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#writerreadswriting Recommends: The Romance Reader’s Guide to Life
I loved this book. Flat out. Had me at hello. I found it when I was on vacation in Atlanta. My husband was at a conference, so The Son and I were doing a bookstore-and-ice-cream tour of the city. Atlanta, BTW, is a fabulous place to do this particular tour. I had heard about this title on the Smart Podcast Trashy Books podcast, and I opened it in the store to see if I’d like it. Now, I am very leery of the “narrated by a ghost,” trope. It’s gotten a bit old, but in this book it’s handled deftly and with humor, as is everything else. There’s a lot…
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Out of the Omnibus: The Corsican Sisters
During the Age of Empire, a particular sub-genre of thriller/horror stories emerged in English letters. It involved English travellers finding out that the natives of whatever country they were tramping through might not actually like them. This sub-genre includes “The Corsican Sisters,” by Violet Hunt. The sisters in question are two beautiful peasant girls whisked away from their humble existence by an English family determined to give the girls a glorious season in London. They are then returned to Corsica and the family moves on. The sisters, however, do not, or rather, they cannot. The story is told from the point of view of Lelis, who is the daughter of…
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Out of the Omnibus: Violet Hunt
Who? Don’t worry, I’d never heard of her before either, and I have no idea why not. I started my dive into THE OMNIBUS OF CRIME in the back, in the section labeled: MACROCOSMOS (Stories of the Human and Inhuman) pt. 2: Tales of Blood and Cruelty. Why? I’m not sure, except it sounded good. And of the six stories there, I decided to start with “The Corsican Sisters,” by Violet Hunt. Who? Well. Let me tell you. First of all — this is Violet Hunt here. Now, that’s an interesting face. She’s an English writer, and nobody I ever heard of before. But I like her. A lot. She…