u/Competitive-Yam5126

Found a stunning first printing of The Lion's Lady as well as a bunch others!

This story starts as all great stories do: with me doomscrolling on my phone through Facebook Marketplace, looking for a quick shot of dopamine. Someone had posted a few boxes of old romance books for sale, my own personal brand of heroin. There were four boxes of Harlequins, labeled “junk”. Now, boxes of old Harlequins are not that unusual, but my trained eye saw them and thought “those look pretty fuckin’ old.”

With $50 in hand, I drove to the west end of town and picked them up. My husband reluctantly helped me load them out of the car and into the basement. “Don’t you have enough books already?” He said, stupidly. Idiot! What does “enough books” even mean?

I started stacking them in order. The joy of Harlequin books (and other category romances) is that they are published in numbered sequence, so sorting them by date is just a matter of sorting them by number. I sorted backwards until I got the oldest book in the collection, published in 1957 for 35 cents.

I won’t subject you to the full inventory, but there were 186 Harlequin Romances, and an almost complete run of Harlequin Presents, as well as some other odds and ends from the romance archives. But what became clear over time is that I wasn’t just sorting through old books, I was cataloguing a piece of someone’s life.

Her name was Audrey Thompson. I know this because she put her name in all of her books. For a while, she had printed stickers, sometimes a stamp, and sometimes she would just write it in pen.

She bought most of her books from a place called Snowdon Pocket Novels and Comics. Snowdon is a neighbourhood in Montreal, and the stamp says it was “opposite the post office”. The building this shop was in was demolished some time in the 1960s, as part of an urban renewal project for Expo67. The post office is still there though!

Audrey bought most of her books second hand, and there are all kinds of traces of other lives in them. Different names, a library checkout card and discard stamp, a 59 year old coffee ring from someone’s morning that I’ll never know anything about, except this little piece of evidence that it happened. Some books had been defaced with scratches, someone carelessly scrawled “—10” across a few books with a marker, a child traced the letters of one title with a pencil, another wrote “mama” at the top of another. There was an embroidered bookmark from Switzerland tucked inside one book, evidence of a reading session never completed.

Some time in 1984, Audrey stopped buying Harlequins. Her last few books don’t even have her name in them. Maybe she just lost interest, which I guess is fair after 25+ years. But I found them in 2026, and I was invested! I felt a little bereft when I reached the end.

The thing about mass market paperbacks is they weren’t meant to last. They were meant to be read on the bus, passed to a sister, left at a cottage, forgotten in the rain, and eventually thrown away. The vast majority of them from this era are simply gone. Read until they fell apart, lost in the shuffle of a few moves, or eaten by mice.

This is what should’ve happened to Audrey’s books. If they were lucky, they may have gone in a donation bin and been scattered across a dozen used bookstores, and if they were unlucky they would have just been pulped and landfilled.

But instead of that, they wound up with me. A person just unhinged enough to spend a month with the whole set, finding out exactly what Audrey had. Audrey loved these books enough to keep them for her whole life, and mark them as hers. I loved them enough to find a good home for them. And now they’re heading somewhere where they’ll have a purpose, and it’ll be someone’s job to keep them safe.

Fifty-one of Audrey’s books are headed to the Bruce Peel Special Collections at the University of Alberta. They’re building a research collection of Harlequins, and I was able to fill some gaps.

So, love your books. Stamp your name in them and leave a bookmark some place you’ll forget. You never know who is going to spend a month, sixty years from now, reconstructing your questionable taste in fictional men from the little bits you leave behind.

Do you smell that? The sweet, subtle scent of maple syrup in the air? Are those the dulcet opening tones of the Canadian national anthem drifting to you on the breeze? “Give me your eyes, I need sunshine,” you murmur, as the realization slowly dawns on you: it’s Canada Day! And what better way to celebrate than to read a recap/review of an obscure 1990 historical romance set in the great nation of Canada?

Content warning: Look, this really kills the vibe, so let’s get this out of the way. The inciting incident here is the murder of a child. Yeah, I know. Christine, you’re really making it hard for me to keep the jokes coming, but I will bravely soldier on, because someone has to do the Lord’s work.

Meet our heroine, Sara Oliver: plucky servant girl from London, freshly imported to Vancouver for the express purpose of marrying a successful widowed businessman. He’s got a kid, and apparently no one told him that nannies exist and you don’t actually have to marry the help to get your child looked after. Poor Sara is miserable. After her extremely long journey where she was expecting to meet her one true love, she gets stuck with some mean old man. Silver linings though, at least he has a cute kid named Beau. (Insert nervous glances at the content warning above.)

>How quickly she had come to love the child! The memory of his pleading little face wrenched her heart. She was going to even the score for that poor mistreated child!

>“Surely my mission in life is Beau. Why else would I be cast on a foreign shore and cheated out of romance?”

Beau is dead two pages later.

