The last novel in Juliana Gray’s “A Princess in Hiding” Victorian romance series, How to School Your Scoundrel features a challenging hero and a remarkably self-possessed and capable heroine. Luisa is the eldest and last hidden princess. Like her sisters Emilie and Stefanie, she fled her country after her father, the Crown Prince, was murdered in a coup. Luisa’s husband was killed as well. Secreted away by a first-rate manipulator and conniving bastard, their uncle, the sisters were trained to masquerade as men and then […]
Shakespeare + Monsters + Dick Jokes = Christopher Moore
As I’ve mentioned before, I love Christopher Moore for his ability to make me forget the troubles of the world. If he has to do that by making me laugh at the most sophomoric humor imaginable, so be it. With Serpent of Venice, though, Moore surpasses this admittedly low bar by adding two other components that I dearly love: Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe. At a book signing I attended, Moore explained that he got the idea for setting a monster story in Venice while […]
How to Make an Interesting Topic Unbearable
The headquarters of the Vidocq Society were housed in a Victorian brownstone in Philadelphia. I know this because author Michael Capuzzo reminds the reader at least four times throughout the 426 pages of The Murder Room, so he must think it’s pretty significant. This is a minor complaint about a book that is rife with problems. I picked this book up with high hopes, drawn in by what I think is a fascinating subject. The Murder Room is a work of non-fiction about a real-life […]
Eve Dallas hunts possible vampires and serial killers
Eternity in Death – 3 stars Creation in Death – 4.5 stars Creation in Death is book 25 in the In Death series (and the novella precedes it, counting as 24.5) and this is possibly not the place you want to start, as a whole load of character development comes before. However, as the books are a bit like episodes in a crime procedural show, picking up with this one would be like watching a random episode of a show a few seasons in. I don’t think there’s any major […]