Thyra Dane

My laptop screen looks like an etch-a-sketch right now – a gray mass with little lines and that`s about it. This means no writing about Sookie the Shieldmaiden since what I had written was on that laptop. If I bat my eyes at my husband I can borrow his laptop but Shieldmaiden is on Summer vacation until I can hook up my own laptop to an external screen.

But nothing is so bad that it isn`t good for something, as we say here in Scandinavia. No writing means more reading. And since I`ve been reading some pretty good stuff lately, I figured I would share my treasures.

Here goes:

First off I want to recommend two Historical Romances. Yes, I hear your moaning and complaining but HR is different now than in the days of bodice rippers and heaving chests. Very different. I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading HRs again a year ago after having given up on the genre when I was 16.

The first one is Miranda Davis` The Duke`s Tattoo

This is a fun read about a rake who wakes up one morning to find himself tattooed around a very private place. All he can remember is a pair of eyes and a girl who said she was sorry. In his pocket he finds a bottle of medicine for his sore shoulder and those are the clues he has to go on to find the woman who did this to him.

This book was self-published and the anarchist in me LOVES the idea of people publishing themselves instead of having to conform to what editors and publishers think is sellable. Go buy this one and I guarantee that you`ll get both a chuckle and a smile on your face.

The next HR I want to recommend is D.L. Carter`s Ridicolous 

The heroine in this book and her sisters and mother are sort of free servants and cooks for their cousin who took them in when the heroine`s father died and they had nowhere to go. When the cousin dies they know the poorhouse is the next step for them and since they`d already spent time there and don`t want to go back, the heroine dresses up as the cousin and pretends it was she who died.

On a trip to visit the cousin`s property she meets the hero of the story and they become best of friends. The heroine is very witty and soon she is the toast of London – as a man.

This is also a fun read and something to chuckle over at the beach (or under the umbrella if you have the same rain showers as we have here in Scandinavia  🙁  )

That same author has written another book but from quite a different universe: The Use and Complexity of Sex Magic. This book is even better than Ridiculous, in my opinion, but doesn`t sell as well according to the author. I think I know the reason – the title does not describe the book very well. This is not porn. It`s not even erotica even if it does have sex scenes.

It`s set in a world where elves are lords and they all look at the mortal humans who have no magic. The heroine has just been thrown out of the house where she and her father lived because her father had the audacity to get sick. She escapes to sort of a hospital where she nurses her father before he dies. In that hospital she meets the hero of the story, a lord who`s just recovered an example of a book about Sex Magic – a kind of magic noone knows about and which he wants to explore.

The author plans on writing more books in this series and I am looking forward to reading them.

Last, but not least, I want to shout out that the fifth book in the amazing Jane True series has just been published. I`ve only just started reading it but it looks really good!

Have a great summer!