A Talent For Trouble

by Anne Barbour

Lady Talitha Burnside knows that she is plain, and unlikely to marry. Her father told her enough times how it didn’t matter and that she was beautiful inside--but this has merely doomed her to being her married brother’s unpaid nanny. She does have one talent that her father encouraged: she can draw brilliant caricatures. It is this that has brought her to London, where she hopes to illustrate a racy new novel while respectably residing with her old school friend Cat and her husband. But she does not know who is writing the novel, and it is this that is going to be the problem.

As well as romance there is a good story in here and plenty of humor; in short, the kind of Regency associated with Georgette Heyer and a world away from the “bodice ripper.” Ms Barbour paints a convincing picture of London during the Season, with all the fun of balls and parties as well as a glimpse of the seamy side and a fiendish plot to uncover. Talitha makes an excellent heroine as she blossoms under the tutelage of her friends, and Viscount Chelmsford is not too alpha a male. The period comes to tactile life, and it is easy to get swept up in the joy of it all--the result of not merely good plotting but a sound knowledge of the period. This is the sort of romance that gives the genre a good name.