Forced into a bad marriage by your own folly, shipped off to India, and then confronted with an enigmatic soldier who may or may not be a spy...This is Penelope Deveraux Staines's dilemma in Lauren Willig's latest Pink Carnation installment, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily.
Sounds like the stuff of an adventure epic, doesn't it? That's just what Blood Lily is. This beautiful story is a love letter to eighteenth-century India, where brave men battled the heat, the indigenous wildlife, and the local rulers, both native and foreign, to carve out a life for themselves.
The hero in Lauren’s book is worthy of the exotic setting. Captain Alex Reid is none too pleased when he’s assigned what he considers a babysitting duty; he must escort a new British envoy from Calcutta to his post in Hyderabad, India. But Alex has no patience for his charge. There’s intrigue and espionage and alliances in India that this man, Frederick Staines, couldn’t possibly understand. Worse yet, he’s accompanied by his wife, Lady Penelope Staines, whose beauty is undeniable but whose impulsive nature gets her -and Alex- into trouble.
This is the sixth in Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series. All of the books involve spies and brave ladies and dashing men. And this week at Romantic Reads Lauren’s taking your questions about all the books, including how she chooses the settings, whether or not Eloise, her modern-day heroine, is based on Lauren herself, and how to walk that fine line of portraying cheating in romance. We’ve been discussing that elsewhere, and your tolerance or lack thereof has provided quite the conversation!
Also this week: we’re talking age differences. Does it bother you if the heroine is much younger than the hero? What about vice versa? How many romances can you think of where that’s one of the issues?
Though we’re still in January, lots of interest is brewing for one of our February Feature authors, Lucy Monroe. She’s the author of a series set in medieval Scotland, about a clan of werewolves. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Scotsmen and werewolves? You can see why everybody’s so excited about her latest book, Moon Craving. We’ll be talking all about it next month, but see what the buzz is about here.
Tune in next week for our first-ever “Debut Week.” Authors Kaki Warner and Courtney Milan will be sharing their “Call” stories as well as other inside scoop on what it’s like to be a first-time published author.
Til then, happy reading!
Why do you think romances set in India are so popular right now? And what are some of your favorites?
Melanie Murray is the moderator of Romantic Reads, BN.com's all-romance, all-the-time community forum.