Beau’s dad, Sara’s would-be husband, was apparently embroiled in some shady dealings, and poor Beau gets caught in the crossfire of a robbery gone wrong. Sara’s new raison d’être is to bring this child killer to justice! She only has a vague glimpse of a small man with an eyepatch to go on, but she’s off on the hunt. She nicknames the killer Patch, which makes him sound more like a children’s hospital therapeutic clown and not a cold-blooded child murderer, and her persistent nightmares about Patch start to read a bit ridiculous.

Apparently, scrubbing floors in London is the perfect training montage for chasing murderers across the wilds of British Columbia, because Sara is suddenly an expert horsewoman, tracker, and all-around frontier badass. She trails the killer south to White Rock, but then she gets ambushed and shot in the chest by Patch. Oh damn!

Luckily, the shooting takes place on the land of a ruggedly handsome bearded recluse named Tom Russell. Tom Russell isn’t his real name, his real name was “too feminine” so he took the names of two brothers whose ranch he apprenticed on when he was young. I’m so excited to find out his name is Shirley or Suzanne or something! Tom is an American hiding out in Canada, wanted for a crime he didn't commit. We won't hold his Americanness against him, and as long as the kisses happen on Canadian soil, I'm sure it'll pass CRTC broadcast standards.

Tom engages in a good bit of competence porn. He’s grumpy and standoffish but still finds time to oil her saddlebags! Not a euphemism, sadly. Sara recuperates from her bullet wound with remarkable aplomb, and then sneaks out one night to continue her hunt for Patch. Here’s where things get a little geographically murky.

Christine Carson, the author, is a Floridian who spent a year in British Columbia “researching the novel and imagining what it was like to live in that time and place.” I, too, love to look for reasons to write vacations off as business expenses.

I have my doubts that Christine was poring over newspaper clippings in the archives. The book seems to be set in 1890s, but there’s no mention of the fact that Vancouver had just burned to the fucking ground in the Great Vancouver Fire a few years prior. Tom also says that Canadians are “nicer to their Indians” and… are we sure about that?

So what was Christine doing with her time in BC? I have surmised that she took the Vancouver trolley tour, bought a souvenir mug, and then spent the rest of her “research trip” binge-watching Bordertown in her hotel room.

Bordertown is a hit (I use the term loosely, although judging by the comment section of the YouTube bootleg episode I watched, it was huge in Ukraine), 1989 Canadian TV Western, set in a fictional town that straddles the US and Canadian border. The town’s law enforcement duties are shared between a US Marshal and a Canadian Mountie, who have a bit of a rivalry and a buddy-cop comedy thing going on. I watched one episode for research purposes. It was fun, but the Marshal and the Mountie aren’t secretly banging after they make arrests, so it’s hard for me to feel invested.​

Anyway, after Sara recuperates, she ditches Tom and heads south, thinking Patch must be trying to cross the border into America to hide out. She rides out to, you guessed it, Bordertown! On the way, she is simultaneously baked by the “cruel Canadian sun” and then caught in a blizzard.

In Bordertown, Sara steals a working girl’s dress to blend in. Give Willa Dean her clothing back, Sara! Have a bit of class solidarity! After a brief stint in jail for the crime of hooker dress theft, Tom swoops in to rescue her. He almost rapes her, but then has a sudden attack of conscience because he was nice to her once, and apparently that’s the line. In vintage romance, this is what passes for a sensitive softboi. He also thinks she’s as treacherous and unpredictable as Canadian weather! Canada! Where the book is set!

Her quest for vengeance is put on pause so she can get a job at a stage shop and indulge in some classic Western Romance Industrious Heroine behaviour: washing dishes and scrubbing floors until Tom Russell inevitably wipes out and lands flat on his ass. Cleanliness is next to slapstick.

Kitty owns a stage shop and is described as a “big woman” with “plump hands” all the time because she is 5’10” and weighs “about 160lbs”. Vintage romances always have absurd ideas about what an adult woman should weigh. Did people in the past have hollow bones? Kitty is a good source of information and tracks Patch to a ranch near a town improbably named Dustbuster, in Washington.

Tom and his buddies are planning a cattle drive down to Seattle, which is a geographically ambitious move, apparently thinking the Pacific Northwest is just one big open prairie. Sara wants in, so she can fulfill her vengeance quest for Beau.

And speaking of south of the border, Sara and Tom finally do it after witnessing the miracle of life in the form of a horse giving birth. Nothing hotter than a little animal husbandry!

