fellow author Mia Marlowe’s blog today.
Improper Gentlemen has snagged 4 1/2 blue ribbons from Romance Junkies: “A titillating and humorous read, TO MATCH A THIEF is a story that I hated to see end. During their years apart, Simon has come up in the world while Lucy has lowered herself to becoming a man’s mistress…or so it seems. I am an avid fan of gifted author Maggie Robinson’s works, which is why I placed her on my auto-read list. The fact that she still remains on that list is proof of her phenomenal talent.
As the title suggests, the common thread running through all three stories in the anthology IMPROPER GENTLEMAN is that the hero in all of the stories is a gentleman who is considered not quite proper by society standards. Their stations in life are rather low in the beginning; a gunman, a pickpocket and an Irish convict. However, each one works, or inherits, his way up in life, becoming respectable enough…Brimming with humor, steamy love scenes, interesting plots, clever repartee, charismatic characters, romance and lots of love, IMPROPER GENTLEMEN, with contributions from three amazing authors, is a delightful way to escape your daily cares. Do not miss it!”
The upcoming blog tour schedule is here. It’s incomplete as yet, but keep checking back. I’m going to be giving away a lot of copies of both Improper Gentlemen and Mistress by Marriage in the next couple of months. And to help celebrate the second anniversary of Beverley Kendall’s wonderful romance e-zine The Season, I’m donating multiple copies all three Courtesan Court books, too.
There’s one more day to buy my debut book Mistress by Mistake on Amazon Kindle for $2.99. The Kobo link is in the post below.:)
Go do something slightly improper to help me celebrate!
Jul 21, 2011
To get you in the mood for Mistress by Marriage and Improper Gentlemen, you have through July 27 to buy my debut book, Mistress by Mistake for your Kindle for only $2.99! Here’s the link. Amazon is running their Big Deal bonanza with a lot of great books. Here’s the main link to the sale. I won’t tell you how many books I’ve bought. (Lord of Scoundrels, 99 cents! How can one resist even if one owns a paper copy? One never knows when one will want to read it to cheer oneself up waiting for the dentist.)
AND MbMistake is also available on Kobo for $2.99! Click here.
There’s still time for a chance to win a free copy of Improper Gentlemen by entering my website contest.
My lovely editor Megan Records sent me a box of gorgeous Mistress by Marriage books yesterday. I feel a Mistress Monday Twitter giveaway coming on in the near future. I love to give away books!
Jul 18, 2011
One more week until Lucy and Simon make their debut in “To Match a Thief” in Improper Gentlemen! Here’s an introduction to the hero Sir Simon Keith (but the image is how I imagined Lucy to look):
No one who would see him now could ever guess precisely how primitive Sir Simon Keith’s beginnings were. Thanks to Providence, his teeth were mercifully straight, his black hair clipped a la Brutus, his shirt points starched high, his cravat snow white, his jacket tailored to perfection—the list could go on and on with a plethora of commas. He was a veritable nonpareil, tall, dark and almost too handsome.
It was only when one noticed his long fingers, their nails irrevocably grease-stained from years of manual labor in its truest sense that one realized that Sir Simon had not been to the manor born. He’d been very good with his hands (whether with women or machinery or removing the odd watch from an unsuspecting cove’s pocket) since he was a boy on the streets of Edinburgh. When he joined the army at the age of seventeen, under some duress if it be known—there was a price on his head and the local constable was keen on his trail—the military seemed preferable to prison. His superiors had soon discovered whatever you put in front of Private Keith he could fix. When he put his mind to something, he could turn a bit of string and a scrap of metal into anything one would like. His mid-battle adjustments to a crate of useless but much-needed rifles earned him a rapid promotion, until he was taken out of the field altogether and put to work at a drafting board in the War Office. One thing led to another, and now Sir Simon owned his own foundry and a fistful of patents.
With peacetime cutting into his profits, he’s seen the way to convert his materiel to less deadly accoutrements and was now deep into the promulgation of a railway system to stretch from one end of Britain to the other, using his own engines, of course. He had been knighted for his service to the crown in squelching that fiend Napoleon, was unbearably rich and only thirty. Who knew what his future held?
It should hold a wife. Some nice, proper well-bred girl who would help him advance in society. She needn’t be rich—he had more money than he knew what to do with—but she’d have to have a pedigree to make up for the one he lacked. Simon supposed a girl like that would be rather dull in bed, but that was all right. He had an appointment this very afternoon to meet with Lord Percival Ferguson, a fellow Scot. The gentleman was a bit eccentric—the earl preferred to wear his kilt even in Town—but Simon didn’t mind. He’d heard old Percy was hard up and planned to sell his Jane Street house. Simon could set up a mistress there to escape from his boring future wife.
If Simon purchased a property on that sought-after street, he really would consider himself ‘arrived.’ Imagine, a boy from the Edinburgh slums keeping a high-class London courtesan. What would Lucy say?
Ah. Poor Lucy. His lost love. Dead and gone for years. Whilst he was out and about fighting and inventing for King and Country, she toiled like a slave for her wretched aunt. He’d come back for her too late. The aunt had chased him out of her hat shop with a fistful of hatpins and he’d lost himself in a pint or two for longer than he cared to remember.
Don’t forget to enter the contest this month to win a copy to see how it all ends!
