I am sooo embarassed, but I just have to share this book with you guys. It is not my fault that I am reading it. My sister found it on an airplane (people are always leaving books and magazines in the seatback pockets...and we will page them to return to claim, but if they don't show up...) and then she left it at my Mom's house for me to read.
It is a romance novel and I don't usually read that kind of thing. The Outlander series or those Janet Evanovich harlequins are the only things of that type I have read in the past 20 years!
SOOooo anyway, this book is called Wideacre and it is by Philippa Gregory and I only started reading it because I had finished Sex Lives of Cannibals by J Maarten Troost --which was very good by the way-- and I had nothing to read for the 5 hour flight back to the West Coast. It is 600+ pages and I figured that I would start it just to keep my mind occupied and then I could turn it in for credit at the Used Book Store without finishing it. Well, I am totally sucked into the thing. And I don't even like the heroine! She is sort of a Scarlett O'Hara anti-heroine. She keeps doing these horrendous things and getting away with everything and I am not sure if I keep on reading because I want to see her triumph or I want to see her downfall. And I find out that this book is the first of a trilogy! But I swear I am not reading another. I am only just over half way thru the thing and I will HAVE to finish it now! aaaargh. BUT I am enjoying it in a perverse sort of way. Her writing is just so darn easy to read and before you know it, you are seduced and you want to know more about these characters.

-Amanda from Seattle

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It is a romance novel and I don't usually read that kind of thing.

Don't apologize! I not only read them, I write them!

DebBee

Phillipa Gregory is fantastic. I haven't read Wideacre, but I have read her stuff based in England. I do like historical romances. Try The Virgin's Lover, The Other Boleyn Girl, and one more that I can't think of right now :)

Maiden

write them? any published

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write them? any published

No, alas. I won an award once, and I've had articles published in a local magazine, but none of my books sold. I have a bunch of published friend, though, and can name drop with the best of them, at least when it comes to romance novels!

DebBee

that's pretty cool, I always want to get into a good romance, but find those covers so silly! Read the Outlander series and loved it but after that the few romances I've read I don't really like so much.

H

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I have a bunch of published friend, though, and can name drop with the best of them

Hey, Deb. Let's see you name drop! I'd like to know if you know any of my faves.

Knit Wit

Okay, let's see. People I can legitimately call friends:

Joan Johnston
Heather Graham Possessere
Linda Anderson (you may not have heard of her. She had a few books out some years ago and if you can get hold of them, they're wonderfu)
Marcia King-Gamble
Carol Stephenson (fairly newly published, only 2 or 3 books out so far, but many more coming!)
Patricia Lewin, aka Patricia Keelyn
Deborah Smith (wonderful Georgia writer!)
Debra Dixon (not writing too much anymore, but very darned good at it when she did)

I'm sure I'm missing a few, but those are the ones that spring readily to mind.

Now, people I've met once or twice, but who probably wouldn't remember me:

Nora Roberts
Jennifer Blake (very sweet and depressingly beautiful!)
Janet Evanovich
LaVyrle Spencer (even exchanged recipes with her once!)
Jayne Ann Krentz
Ann Maxwell (She and her husband led us on a tour of Seattle years ago. Great fun.)

DebBee

Try Moonstruck Madness, Dark Before the Rising Sun and Chance the Winds of Fortune by Laurie McBain (it's a trilogy). I HAD to write a paper on these books in college for a course I was taking on Popular Culture. Reading Romance Novels and Watching Soap Operas for a semester, it was hard work! ;-) I really enjoyed them then, although I haven't read them in years (they are still on my shelf, perhaps I should include them in my current stack of "to read"s)

-Amanda (I've got a signed copy of Snow and Ashes winging it's way to me as we speak!)