In the end, Sara gets to kill Patch in a gunfight, hooray for frontier justice! He was also, conveniently, guilty of the crime Tom was falsely accused of committing. Very tidy, let's get back to Canada for the Canadian Kisses. But then, disaster: Tom gets a cut on his face in the final shootout and has to SHAVE HIS BEARD. Sara claims she likes his face better that way. Absolutely not. This is a violation of the sacred romance novel contract. I was promised a happily ever after, and there is no universe in which shaving off a perfectly good beard leads to happiness. I feel like Alexis when Mutt shaved. I’ve also been waiting impatiently to find out what Tom’s real name is. Drumroll please…

We don’t find out. I think Christine forgot that little detail. Further cementing my non-HEA hangover. I wanted Sara to live happily ever after in the Canadian Rockies with a rugged bearded man named Jennifer, damnit! Instead she lives happily ever after in the Canadian Rockies with a beardless man named Tom.

So, in conclusion, the book was a fairly mid-Western (see what I did there?), but I can rest easy knowing we’ve met our quota for Canadian Content regulations. Let’s start a petition for a Heated Rivalry-esque revival of Bordertown, this time with more Mountie on Marshal action.

{Canadian Kiss by Christine Carson}

Here are a few more Harlequins from the big box of old-ass books I bought a few weeks ago. I haven't been wild about the cover art so far, more curious than anything, but goddamn do these mid-70s covers slap.

We start seeing more artist signatures in this era, and the covers seem higher effort overall. Interestingly, Harlequin seems to have decided that all romance novel cover men are tanned white men with brown curly hair cut into roughly the same style.

These are just some highlights that I picked:

• {Timber Boss by Kay Thorpe} As u/Ochenkruto eloquently put it, the Timber Boss fucks. Also this is set in Nova Scotia at a logging camp, I can't think of anything more Canadian Content than that.
• {Moon without Stars by Anne Hampson} What kind of bad trip produced this image? Jesus.
• {Handful of Stardust by Yvonne Whittall} I think she looks really cute! I like her soft, round face and styling. Something about the cover says Cinderella retelling to me (I haven't checked the blurb so that might just be a flight of fancy on my part).
• {Fly Beyond the Sunset by Anne Hampson} This collection moved on from hospital romances to aviation and travel themed romances pretty hard in this time period. Move over doctors, it's sexy pilot time! Whether that was a Harlequin move or the previous owner's own tastes drifting, I could not say.
• {New Man at Cedar Hills by Elizabeth Graham} I love her hair and her cute neckerchief. Ride 'em, cowgirl!
• {Unexpected Hazard by Sophie Weston} Another racing romance!
• {Rendezvous in Venice by Elizabeth Ashton} Her pink hat and matching outfit are too cute!

These were also in the big box of old Harlequins I bought recently, and I thought they were kind of interesting. They are small magazine style short romance stories published by Woman's Weekly Library. Each one is about 60 pages long. Some of them are abridged versions of longer books, and I think some of them are originals.

Mostly, they are a fun time capsule of 60s and 70s fashion!

Here are some more books from my big box of old Harlequins! I'm slowly compiling a list of everything I have and will probably be donating a bunch to the special research collection of Harlequins at the University of Alberta, so let's enjoy them while we can!

The person who owned these before (her name was Audrey, she wrote her name in all her books, and at various points in her life had custom stickers and a stamp) was a big fan of Mary Burchell, so I have a lot of them! Mary Burchell was the pen name of Ida Cook, a badass who rescued Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. I have books of hers from 1959-1983, which is just a part of her publishing career. You can also watch how the Harlequin Books style changed over the decades as you scroll through. They used to use a variety of fonts and cover art styles, before switching to a more cohesive, uniform look in the late 70s.

{Cinderella After Midnight by Mary Burchell}

{Away Went Love by Mary Burchell}

{Take Me With You by Mary Burchell}

{The Curtain Rises by Mary Burchell}

{The Girl in the Blue Dress by Mary Burchell}

{Loving is Giving by Mary Burchell}

{Remembered Serenade by Mary Burchell}

{Tell Me My Fortune by Mary Burchell}

{Song Cycle by Mary Burchell}

{It's Rumoured in the Village by Mary Burchell}

{Nightingales by Mary Burchell}

{Masquerade with Music by Mary Burchell}

Someone had an enormous lot of romance novels for sale and I took it on a whim. These were inside a box labeled "Junk". JUNK! These are High Art. Here's a small selection of old Harlequin hospital romances. Do expect me to bore you to tears with all 400+ books I got over the next few weeks.

{Hospital at Night by Marguerite Lees} - I love how pulpy and dramatic this cover looks, with the little black and white vignettes. Hospital stuff! A little peck on the cheek (steamy)! Someone getting the shit kicked out of them!

{Doctors Together by Jean S. MacLeod} - Doctors... Together?! Female doctors being a novelty just tickles me. Fun fact: Jean S. MacLeod lived to be 103 and was writing romance novels for 60 years, from 1936-1996.

{Australian Hospital by Joyce Dingwell} - This one looks like a straight up horror movie.

{General Hospital by Marguerite Lees} - I'm choosing to believe the soap opera is based on this book. They would've come out at about the same time!

