Five Minutes Peace

BOOK NEWS: Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

Eep! After writing three action-romance collaborations with Bob Meyer (Don't Look Down, Agnes and the Hitman and Wild Ride) Crusie treats her fans to an all-Crusie title.

However, Maybe This Time isn't a return to 'classic' Crusie. She is following a recent fascination with the paranormal, mixing a spooky old house, ghosts, and a story loosely based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

The first chapter is available for free on Jennifer Crusie's website.

It's out (in the UK) at the end of the month and has a fabulous - very red - cover. Look out for our review soon.

BOOK REVIEW: The Lost Guide to Life and Love by Sharon Griffiths

When food writer Tilly Flint has one too many arguments with her boyfriend Jake, she ends up abandoned in a cottage miles from anywhere. The couple had planned a working holiday in the Penines, but Tilly ends up watching him drive away, leaving her newly-single and very much alone.

However, Tilly is surprised at the excitement that bubbles in her stomach along with the terror, and, having discovered she once had family in the area, she she vows to make the best of things and to spend time getting to know the bleak landscape and its inhabitants.

The story moves up gear when Tilly has a chance encounter with a premier footballer, Clayton Silver. He is entranced by her and her no-nonsense attitude to celebrity, and the two begin a whirlwind relationship. Soon, Tilly's life includes glitzy parties, flashy romance, and mystery...

BOOK NEWS: A Most Lamentable Comedy

I have read and enjoyed many books from the Little Black Dress imprint so although I don't often 'do' historical, I'm looking forward to trying this one.

A Most Lamentable Comedy follows the travails of Lady Caroline Elmhurst as she attempts to revive her flagging fortunes via the mysterious - and dashing - Nicholas.

Neither realises that the other is penniless - and neither can afford to fall in love...

You can peek at an extract here.

"Romance is Everything" at WH Smith's

I have a bit of an addiction to reusable bags and I quite fancy this one from Mills & Boon. It's featured in a few promotions over the past few months and is currently free with four M&B books from W H Smith's.

I haven't read a Mills & Boon for years (not since studying them on my English Lit degree course, in fact), but this may well convince me to give them another go.

BOOK REVIEW: Girl From Mars by Julie Cohen

We all know a good book can keep you awake until the small hours whilst you scramble to finish it. When you've been up since the crack and driven for miles with a baby and small boy yet still want to keep your eyes open to see how the book ends, the chances are that this is some kind of fabulous book. Girl From Mars by Julie Cohen is most definitely to blame for the bags under my eyes.

Philomena Desdemona Brown - or Fil for short, is a blue haired, coffee loving, comic drawing kind of genius. Ever since her best mate Jim showed her a copy of a comic about the Girl From Mars she has loved her. Fil then made it her mission in life to become one of the artists who draws the battles and adventures of the female superhero. Now grown up and drawing her heroine she lives with Jim and also has two other male best mates. Stevo and Digger. But then Stevo falls in love and drifts away from the tightly knit group. The remaining three make a vow never to have a relationship and to keep things the way they are.

Mills & Boon in the 21st Century!

Staggeringly successful romance publisher Mills and Boon (they sell over 200 million books every year) has become the first publisher to simultaneously release all its books in both paper and digital formats.

Their recently redesigned website features a facebook-style community where readers can chat with the authors, access exclusive free online reads and buy eBooks directly.

Do you read Mills and Boon books? Would you read them in eBook format? (And how FANTASTIC a title is The Millionaire's Inexperienced Love-Slave?!)

The New Romantics

Seven British romance novelists - Lucy Diamond, Kate Harrison, Matt Dunn, Veronica Henry, Milly Johnson, Jojo Moyes and Sarah Duncan - have banded together under the name The New Romantics. They aim to promote their chosen genre (much like the crime writers that formed The Murder Squad).

Romance is a massively popular and hugely varied genre that gets continually derided (or ignored) by both the media and literary establishment. And it's a genre that focuses on subjects that are traditionally 'female' - love, relationships, the domestic sphere, and family. Interesting, no?

The New Romantics are standing up to say 'we are intelligent professionals and we are proud to write and read romance'. Hurrah for that.

There's also a fab competiton running on the site to win a novel a month for a year. The closing date is 8 May so don't delay!

BOOK REVIEW: Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James

When I was sent this book, I looked at the cover, laughed, and thought I don't think so... And then I started reading it and I absolutely adored it.

Set in 1783, Jemma, Duchess of Beaumont has returned to London (and her husband) from Paris (and her lover(s)), but she's not planning to settle down, that's for sure. She fully intends to be just as independent and shocking in London as she was in Paris. And then a distant cousin, Lady Roberta, comes to stay. Roberta has fallen for the dastardly Duke of Villiers at first sight and wants Jemma's help in seducing and marrying him.

After giving Roberta a foxy makeover, Jemma challenges Villiers to a chess match, hoping to humiliate him as revenge for his dishonouring of another friend's husband and also mindful of the fact that if he falls for and marries Roberta, that will be the ultimate humiliation (Jemma's not a fan of marriage).

BOOK REVIEW: An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James

I absolutely adored Eloisa James's Desperate Duchesses. In fact my rave review is quoted in James's latest book, An Affair Before Christmas. Taking place immediately after Desperate Duchesses, An Affair Before Christmas focusses mainly on new characters, the Duke of Fletcher and his wife, Poppy.

Poppy's beyond-overbearing and opinionated mother has convinced Poppy of a wife's (particularly if that wife is a duchess) duties to her husband and of what she can expect in return. And let's just say that Poppy's mother's opinions of both men in general and her daughter in particular are far from high. So although Poppy is in love with her husband (and he with her), she's never been able to show him in, you know, the bedroom. And, after four years of marriage, it's started (started?) to become a problem.

But, along with Poppy and Fletch, An Affair Before Christmas also features Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, who behaved so scandalously in the first book. The Duke of Villiers, with whom Jemma was conducting a shocking chess match (no, really) in the first book, is in bed with fever, following a duel with Jemma's brother, Damon. So their chess match is postponed, leaving Jemma at a loose end... and free to get into yet more trouble.