S04.30: Her Night With the Duke by Diana Quincy
This week, we’re talking about one of Sarah’s favorite recent historicals, Diana Quincy’s beautiful Her Night With the Duke, which was on our 2020 Best Romance of the Year list. This one fires on many cylinders, and the conversation it inspired covers a lot of ground. We talk about how you won’t get a better Bridgerton read-alike than this one, about the third-act breakup, why it works and the work it does in a romance, about why widows are allowed to be sexy, about responsibility and aristocracy, about hot golf, and about how modern historicals are really doing the business.
Thanks to Avon Books, publisher of Eva Leigh’s The Good Girl’s Guide to Rakes, and Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste, for sponsoring the episode.
Our next read along is Julie James’s Something About You. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or at your local bookstore.
Show Notes
Diana Quincy has written many romance novels, and she also published Regency era mysteries under the name D.M. Quincy. You can find information about her books on her website, on twitter, or on Instagram.
Her Night with the Duke was one of our best of 2020 romances.
Leela taking her knife to her evil brother-in-law's face was just as satisfying as this great scene with Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride.
Here's a brief overview of the history of the Arab community in Manchester, England.
Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses dives into storytelling around the world, makes the case that conflict-driven plots are not universal and advocates for making diverse storytelling traditions welcome in literary spaces. This essay from LitHub is a good primer to his argument.
The Clandestine Affairs Series by Diana Quincy
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Eva Leigh’s The Good Girls Guide to Rakes, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Kelly Cain, author of An Acquired Taste,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your ebooks.
Visit kellycainauthor.com
S03.37: Widows in Romance
We’re toppling TBRs this week with widow romances! We’re talking widows of all shapes and sizes…from virgin widows who murder their husbands in old school historicals to modern-day widows who are looking for love because they know how good it can be. If widow romances are your thing, we’re about to make you very happy!
Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
We’re also going to announce our next read along now, because it’s out of print (but available in audio!), so you will have to do a bit of a used bookstore hunt to get it! Get Anne Stuart’s truly bananas Tangled Lies at a used bookseller near you. We recommend checking Amazon, eBay & Thrift Books.
Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!
Widow Books
Notes
Last week, we talked about Big Pharma, and if you want more of that, read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe. It’s about the Sackler family and how they made billions on Oxycontin which was a huge factor in the creation of the opioid epidemic.
Daisy Jones and the Six is a great novel, and the full-cast audiobook is supposed to be amazing. The Reese Witherspoon book club is the definition of the full glow-up.
Sarah made some Maple Oatmeal Muffins, and maybe you want the recipe. Why food bloggers include some pre-recipe chatter.
The question of freshman year dorm room decoration is of new significance to Jen since Lil Romance will be heading off to college in the fall. Might we recommend a Pulp Fiction movie poster or some Absolut Vodka ads?
If we’re talking skyscrapers, meaning buildings over 150M (about 500 feet) tall, when this was recorded in April of 2021, Cleveland has 4, Denver has 7, Chicago has 127, and New York has 284. According to wikipedia, only nine cities in the world have over 100 buildings 150M tall. The other seven are Hong Kong (355), Shenzhen (289), Dubai (201), Shanghai (163), Tokyo (158), Chongqing (127), and Guangzhou (118).
Check out the Sassy Podcast and the Babysitter’s Club. No, not that kind of babysitter.
We love the movie Widows.
The merry widow is an opera and a kind of sexy lingerie.
We did an episode on Prisoner of My Desire with Joanna Shupe way back in season one.
Primogeniture laws are all about who inherits titles and money and estates, and wasn't changed in England until 2013.
Apparently there are lots of misconceptions about Arabian horses.
More about Victorian era mourning requirements.
Historically you couldn’t marry your brother’s widow
All about gorillas and where the live, and actually it turns out a gorilla really could kill you in a fight. Sarah was on Learning the Tropes talking about The Earl Takes All, in case you need more of that.
Spoiler alert about The Power Broker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
We have two read-along books in May. On the 12th, we’ll be reading Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. On the 26th, we’ll be reading Tangled Lies by Anne Stuart. It’s out of print and not available as an eBook, so order a used copy from Amazon or ThriftBooks, or check out the audio.
Join the "Romance sticker of the month" club
Preorder Bombshell, which comes out August 24th.