{The Gentle Surgeon by Hilda Pressley} - Unlike most surgeons, who are known dickheads in vintage hospital romances, this one is nice!

{Second Year Nurse by Valerie K. Nelson} - She's a second year nurse, Dr. Doctor! Leave her alone. She's working very hard.

{Thursday Clinic by Anne Lorraine} - Ugh, not Thursday Clinic. I'm assuming that's when she has to work with Dr. Douchebag.

{Nurse of All Work by Jane Arbor} - Another very pulpy cover. She's doing it all! Attending the opera, racing in cars, seducing James Bond.

And the last picture is of the whole set that I got. And there are more, stay tuned! Or block me!

Hi, hello, it’s been a minute! Saddle up for a miserable journey to the medieval world of Jude Deveraux, where two bad bitches claw at each other for the privilege of winning a man-shaped scrap heap of disappointment named Gavin. Yes, those scraps have a name, and it’s Gavin Montgomery.

Content Warnings: We’re running the full gauntlet here. Sexual assault and rape (between the main characters; that’s 80s bodice rippers for you), domestic violence, suicide, and miscarriage. Also other woman/other man drama to the nth degree. We are, as the kids say, doing the most.

This book is about two hot girls, Judith and Alice. Judith has been training for her whole life to become a prioress, but her dad takes one look at her ambitions and says “absolutely not.”

>“You’re the only one I have left,” Robert said, his voice heavy with disgust. “You will marry and give me grandsons.”

He marries Judith off to this guy named Gavin Montgomery, who has the financial prospects of a turnip farmer but a surplus of brothers, which is evidence of a strong Y chromosome presence in the bloodline. Problem: Gavin has already pledged his undying love to Alice. Mme. Deveraux is working overtime to make us hate Alice because she is skinny and blonde and has bad teeth that she hides under falsely demure smiles. Well guess what Jude, I like Alice! And I will grit my teeth and like her through this whole book just to spite you! Alice is a morally grey (okay… charcoal) character who is just trying to girlboss her way through a man’s world. Sure, she has sex with people just to manipulate them for information and then has them pushed off of turrets, but a girlboss needs to break a few eggs to make an omelette, and Alice wants the whole brunch buffet.

>“She did not let people see inside her; she hid her hurt well. [...] Scorned by her mother, Alice turned to her father for love. But the only thing Nicolas Valence cared for came from a bottle. So Alice learned to take what was not given to her. [...] She wanted it all—Edmund’s fortune and position and Gavin’s passion. Yes, if she were cautious, she would have them both; Gavin for the nights, Edmund’s wealth for the day.”

As is her right!

So, since I’ve pledged my allegiance to team Alice, I must hate our main character Judith, right? Absolutely not. I am a girl’s girl and Judith is also great. And, like all hot girls who came before them and will come after, both Judith and Alice have terrible dads. Judith’s is violent and physically abusive to an extreme, and Alice’s is a neglectful drunk. Hot girls, I would recommend going to therapy and resolving your attachment style issues, but it is the 1400s so I guess you’ll just have to fight over a wet fart of a man. Tragic. As Judith’s mother wisely advises: “I will tell you something that you must hear. Never, never must you trust a man.” Hear that? Men ain’t shit!

Well, Gavin ain’t shit, that’s for sure.

The only things Gavin seems to have going for him are his three hot brothers, all of whom sound like much better options, and the fact that he is the most topographically interesting man on the planet. He’s all defined cheekbones, dimpled chin, knobbly abs, shoulder mounds, big thicc calves. What an intriguing elevation map he would make! Personality-wise, he’s a dud.

After making moon-eyes at each other on their wedding day, Judith catches Gavin professing his undying love to Alice. This, understandably, makes her a little upset. Judith, fiery redhead that she is, gets all up in his face about it and tries to make him suffer some consequences for his actions. Accountability? Not on Gavin’s watch!

>“Gavin drew back his arm and slapped her. An hour before he would have sworn that nothing could have made him harm a woman.”

Except for being a little lippy after catching you pledging your love to another woman on your wedding day! Gavin and Judith’s relationship, if we can call it that, continues to grow like a blue-green algae bloom, leaking cyanotoxins into my eyes. Case in point:

>“She was a bitch! A conniving, masterful bitch! All he could think was that he wanted to beat her and make love to her at the same time.”

Why is she being such a bitch?

>“He’d raped her once, used the pain of her hair twisted around his arm to command her to him the second time.”

A tough case to crack, my dude. Maybe you’ll figure it out eventually.

>“What did it matter if he raped Judith again? Hadn’t he enjoyed it the first night? He undressed quickly and slid into the empty bed. He didn’t want to rape her again.”

A Prince! A prince among men! Consent King Gavin.

>“I don’t know. I hate him, I love him, I despise him, I adore him. I don’t know. He is so big—”

Relatable.

