Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
I may also browse and look at some more historicals if I can get some recommendations for good ones that put as much emphasis on the history as the romance (like Roberta Gellis' works) and have very plotty stories, and they've got settings which appeal.
But I've kind of got a list of criteria for the couples-type stuff I'd rather not see in those (e.g. nothing where the hero/heroine are made to look better by having their rivals in competition for the other person's hand-in-marriage be total despicable sociopaths who would never understand what it is to love and are only in it for baser lust/money/psychotic obsession reasons, because that's really irritating to read).
|
If these are your criteria, you can't do better than buy Carla Kelly's historicals. They are set in the rather over-used Regency period, but they are most emphatically not about dukes etc., but
Beau Crusoe is about a scientist, and the other four full-length novels available at Harlequin are about men who work in the navy. The novels are meticulously researched and about highly likeable characters, not least because they are ordinary people who need to act in difficult situations. Not a flat character in sight.
If you like unusual settings in historicals, Elizabeth Lane's
On the Wings of Love is about aviation in early 20th cent. USA.
Judith James's HQN titles are set in the Restoration period. I haven't read her Harlequin titles yet, but from other books I have read, while they do have characters with larger-than-like tendencies, I can't recall any mercenary rivals, and they feature highly unusual plot elements and a lovely, lyrical style.