Tag: Sons of Sin

Guest Review: Days of Rakes and Roses by Anna Campbell

Posted September 13, 2013 by Judith in Reviews | 0 Comments

Guest Review: Days of Rakes and Roses by Anna CampbellReviewer: Judith
Days of Rakes and Roses (Sons of Sin, #1.5) by Anna Campbell
Series: Sons of Sin #1.5
Publisher: Forever Yours
Publication Date: July 2, 2013
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher
Genres: Historical Romance
Pages: 93
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four-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

Lady Lydia Rothermere has spent the past decade trying to make up for a single, youthful moment of passion. Now the image of propriety, Lydia knows her future rests on never straying outside society's rigid rules, but hiding away the desire that runs through her is harder than she could have ever dreamed. And as she prepares for a marriage that will suit her family, but not her heart, Lydia must decide what's more important: propriety or passion?

Simon Metcalf is a rake and adventurer. But for all his experience, nothing can compare to the kiss he stole from the captivating Lydia Rothermere ten years ago. Simon can scarcely believe he's about to lose the one woman he's never forgotten. The attraction between them is irresistible, yet Lydia refuses to forsake her engagement. With his heart on the line, will Simon prove that love is a risk worth taking?

I have to say right from the start that I am not a really big fan of novellas.  Now that’s not to say that I haven’t found many novellas to be highly entertaining and enjoyable.  It’s just not a literary format that appeals greatly.  Too short many times, with hurried conclusions or underdeveloped plots or characters.  Novellas take lots of talents.  It’s like preparing a public speech:  It takes twice as long to prepare for saying half as much.  Yet in this new novella there is lots to like.

It’s a romance that is old as well as new.  Lydia and Simon have walked the romance road before and Simon would like to go down that path again.   Lydia, on the other hand, found that earlier romantic encounter to be embarrassing and humiliating, and has how spent a decade training herself to be proper in all the ways that count and which meet the exacting standards of a society that spends a great deal too much time poking noses where they shouldn’t.  Yes, there’s lots of struggle, lots of going back and forth, lots of weighing pros and cons–family approval vs following one’s own heart.  But all that aside, it is a compelling story that does what it sets out to do and even brings the reader “up to snuff” with the background characters in the story.  For those like me who hadn’t read book one in the series, this was an important factor in figuring out what was going on.  I have great respect for authors who can do that with an economy of words and still maintain the integrity of the primary plot and story line.

All in all, it is a very entertaining novella and one that certainly fleshes out the lives and experiences of the characters in this series and prepares the reader for the second full novel in this series.  I have not read an Anna Campbell book for quite some time so was delighted to reacquaint myself with her writing style and her storytelling abilities.  Lastly, I appreciated the fact that there was no sense that the story ended in a hurried fashion.  It all came together just fine without seeming to be contrived or put together simply because it was time to end the tale.  Another indication that the author had good command of the literary format.  Anyone who has read book one will appreciate this novella, quite possibly more than some of us who had not met these characters previously.  But it is a story that will adequately introduce a reader to this series of books and I look forward to reading book two.

I give this novella a rating of 4 out of 5.

The Series:
Book Cover Book Cover

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This title is available from Forever Yours. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

four-stars

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Excerpt: To Save the Devil by Kate Moore

Posted October 5, 2010 by Holly in Promotions | 0 Comments

Check out this awesome excerpt of Kate Moore’s To Save the Devil.