Judith and Gavin are locked in a cycle of mutual misery and relentless banging, so what’s Alice been up to this whole time, you ask? She, sensibly, marries for money (again, the correct move) to some horrible man named Edmund. Edmund is abusing a woman named Constance, among his many charming qualities. We also meet Jocelin, a hot rakish bard with a heart of gold and a libido to match, who is tangled up in Alice and Edmund’s toxic situation. He saves Constance’s life and hides her in a barn loft. The charming rogue and the wounded bird! This dynamic should be dried, ground into a powder, laid out in a fat line, and snorted directly into my mucous membranes the way it hits the dopamine centres of my brain. Give it to me pure and uncut.

>“Jocelin slipped four plums inside his doublet; he knew how much Constance loved fresh fruit. In the last weeks, his life had begun to revolve around what Constance did and did not like. Watching her unfold, petal by soft petal, had been the most delightful thing that had ever happened to him.”

Ugh, my heart! Jude, leave my sexy little barn kittens alone. Alas, this ends in tragedy when they are betrayed. Constance takes her own life rather than face Edmund’s torment. Jude, that is rude as hell. No more stealthing tragic endings into my romance novels, even for side characters. Get out of here with that shit! Joss kills Edmund, which means Alice now has her ticket to freedom: she’s a young wealthy widow, which is basically hitting the jackpot.

Meanwhile, there’s this whole interlude where Judith gets abducted and Gavin rides to the rescue. It actually takes up most of the book and I did not care at all.

Alice then tries to scheme her way back into Gavin’s pants and, in the process, causes Judith to have a miscarriage. Vintage bodice rippers love this move. If a pregnancy is announced before the last chapter, you can bet your last farthing that the baby isn’t making it to the epilogue. I think because it’s a cheap way to crank up the emotional stakes, without having the inconvenience of having to work around an actual infant in the plot.

After that, we get the world’s most unsatisfying Happily Ever After where Alice goes full crazy and accidentally scars her own face with boiling oil. This solves Gavin’s little Betty and Veronica problem, and he finally realizes he doesn’t love Alice anymore, I guess because she’s ugly now.

That’s it. That’s the ending. That’s the note Jude decided to go out on. I’ve never been so bummed out. Take me back to the barn!

{The Velvet Promise by Jude Deveraux}

Remember when I reviewed Chandra by Catherine Coulter and I said I would only review the sequel, {Fire Song by Catherine Coulter}, if I found a copy with the original cover? Well, now I have to eat my words because here it is.

I also found {Midnight Star by Catherine Coulter}, {Night Storm by Catherine Coulter}, {Calypso Magic by Catherine Coulter}, and {Midsummer Magic by Catherine Coulter}.

Up next is {A Rose in Splendor by Laura Parker} which features my favourite sub-category of cover art: Robert McGinnis goes absolutely buck wild with a naked man.

{The Edge of Light by Joan Wolf}

{The Dragon and the Jewel by Virginia Henley} and {The Pirate and the Pagan by Virginia Henley} with the original, fully embossed, insane colour scheme covers.

{The Masquers by Natasha Peters} This seems to be about the inherent romance of banging your husband's enemy. I'm on board! Fictionally speaking!

{Moonstruck Madness by Laurie McBain}

A whole bunch of Rebecca Brandewyne: {Rainbow's End by Rebecca Brandewyne}, {The Outlaw Hearts by Rebecca Brandewyne}, {Across A Starlit Sea by Rebecca Brandewyne}, and {Desperado by Rebecca Brandewyne}.

Next are the stepbacks:

{Upon a Moon-Dark Moor by Rebecca Brandewyne} This is straight-up Wuthering Heights fanfic, if anyone is still feeling that urge.

{The Jacaranda Tree by Rebecca Brandewyne}

{Angel Rogue by Mary Jo Putney}

{The Maiden Bride by Rexanne Becnel}

{This Side of Heaven by Karen Robards}

{The Love Charm by Pamela Morsi}

{Wild Oats by Pamela Morsi}

{Runabout by Pamela Morsi}

I actually got more but I will torment you no further!

I scored all of these for $1, and when I brought them up to the cash the volunteer was very excited that I liked Regencies and gave me the Heyer book out of her private stash, which was super sweet!

I have read other Heyer and McNaught books, but not these ones, and I've never read the other authors so I'm very pleased with this little haul.

{Sylvester by Georgette Heyer}

{Something Wonderful by Judith McNaught}

{The Passionate Prude by Elizabeth Thornton}

{The Rake and The Reformer by Mary Jo Putney}

{The Bartered Bride by Elizabeth Mansfield}

I went to renew my library card today and found this on the sale shelf. A gift from the thrift goddess for my good behaviour, and for Medieval May!

