A slightly dark but mostly sweet Regency romance, with a touch of cozy mystery.
A lady comes out of hiding to take control of her future.
Georgina Bligh is the Baroness Elmsford, but despite her privileged position, she’s in hiding. Unusually, her family’s barony can pass to a woman, but her odious uncle killed her father and tried to kill her so he’d be able to usurp the title. After a decade in hiding, just as she’s about to turn 21 and will finally be able to claim her inheritance, she learns that he’s trying to have her declared dead. This renews Georgina’s determination to expose the truth, and as she focuses on finding her father’s will, she’s not alone. Lord Bertram Redwick, third son of a duke, is anxious to help her, and since they’ve been developing a mutual crush, she’s very happy to accept his assistance. Their journey takes them across London and far up north to Cumbria, the home of her estate, and though they are lightly chaperoned, it’s not hard for the besotted pair to find stolen moments in different places for some passionate kissing (though nothing more). But Bertie’s digging behind the scenes and Georgina’s daring searches uncover the fact that someone even more dangerous than Georgina’s uncle might be lurking in the shadows. The first book in Schwarz’s new Inconvenient Heirs series is an enjoyable mix of cozy mystery and Regency romance. The relatively short plot is uneven yet action-packed, and Bertie and Georgina are the sort of straightforward hero and heroine that Regency readers adore. It’s a simple story that unfolds roughly, as one might expect, but Schwarz writes compelling dialogue and includes thoughtful historical details, and she infuses a healthy amount of slow-burn intensity into the PG-13 intimacy between the protagonists. As long as readers aren’t expecting any shocking plot twists, they’re likely to be won over.
A slightly dark but mostly sweet Regency romance, with a touch of cozy mystery.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781771684514
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.
A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.
In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras. Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered? What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and “deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.
Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64313-865-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.
Another reboot of Jane Austen?!? Hadlow pulls it off in a smart, heartfelt novel devoted to bookish Mary, middle of the five sisters in Pride and Prejudice.
Part 1 recaps Pride and Prejudice through Mary’s eyes, climaxing with the humiliating moment when she sings poorly at a party and older sister Elizabeth goads their father to cut her off in front of everyone. The sisters’ friend Charlotte, who marries the unctuous Mr. Collins after Elizabeth rejects him, emerges as a pivotal character; her conversations with Mary are even tougher-minded here than those with Elizabeth depicted by Austen. In Part 2, two years later, Mary observes on a visit that Charlotte is deferential but remote with her husband; she forms an intellectual friendship with the neglected and surprisingly nice Mr. Collins that leads to Charlotte’s asking Mary to leave. In Part 3, Mary finds refuge in London with her kindly aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. Mrs. Gardiner is the second motherly woman, after Longbourn housekeeper Mrs. Hill, to try to undo the psychic damage wrought by Mary’s actual mother, shallow, status-obsessed Mrs. Bennet, by building up her confidence and buying her some nice clothes (funded by guilt-ridden Lizzy). Sure enough, two suitors appear: Tom Hayward, a poetry-loving lawyer who relishes Mary’s intellect but urges her to also express her feelings; and William Ryder, charming but feckless inheritor of a large fortune, whom naturally Mrs. Bennet loudly favors. It takes some maneuvering to orchestrate the estrangement of Mary and Tom, so clearly right for each other, but debut novelist Hadlow manages it with aplomb in a bravura passage describing a walking tour of the Lake District rife with seething complications furthered by odious Caroline Bingley. Her comeuppance at Mary’s hands marks the welcome final step in our heroine’s transformation from a self-doubting wallflower to a vibrant, self-assured woman who deserves her happy ending. Hadlow traces that progression with sensitivity, emotional clarity, and a quiet edge of social criticism Austen would have relished.
Entertaining and thoroughly engrossing.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-12941-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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