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“Where are you taking me this time?”  She twisted her face away from his hand.  She had no clear sense of where she was, and she probably had less than a quarter of an hour to convince him to let her go.   
“Going about London alone, you’ve been headed only one place all along–a man’s bed.”  His voice was grim.  “Mine.”
The word was an unmistakable claim.  His voice had the timbre she’d first heard in the brothel.  She turned to judge the intent in those dark eyes.  “You won’t . . . rape me.”  She made herself say the word.  
    “I won’t read you Fordyce’s sermons on The Character and Conduct of the Female Sex.”
    Flickering shadows in the interior of the hack revealed only fragments of his appearance, the hard-edged profile, the gleam in his dark eyes. She had not properly understood him in the brothel.  She had believed him preparing to bed her, and his languid air as a Frenchman had made her think she could overpower him and escape. But outside the brothel, the fastidious vicomte did not exist.
“I don’t know who you are.  Yesterday you wore a cravat and silks, today a Belcher neckerchief and corduroy.”
    “Neighborhoods change.  Depravity . . . remains the same.”
    “Do you have a name?”
    His grin flashed briefly in the dark.  “Will Jones.  Descended on both sides from a distinguished line of fornicators back to the Conqueror himself.”
    “You didn’t have to hunt me down.  I told you I would repay you.”
    “Was that going to be before, or after your arrest for stealing and fencing the goods?”
    “I know exactly where those candlesticks are.”
    “I doubt it.”
    She took a calming breath.  “You are interfering with my plan.”
    “Which was going so well.”
    “There were setbacks, I grant you.”  She’d lost three days.  Her mother was three days closer to disaster.
    “Setbacks, sweetheart? First Leary, then Wilde—both quite willing to sell you, though to Leary’s credit, he had a much higher appreciation of your value.  How long did you expect to pass as a boy in a boys’ school?”
    “I was only going to stay the night.”  Her missteps accumulated moment by wearying moment.
    “What kept you?”  
    She wasn’t going to tell him about Robin.  The little boy had followed her about the school all day, and leaving him behind with his vain hope that a phantom hero would come over the rooftops to save him struck her as the one true crime she’d committed.  Stealing from Will Jones didn’t count.  “Did you come after me for the candlesticks or the clothes?”
    “Ah, Helen, for all your experience in Troy, how little you know of men.”
    There was a teasing note in his voice.  “It was only one man, you know, Paris, endlessly Paris, and a woman can hardly judge others by such a man.  Really the rest of the time, I was among the Trojan women.  Imagine a room full of women, fifty looms and tongues going at once, and old queen’s stern eye on us every minute.”
    “Good at weaving, were you?”  He laughed.  The hack came to a halt.  Leaning close he told her, “You undid my first efforts on your behalf, and when I do a thing, I like it to stay done.”
    “Please, don’t trouble yourself further on my account.  I’m sure you have other business to attend to.”
“I do, Helen, but you see, as I go about my business, you keep turning up in suspicious places.”  Will extracted his prisoner, unwound her from the fragrant blanket, paid the hack driver, and led her through the usual passageways to his door.  “Home,” he announced.  
“I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
“You are an ungrateful baggage, you know.  You were unable to get yourself out of either the brothel or the boys school without my aid and my money.”
    “With which you are quite free for a man from your neighborhood.”
    Argos in the shadows thumped his tale in welcome.  “Argos knows you already.”  Will made her sit two stairs above him on the long staircase.  
    “What are you doing?”
    “Removing my ruined boots from your feet.  Harding will take it ill if you track mud on the rugs.”
    “Harding?”  
He could hear the weariness in her voice.  He doubted she’d slept much in three days.  “You met Harding on the ledge last night.  A good man in at tight spot.”
    “You’ve been in tight spots with him before?”
    “Dozens.”  The stockings she’d stolen from him stuck to her feet in dark coins of dried blood.  Bleeding determined chit.  He swung her over his shoulder and carried her through the door.
    She lay where he put her on the bed and her eyes fell closed.  “I warn you, whatever you mean to do to me, I’ll be asleep.”
    “Oh I doubt that.”
    Her eyes opened at once as he secured her left arm to a bedpost with a silken scarf.  A red streak marked her wrist where he had dangled her from the brothel window two nights before.
    “Do you mean to torture me?”
    “Definitely.”

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I love that excerpt!

Want to win a copy? We’re giving away 5! Check out Kate’s guest post to find out how you can win.

The series:
To Tempt a Saint (Berkley Sensation)To Save the Devil (Berkley Sensation)

This book is available from Berkley Sensation. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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Guest Author: Kate Moore – Bad Boys

Posted October 5, 2010 by Holly in Giveaways, Promotions | 36 Comments

Today historical author Kate Moore is here with us talking about bad boys (one of my favorite topics). Kate’s latest release, the second Sons of Sin book, To Save the Devil, is available now from Berkley Sensation.

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Hello bookbinge fans, and thank you for having me, especially today, the release day for To Save the Devil.

Writing a trilogy has been a whole new learning experience for me teaching me profound respect for my sister authors who keep their series going book after book. Right from the beginning of writing To Save the Devil, book two of my Sons of Sin trilogy, I realized I was stuck with choices I’d made in book one To Tempt a Saint.

What did I have? A missing blackmailer, an upscale brothel where a murder had taken place, a dark slum where a kidnapped teenager was hiding, and a bad boy hero who in book one had disappointed his family, lost his job, and been badly beaten. I also had a time line with major historical events happening that my London-based characters could hardly ignore. How could I weave these elements together into a love story?