{Never Cross A Highlander by Lisa Rayne}

From the late 80s to the mid-90s, medieval romance was everywhere. The Middle Ages are a treasure trove for romance writers: nice and thick stone walls for maximum forced proximity, a smorgasbord of arranged marriage options, FMCs whose choices were ‘marry this guy’ or ‘get abducted by that guy.’ Or why not both, and in that order, and maybe fall in love with both of them!

Western culture has a history of turning to the Middle Ages whenever real life gets to be a little too much. The Victorians did it to escape industrialisation, and the hippies in the 60s did it to reimagine new ways of living. Whomst among us hasn’t fantasized about a simpler time when the world feels a bit too complicated. Reaching back to an imagined past reveals a longing for the kind of moral clarity only a knight on a quest can offer. Judging by how things are going, it feels like the conditions are right for another Medieval Market Boom.

If you’d like to join this informal quest, just pick up a medieval romance. 80s, 90s, 00s, new release, doesn’t matter! Even the 70s, if you’re feeling brave. Write a review or just show us the cover!

Anyway, enough blathering, let's look at some stepbacks.

{The Rose of Blacksword by Rexanne Becnel} - Art by Robert Sabin. Yes, bring that knight to his knees, sis! I also like the nosey horse and knight in the background.

{For My Lady’s Heart by Laura Kinsale} - Art by Gregg Gulbronson. This may seem understated at first glance, but this is actually the most beautiful stepback ever made. The orange haze over the castle in the background! The hawk! Her emerald green dress with tiny embroidered dragonflies! Were backless dresses a thing in the Middle Ages? Who cares!

{Charming the Prince by Teresa Medeiros} Art by Lynn Sanders. - The model here is Cherif Fortin and he was Lynn Sanders muse. She actually found him working at a Medieval Times, which is so appropriate.

{Keeper of the Dream by Penelope Williamson} Art by Elaine Duillo.

{Lady and the Wolf by Julie Beard} - Art by Victor Gadino. Every strand of hair, every crinkle in the shirt, and every thread of embroidery is all getting equal attention. I’ve included a close-up so you can soak it all in.

{The Knight of Rosecliffe by Rexanne Becnel} Art by Robert Sabin.

{Where Magic Dwells by Rexanne Becnel} Art by Robert Sabin.

{Wild by Jill Barnett} Art by Steve Assel.

{Wonderful by Jill Barnett} Art by Steve Assel. - This one makes me laugh because of the super nonchalant double rider side saddle horse jump.

{Wicked by Jill Barnett} Art by Steve Assel.

{A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught} Art by Morgan Kane.

{Shadows and Lace by Teresa Medeiros} Art by Elaine Duillo.

A thrift find too good not to share. Someone very rudely stuck a sticker right on his magnificent face. I'm seriously considering sending this book to an art restorer, I love it so much. Baumgartner Restoration, please DM me.

Luckily Sharon Spiak, the artist, has full poster sized prints for sale on her website, so I can decorate my tastefully sparse modern minimalist contemporary living room with this masterpiece.

{Heaven by Bobbi Smith}

In 1576, Tycho Brahe, Denmark’s resident astronomer and all-around chaos goblin, was gifted an entire island by the king. He used it to build an underground observatory called Stjärneborg (Star Castle). Tycho also sported a gold prosthetic nose, the result of a math-fueled duel gone wrong, and kept a pet elk who, in a tragic turn of events, got absolutely sloshed at a banquet, tumbled down the stairs, and died. Pour one out for Tycho’s elk.

Seaflame, a 1980 Golden Age of Piracy romance by Janice Young Brooks and Jean Brooks-Janowiak, a sister-in-law team writing as Valerie Vayle, is dedicated to Tycho Brahe. “Why not?” the dedication reads.

Now that I’ve read it, I can definitely confirm that the dedication is not a non-sequitur. This book has the energy of a drunk elk falling down the stairs. It’s chaotic, weirdly majestic, and a little tragic

At its core, Seaflame is about women who take up space with the kind of joyful, reckless abandon that makes men nervous and me delighted. We’ve got Genevieve, her pirate-captain sister Evonne, and their infamous mother Sabelle. These ladies are not here to be rescued… they’re too busy dodging the hangman, captaining pirate ships, and negotiating ransoms while also sneaking off for secret trysts with a horse-thieving lawyer who moonlights as an English spy. The men are largely along for the ride, and frankly, they’re lucky to be invited.

Let’s get into it. Spoilers off the port bow!

We meet Genevieve Faunton as a young widow on a ship bound for England. She has, so far, lived a sad, grey little life. She’s spent her life as the Fauntons’ charity case, a fact they remind her of at every opportunity. Her late husband (their son) married her over her objections, and was the sort of man who thought prayer was appropriate for both foreplay and aftercare. Then he promptly died of measles before either situation could be remedied. RIP, I guess.

