Sourcebooks Blog Tour: Bath Tangle (and Happy Birthday to Georgette Heyer)

Georgette Heyer was designed for you if….

…it’s raining and you have the “mean reds”

…you want to steal into a land of gossamer and lace where men wear top hats and breeches

…you can taste the salt smell of the Bath waters while dreaming of a high tea at a nearby shop (perhaps stealing in for a dry spell after a stint in the rain)

…you miss the days when men were men and kissed ladies’ hands and knew the rigmarole of whist games and quadrilles

…you know the difference between a morning dress and a day dress

…you want to breakfast late and call the house staff by their surnames

…you think that “felicity” and “thither” really are the greatest words in the dictionary

…if, like me, you have read your Jane Austen canon to shreds since you began at the tender age of 14.

Georgette Heyer is pure, sparkly, cupcake-iced joy. Her heroines are winsome and beguiling, her heroes have just enough rogue to be tamed by the careful attention and craftily-won heart of a fair maiden. The “drawing room” manners and social graces of the “ton” whirl in a maze of winding, twining roads making the obstacles securing an inevitable happy ending worth the trip to the altar. Celebrating Georgette Heyer’s Birthday ( today) is a good excuse to spend the day perusing through Sourcebooks’ exceptional catalogue (they have done an incredible job at making her beloved titles easily accessible for the hungry masses)

Take Bath Tangle….

{italicized from the publisher}:

A Delightful Tangle of Affairs…The Earl of Spenborough had always been noted for his eccentricity. Leaving a widow younger than his own daughter Serena was one thing, but leaving his fortune to the trusteeship of the Marquis of Rotherham – the one man the same daughter had jilted – was quite another.When Serena and her lovely young stepmother Fanny decide to move to Bath, Serena makes an odd new friend and discovers an old love. Before long, they’re all entangled in a clutter of marriage and manners the likes of which even Regency Bath has rarely seen.

Serena is a lovely heroine: spirited and sly and smart and, like the best Heyer heroines, unwilling to be rescued by a dashing gent; rather willing to be accepting of his offer on her own terms and in her own way. A feisty red head with a temper to boot, she is near bested by a reduced family circumstance that throws her in the path of a suitor she jilted years before. Will he enjoy sweet revenge on her behalf …and to her utter ruin? Or does the spark of a first love still linger like an ember beneath flashes of anger, duels of wit and conversation that will keep readers giggling?

If you liked Persuasion, then Bath Tangle will delight you.

Heyer is indubitably the best Regency writer since Austen and in sea of Austen-inspired prequels, updates, sequels, epistolary fiction, diaries, graphic novels, parodies, pastiches and horror stories, she will rescue you. She is in a class of her own. What differentiates her from the usual Austenitis continually sweeping the publishing world and fulfilling our insatiable craving for more, is her verisimilitude, understanding of Regency culture, feels for dialogue and character and fresh plots and romances. She doesn’t hype on the laurels of Jane Austen; nor does she create new stories for characters already developed. Rather, she springboards from a popular motif and makes it her own. She is renowned as one of the most timeless Historical novelists of any age and you must, must read her. You must. It’s the law.

+To celebrate Georgette Heyer's birthday, make sure you visit Austenprose --where they are celebrating with a giveaway!

+Jane Austen's World featured a scintillating look at the Many Faces of Georgette Heyer

+Sourcebooks is celebrating Heyer's 109th by offering e-books at as little as 1.99. Honestly, they are so worth it. Buy all your Heyer here. Consider my two favourites, Venetia and Black Sheep alongside a purchase of Bath Tangle

My thanks to Sourcebooks for making her titles widely available and for sending me the copy of Bath Tangle to add to my happily growing Heyer collection.