I started with the hero. I confess that I’ve always been curious about bad boys even when I thought sexual congress involved external body parts meeting north of the collarbone. Bad boys were troublemakers who wore their jeans slung lower than an Abercrombie model and who openly defied authority whenever they could. At fifteen I suspected, with no real basis for judgment, unless slumber party gossip counts, that bad boys knew moves that good boys didn’t know or wouldn’t make. Writing To Save the Devil would be my chance to explore a bad boy character like some of my favorites—Patrick Swayze’s Johnny Castle from Dirty Dancing, or Dominic West’s Jimmy McNulty from The Wire.

Will Jones, my bad boy hero, doesn’t have fangs, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a drinking habit, or inner demons except of his own making. Mostly he’s a very human bad boy, but like Satan he’d rather “reign in hell than serve in heaven.” His particular hell is a London slum. An ex-spy, in the army he discovered what he was best at was not being himself at all, but disappearing into false identities to get information for the British.

Like all bad boys in romance fiction Will is really an alpha male whose circumstances deprive him of the natural position of authority and leadership his intelligence and energy deserve. He’s arrogant and sarcastic, but competent and fearless. Because bad boys can’t be the men they are meant to be—princes, generals, leaders, CEO’s, chiefs–they become pirate captains or the leaders of outlaw gangs or loners, and buck the system.

Who, I wondered, could help Will Jones stop being his own worst enemy and find his way back into leadership and into his family—a good girl, of course, and she had to be very, very good.

My good girl wasn’t hard to find in1820, a time when girls were told how to be good not only by their parents but also by the publishers of sermons on the subject. Helen, my heroine, has a father who is famous for his strict ideas about female goodness. Helen’s struggle is to find the strength to stand up to her overbearing father and save her mother. Ironically, the hours of Greek lessons her father has imposed on her give her intimate knowledge of one of history’s most independent women—Helen of Troy. My Helen draws inspiration from that ancient beauty and strength from Will, a bad boy fresh from the fight against injustice.

Then history gets in their way. If writing bad-boy-meets-good-girl scenes was the fun part of writing To Save the Devil, working with real history was the tricky part. Naturally, I set this pair of unlikely lovers in the midst of one of the most potentially dangerous terrorist plots in English history. (Yes, they had terrorism back then.) In London in the dark days of early 1820 when the popular old king died and his unpopular son took to his bed ill, a secret insurgent cell gathered arms, trained, laundered money, and plotted to assassinate the entire cabinet. The plotters nearly succeeded except for a certain dinner party in Grosvenor Square. Will’s ties to the Home Office, the part of the government in charge of security, and Helen’s mother’s ties to one of the plotters makes for an uneasy alliance between the lovers. Only in bed can Helen trust Will, and only when each of them has been true to himself can they find their happily ever after.

Whew! In the end, the things I was stuck with–a brothel, a blackmailer, a bad boy, and a terrorist plot–led me to write an emotional story about learning to be your true self by falling in love. I hope you’ll enjoy Will and Helen’s journey. If you are reading the book with a group, there are reading group questions on my website www.katemoore.com. I’d love to hear from you today about bad boys and good girls, English history, Helen of Troy, the writing process, and what’s coming up in the Sons of Sin trilogy.

For more on To Save the Devil and the Sons of Sin trilogy see my website at www.katemoore.com. Readers can follow me on my Kate Moore author page on Facebook, or at us.penguingroup.com.

I’ve lived most of my life along the California coast. That experience has made me a jeans-wearing, toes in wet-sand, married to a surfer, fog-loving weather wimp, with a hint of East Coast polish from spending my college years in Boston. Family history connects me to Irish and English immigrants, Cornish miners, gold prospectors, and adventurers who sailed around Cape Horn bound for San Francisco. 

When I’m not reading, writing, teaching, or brainstorming, I walk in the redwoods; feed birds; collect books, apples and leaves; watch the tele-novellas on Spanish-language TV; and immerse myself in all things English. My favorite food groups are butter, brown sugar, dark chocolate, and red wine. My early literary influences were The Little Engine That Could, The Little Red Hen, and Winnie the Pooh. Austen, Heyer, Chaucer, and Homer came later and inspired me to put that first plot on paper.

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Thanks Kate!

I’ll tell you a secret – I loved Will Jones, the hero of To Save the Devil. He was everything Kate described above and more. 

Would you like to read To Save the Devil and see for yourself how great Bad Boy Will really is? We have five (5) copies to giveaway! Leave a comment on this post welcoming Kate and telling us what you think of Bad Boys (love em or hate em?), and you’ll be entered to win. Contest ends 10/12 at 11:59 p.m.

The series:

To Tempt a Saint (Berkley Sensation)To Save the Devil (Berkley Sensation)

To Save the Devil is available now from Berkley Sensation. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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