Genevieve doesn’t remember much about where she came from. She has dim memories of a tent incongruously filled with jeweled pitchers and silks and fist-sized rubies being used as paperweights. There are flashes of a dark-haired, buxom woman and a frightening, fiery night. She was five when she was discovered by the Fauntons in a slave market in Jamaica, and she has been grateful and biddable and lesser-than ever since.

Buckle up Gen, because the good ship Matriarchy (fine, it’s technically called the Black Angel) is here to blow your sad little life up into glorious, chaotic pieces!

This ship has black sails and at its prow is a figurehead of a woman with black wings and a rocket bod. The figurehead is modeled after its captain.

>Boots. Red knee-high boots of rich Moroccan leather, laced up the inside. Cavalier boots encasing a well-shaped ankle and calf. Diamond buckles at the knees of too-well-worn trousers of dusty, indeterminate hue hugged slim, well-muscled thighs. And the heavy linen shirt with its faded blood and powder stains, lace dripping from the cuffs—it did not fit properly, there was a pronounced swell beneath it.

>Genevieve stared straight up and found her astonished gaze pooled in the glittering black eyes of a wholly beautiful, wholly dangerous woman!

Her name is Evonne, and she is Genevieve’s long-lost sister. Evonne lived a much rougher, more daring life after their family separation, but worked her way up to captain of her own ship. No notes, Evonne, you absolute fucking legend.

Gen is overwhelmed and hopefully suggests they should go in search of their lost mother, Sabelle.

>“Do you think she’s still alive?”
“Possible. What difference would it make? She wouldn’t remember us either.”
“Yes, she would! Oh, yes, she would. She loved us, she wouldn’t have forgotten.”
“Love!” Evonne sneered. “You lily-livered sap. That’s something in stories.”

Evonne doesn’t do feelings, as you can see. She also has other plans. You see also aboard Gen’s ship, and now Evonne’s as a prisoner, is Robert St. Justine, a charming rake who was flirting hard with Gen but now happily hops into bed with his new hot lady pirate captor. He’s adaptable.

Evonne plans to ransom Robert back to his enormously wealthy aunt for the absurd amount of one hundred thousand pounds. Given that this is set sometime in the 1690s, I think that’s a bit like asking for eleventy bajillion dollars. Anyway, a negotiator is needed, someone respectable enough to deal with the aunt and unknown enough not to be arrested on sight on English soil. Someone like a biddable young widow who just discovered she has a pirate sister.

This is also a good point to introduce Xantha. She’s the gunner’s mate aboard the Black Angel, and she’s a Black woman. A Black woman, with a name and an occupation, in my 1980s Romance Novel? I nearly fell out of my chair. Seaflame actually represents the world as multiracial, which was genuinely surprising. There’s even a Black doctor and a handful of other characters with actual ethnic diversity. Of course, this comes with a few asterisks. Sure, they cleared the bar, but the bar for vintage romances on this front is so low it’s in hell. Also, while Xantha is a real, fleshed-out character, her dialogue is written in such heavy Patois it sometimes tips over into parody. The intentions are good even if the execution faceplants.

So Gen and Xantha hit London, with Gen posing as the sister of another captive, and negotiate with the magnificently unflappable Dowager St. Justine.

>“That’s utter nonsense! Young lady, you can tell those unspeakable villains that I won’t pay a farthing over ten thousand,” the Dowager said in a slightly lower tone.

>Dear God, I had no idea it would be like this. We might as well be haggling over the price of a pumpkin, Genevieve thought wildly.

At the St. Justine’s house, she meets the lawyer handling Robert’s affairs, the dashing young Jean-Michael Clermont. Clermont was recently involved in breaking the infamous Sabelle out of an English prison, he’s also a spy for the English crown, and he’s possessed of an apparently uncontrollable compulsion to steal horses. He steals at least five over the course of this novel. He clocks Gen’s deception immediately, but finds it more amusing than anything. After a bit of verbal sparring, Gen takes a page from Evonne’s book and tumbles into bed with him.

Michael uses some of those spy skills and finds out his friend Robert is being held by a black-haired lady pirate whose description sounds a lot like his friend Sabelle, “a hard-boiled, black-haired bitch with a tongue could flay an elephant from across the road.” 

Michael breaks on to the Black Angel, intending to rescue Robert, but instead finds him quite content to stay and have sex with the hot lady pirate, thank you very much.

>“I have a fantasy wherein both sisters—”
“I’m writing you out of my will,” Michael announced, hand on the doorknob.

Michael and Genevieve continue their liaison, until the Dowager St Justine gets wind of the fact that Gen is actually working for the pirates. The constables arrive to arrest her, while she’s in bed in Michael’s arms. There’s a mad dash through the streets of London, with Gen and Xantha believing that Michael betrayed them. Michael gets sent to France to continue his spying mission, so he and Gen think they’ve seen the last of each other.

