If your resolution is to read more historical romance, a good beginning is Sullivan's late Victorian histrom, Is This Real or Just Pretend? (heroine is one of three sisters introduced in Duchess Material, but stands alone). Sullivan writes well, researches loosely but meticulously, and is sensitive to the genre's conventions. With the romance-drivel "out there," and not reading as much of the genre as I used to, I'm happy to say I thoroughly enjoyed…

I've arrived at the near-end of one of the most difficult years of my life. As a missbatesian spinster caring for a declining elderly person, the "caring" part was near-unsurvivable. My mother's Alzheimer's worsened and precipitated my near-collapse from lack of sleep, support, and respite. Then, suddenly, after five years of struggling, arguing, threatening, and cajoling for help from the Quebec government (I won't detail-describe the labyrinthine, kafka-esque state of Quebec's no-health-care system), she was finally called to a nursing home placement.

I miss unabashed romance, without the genre-blurring we often read in the genre today. (And because I dislike romantasy, I read so much less of it.) That's why it was a pleasure to welcome some "unabashed romance" with Jennifer Hayward's latest release, The Davis Deal. If you were a fan of Hayward's HPs (and I was), The Davis Deal…

When I wake up in the wee hours (the plight of the chronic insomniac), I don't want to turn the light on and read on my e-reader; hence, why I do romance reading during sleeping hours and any other kind of reading in the waking hours. Or, to the spinster who needs make a living, taking a half hour in the evening in the reading chair.

As someone who endured a soul-destroying grad school experience and its subsequent cut-throat world of snagging work in your field, one that sees more of annihilation than growth, I've read too many romances with "professor" heroines whose authors know diddly-squat about academia. I am, therefore, leery to read one. But McAlister is an English prof and I hoped finally someone would get it right?