The Garden Intrigue

I’m thrilled to be part of Lady Jane’s third anniversary celebration (how has it been three years already?). Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches will be emcee-ing and the always wonderful Eloisa James will be reading from her new memoir, Paris in Love.

Since Garden Intrigue isn’t officially out yet, there won’t be copies for sale, but I will bring bookplates with me that can be pasted into Garden Intrigue when it arrives. And, as always, I’m happy to sign all your copies of the older books!

Lady Jane’s Salon convenes this Monday, February 6, at Madame X at 94 West Houston Street. The price of admission is one used romance novel or $5 to benefit women’s charities.

Hope to see you there!

– Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society.

I have to admit, it was the cover that caught my eye on this one, a rickety old mansion. A young adult novel, it’s a little bit Harry Potter and a little bit The Westing Game (does anyone else remember that book?). I read it in one night and am definitely going for the second book in the series.

– Eloisa James, The Duke Is Mine.

I’ve really been enjoying Eloisa James’ new fairy tale series (I’m particularly looking forward to the next one, The Ugly Duchess). This one is a take on the Princess and the Pea story. It’s also the origin of the Lucky Duck Club… but that’s a side point.

– H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights.

This was the week’s unexpected treat. My little sister has been to telling me I have to have to watch Friday Night Lights, the television show. Being me, I wound up reading the book it was based on instead. Since my interest in football is roughly commensurate with watching paint dry (and the paint might have a slight edge there), I’d expected to fling it aside after a few pages. Instead I sat up half the night. It’s a compelling and beautifully written portrait of a particular place, its culture, its people, its ups and downs. In short, nonfiction as it should be.

I have so far been thwarted– thwarted!– in my attempt to get my hands on Loretta Chase’s Silk Is For Seduction, but I’m hopeful that a stop at Posman Books in Grand Central later today should solve the problem. For those who haven’t been there, it’s tucked away in a corner off the main terminal and has, arguably, the best romance collection in the city.

What have you been reading?

Every couple of weeks, they give away an advance copy of a novel and a Swarovski crystal duck. Today, the Lucky Duck give-away is The Garden Intrigue!

To enter, just go to Eloisa James’ and Linda Francis Lee’s Facebook pages and fill out the form found on the “Lucky Duck Contest” tabs. The winner will be chosen tomorrow.

Happy quacking!

In more mundane news, the event at Cook Library at 12:30 on February 23 has been moved from the Vernon Hills location to Cook Park Library in Libertyville (see the sidebar for the exact address).

Check out the previous “Day in the Life” posts, including Teresa Medeiros (so entertaining!), Madeline Hunter, and Katie MacAlister.

What does your average day look like?

The Garden Intrigue

On Facebook recently, I was asked to post about a different sort of visual inspiration: my heroine’s clothing. Emma, the heroine of The Garden Intrigue, is at the forefront of the Paris fashion scene. Like her role model, Josephine Bonaparte, her chosen color is white.

The white dress was to 1804 Paris what the little black dress is to modern New York. In this painting of a frolic in the gardens of Malmaison, you can see the overwhelming preponderance of white dresses among the ladies:

In Paris, unlike London, diaphanous and clingy were in. Emma’s dresses would have looked much like the one being modeled in this 1804 portrait of the wife of Napoleon’s foreign minister, Talleyrand:

To get a sense of just how fine the fabric was– and how beautiful the detail– you can click here to see a close-up of Betsy Patterson’s 1804 dress now in the Metropolitan Museum’s costume collection. (Personal side note: as a high school student, I interned in the Met’s costume collection and got to play with dresses very much like this one. The level of detail and the delicacy of the fabric are incredible. It amazes me that they’ve survived.)

Here’s the whole dress:

Emma doesn’t always wear all white. Sometimes, she wears a colored tunic over an embroidered underdress, as in this picture of her frenemy, Caroline Murat:

Being a small person, Emma likes to build up her height with feathered headdresses, like the one in this picture. And, like Josephine in this 1805 portrait, Emma is very fond of sparkly accessories:

The jewelry of the period tended to be large and gaudy– and Emma was all about that. This set of blue pressed glass cameos is exactly the sort of thing I could imagine her wearing for a weekend at Malmaison:

Although I searched, sadly, I couldn’t find a good picture of the scandalous French fashion for open sandals and diamond or cameo toe-rings. But I’m sure you can picture it!

Only two more weeks until The Garden Intrigue!

– Eva Ibbotsen’s A Countess Below Stairs, about a Russian noblewoman who becomes a downstairs maid in an English manor house;

– Barbara Taylor Bradford’s A Woman of Substance, about a woman who rises from maid in an Edwardian house to mistress of a financial empire;

– Kate Morton’s The House at Riverton, following the intertwined destinies of maid and mistress at the great house at Riverton;

– Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love (one of my very favorite books) and Love in a Cold Climate– and, if you can, find a way to get your hands on the excellent BBC adaptation;

– Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, the famous novel told as a butler’s reminiscences about his days in service;

– Daisy Goodwin’s The American Heiress and Edith Wharton’s The Buccaneers, novels about the American heiresses, like Cora, who married into the English aristocracy;

– On the non-fiction end, the Countess of Carnaervon’s Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle and Carol Wallace’s To Marry an English Lord, a look into the inspiration behind Downton;

– and speaking of Americans marrying Englishman, more modern, but very entertaining, there’s also Sarah Lyle’s The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British.

And, of course, you wouldn’t want to miss the excellent Red Nose Day spoof, Uptown Downstairs Abbey!

Which Downton-related reads would you recommend?

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– Elizabeth Peters, The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits.

I remembered why this one doesn’t make it back into the re-read rotation very frequently. Not that it’s bad– it’s just not up to the level of her others.

– Patti Callahan Henry, Coming Up for Air.

A woman discovers truths about herself by delving into her mother’s past.

– Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire.

I know, I know, I’m only the last person in the continental U.S. to get around to reading the rest of the Hunger Games trilogy. There was a bit of deja vu in seeing the Games all over again, but it was still a compelling book.

– Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay.

I liked the way it eventually ended, but had mixed feelings about the way it got there.

– Michelle Moran, Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution.

I’ve only just started this one, so more on Madame Tussaud next week.

What have you been reading?

Come see Deanna at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale on Thursday, February 16th– we’ll have champagne and chocolates and lots of copies of both of our books. (If you can’t be there, you can order signed books here.)

Then Tasha Alexander and I will reprise our “oh my goodness, how caffeinated can two authors get?” routine on Wednesday, February 22nd at the Barrington Area Library in Illinois. There’ll be tea and cookies and two ridiculously perky authors. (Things got a little silly in Houston back in November when Tasha and I took the stage after consuming a few liters of Diet Coke. It took us about thirty minutes to pause for breath. There may have been some discussion of doing an interpretive dance routine on the table.)

Deanna will be signing The Dark Enquiry and the rest of her Lady Julia books, and Tasha will be signing A Crimson Warning, the latest in her Lady Emily series.

Both events are entirely free and open to the public. Hope to see you there!