Evonne has grown tired of Robert and is ready to ditch him back on shore, but he sneaks back on board as a stowaway. He convinces her that what she actually needs is a bit of accounting help. He makes himself useful by cataloguing all her pirate booty, and by having contacts in the Americas who are willing to buy. Gen has discovered a talent for reading maps and navigating, so she and Robert are spending time together as the resident pirate indoor kids. Gen decides to take a page from Evonne’s book and sleeps with Robert too. Good for her, and good for him too really. (Evonne cares not a fig and has already cycled through several other lovers of her own at this point.)

At Vigo Bay, where a Spanish treasure fleet meets its real historical end in 1702, Evonne and Gen swoop in on the aftermath and emerge wealthy women. Evonne retires to a private island, her pirating urges satisfied for now. Gen goes to France to continue to look for their mother, only to discover Sabelle has married a French nobleman and may have died in an Alpine avalanche.

Gen and Michael cross paths again in bawdy, decadent, and hedonistic Versailles. Michael is undercover as a lesser French nobleman, sneaking whatever information he can glean to England. Michael maintains a careful distance that reads to Gen as rejection.

Gen, heartbroken and confused by Michael’s behavior, marries a cold and distant Count named André. She quietly shrinks back into herself, and it’s a real bummer.

>“I am courageous—no, I was courageous once. I won’t need to be anymore. André will save me from the necessity.”

André takes Gen to Gibraltar and promptly leaves her there, just in time for Michael to alert the crown that the tactically important town is largely undefended.  The English attack, the soldiers turn mutinous, and Gen understands immediately the the women and children are being set up for rape and slaughter.

Gen remembers that she’s her mother’s daughter, and her sister’s sister. She barricades the women in a chapel and tells them to fight.

>Women in gore-splashed gowns of dainty muslin and satin raised empty muskets to swing as clubs. Swords of dead husbands, sons and fathers glinted in pink-nailed, plump little hands that had never raised anything more dangerous than tweezers. Genevieve felt a swell of hopeless pride choke her. They were beautiful, her doomed, delicate Amazons.

Gen climbs into the rafters and cuts the church bells loose, sending them crashing into the crowd of bloodlust filled men.

>Bells sang and bellowed as they fell, exploding through stone, timber, and flesh.

This is what the matriarchal thread running through Seaflame is really about. Evonne learned early that the world would not protect her, and that this was not a reason to despair, but to act. Gen had it educated and married out of her, and this book is her journey back to it.

It seems all hope is lost and the women will be overwhelmed when she hears a voice call for the men to fall back. Michael cuts his way through the crowd.

>She put her back to his, heart laughing and crying. Together they fought the foe, minds and bodies working as one. She did not know what made her sure of his heart, she only felt the emotion so strong between them, there could be no question.

They emerge victorious and immediately have sex on the blood soaked grass of Gibraltar. Romantic and unsanitary! Their triumphant love is short-lived, though, as Gen is shipped back to France and André, and Michael is hustled into hiding with his cover blown.

The plot mechanics grind through their final moments: André turns from cold to cruel, Michael gets arrested and nearly hanged, Sabelle is resurrected from the Alpine avalanche, André gets murdered, and there’s a daring escape onto Sabelle’s ship the Nightbird. Gen, for some reason, thinks she’ll never see Michael again. “Oh, hell, I run into that boy every few years,” says Sabelle. I don’t know if you noticed, Gen, but so do you!

Finally, Gen, Sabelle, and Evonne all reunite in the Caribbean.

>“My beauties, my treasures,” Sabelle murmured thickly. “I’m rich past all proper due now. Ah, my treasures!”

Sabelle and Evonne, cut from the same cloth and constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, go out on one last raid. It all goes to shit, and Evonne catches a cannon blast. She dies in Gen’s arms.

>“No regrets, Gen. Oh, Gen, I’m so happy!”
“Happy, you fool?” Whatever for?” Genevieve asked brokenly, unable to stop the tears now. Evonne’s face was growing peaceful, their combined tears and the rain rinsing away dirt and blood.
“I’m happy because I’ve had everything. I controlled my own fate. I mastered a crew and a ship. I had adventures and riches… I had so much. I was rich and wild and carefree—and I had love, so much love!”
Genevieve held her closer, kissed her sister’s cheek. It was cool now, cool and translucent as fine marble. “Love, Evonne? Tell me about your love,” she soothed, imagining some tall, dashing sailor.
“Oh Gen—it was the purest, noblest thing I ever knew—it was brave and true and asked nothing in return—oh, Gen! It was you!”

I’m not at all embarrassed to say that I sobbed.

And yes, we do get our happily ever after for Gen and Michael. They earn it, and it’s lovely. But honestly, the heart of Seaflame isn’t their love story, it’s about three women trying to find their way back to each other across oceans and through absolute chaos. This book is wild, messy, and so alive it has no business being this good. I think Tycho’s drunk elk would give it a standing ovation.

{Seaflame by Valerie Vayle}