Book picks similar to
The Dandy: Peacock or Enigma? by Nigel Rodgers


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The Pelican Bride


Beth White - 2014
    Both have promised to marry one of the rough men toiling in this strange new world in order to escape suffering in the old. Geneviève knows life won’t be easy, but at least here she can establish a home and family without fear of persecution for her outlawed religious beliefs. When she falls in love with Tristan Lanier, an expatriate cartographer-turned-farmer whose checkered past is shrouded in mystery, Geneviève realizes that even in this land of liberty one is not guaranteed peace. Trouble is brewing outside the fort between the French colonists and the native people surrounding them. And an even more sinister enemy may lurk within. Could the secret Geneviève harbors mean the undoing of the colony itself?

About a Rogue


Caroline Linden - 2020
    James, notorious rake. Defiantly she helps Cathy elope with her true love, and takes her sister’s place at the altar.It’s not even the match that was made…Perched on the lowest branch of his family tree, Max has relied on charm and cunning to survive. But an unexpected stroke of luck gives him an outside chance at a dukedom—and which Tate sister he weds hardly seems to matter. But could it be the perfect match? Married or not, Bianca is determined to protect her family’s prosperous ceramics business, even when Max shows an affinity for it—not to mention a dangerous ability to intrigue and tempt Bianca herself. And when Max realizes how beautiful and intelligent and desirable Bianca is, he’ll have to prove he’s no rogue, but the passionately devoted husband she craves…

Countess So Shameless


Liana LeFey - 2012
    Her encounter with Lord Alessandro Orsini awakened a passion so fierce that the mere memory of it still ignites her senses. So when the celebrated rake resurfaces in London, Mélisande succumbs to temptation and shamelessly proposes an affair for the Season.Alessandro has never forgotten the girl he met in Versailles—his perfect match. Though the fiercely independent lady has sworn off marriage, it doesn’t stop him from vowing to make her his wife. While seducing her body, he wages tender warfare on her heart’s defenses. But a bitter rival also burns to possess Mélisande, and luck has provided the means to bend her to his will: a scandalous secret that could ruin her. The price of his silence is nothing less than her hand in marriage, forcing Mélisande to choose between the desires of her heart and everything else she holds dear.

Island of the Swans


Ciji Ware - 1989
    In love since childhood with Thomas Fraser, when she hears that he's been killed in America, she marries the Duke of Gordon with disastrous results. But Fraser, very much alive, returns to England to claim her love. In addition to telling a heart-wrenching love story, Island of the Swans also paints a fascinating portrait of a powerful and controversial woman and the tumultuous era in which she lived. Patroness of poet Robert Burns, advisor to King George, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Jane Maxwell was a towering figure in her own time and is an unforgettable heroine. (20100126)

Catching the Eagle


Karen Charlton - 2011
    When suspicion falls on Jamie Charlton, he and his family face a desperate battle to save him from the gallows.When £1,157 rent money is stolen from Kirkley Hall, it is the biggest robbery Northumberland has ever known. Suspicion soon falls on impoverished farm labourer, Jamie Charlton, and the unpopular steward, Michael Aynsley.Jamie Charlton is a loving family man but he is hot-tempered and careless. As the case grows against him, it seems that only his brother, William, can save him from an impending miscarriage of justice. But William is struggling with demons of his own. Desperate to break free from the tangled web of family ties which bind him to their small community, he is alarmed to find that he is falling in love with Jamie’s wife. Set beneath the impenetrable gaze of a stray golden eagle whose fate seems to mirror that of Jamie's, 'Catching the Eagle' is a fictionalised account of a real trial that devastated a family and divided a community.

Burning Bright


Tracy Chevalier - 2007
    As they move in next door to the radical painter/poet William Blake, and take up work for a near-by circus impresario, the youngest family member gets to know a girl his age. Embodying opposite characteristics — Maggie Butterfield is a dark-haired, streetwise extrovert, Jem Kellaway a quiet blond introvert — the children form a strong bond while getting to know their unusual neighbor and his wife.Set against the backdrop of a city nervous of the revolution gone sour across the Channel in France, Burning Bright explores the states of innocence and experience just as Blake takes on similar themes in his best-known poems, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Celia Garth


Gwen Bristow - 1959
    She had blond hair and brown eyes and a sassy face, and she worked in a fashionable dressmaking shop.Things did happen to Celia, but not as she had planned. The king's army captured Charleston. The ravisher Tarleton swept through the Carolina countryside in a wave of blood and fire and debauchery. Caught up in the ruin were Celia and her friends -- the merry-minded Darren; Jimmy, whose love for Celia brought her into his tragedy; the fascinating Vivian, five times married; Godfrey, rich and powerful, who met disaster because he could control anything in town but the weather; the daredevil Luke.Most people thought the Revolution was lost. Many Americans, like Celia's handsome cousin Roy, joined the king's side. Then out of the swamps appeared Francis Marion.Marion was a little man. Marion was also crippled. But as Luke said of him, "When that man's leading a charge, he looks nine feet tall."In the dressmaking shop, Celia became a spy for Marion. She sewed, she smiled sweetly, and in secret she risked her life sending information to this man that the king's whole army could not catch, the mighty little man to whom Tarleton angrily gave the name 'Swamp Fox'.(from the front end flap)

Sanditon, Lady Susan, & The History of England


Jane Austen - 2011
    It represents what Richard Church regarded as Jane Austen’s literary work-basket and contains some of Austen’s earliest work—her hilarious brief History of England, illustrated by her favorite sister, which is a worthy forerunner of 1066 & All That to the unfinished Sanditon, the novel of her maturity on which she was writing at her death at age forty-two. Also included are the two epistolary novels, Lady Susan and Love and Friendship, and The Watsons, Catharine, Lesley Castle, Evelyn, Frederic and Elfrida, Jack and Alice, Edgar and Emma, Henry and Eliza, and The Three Sisters.

The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man


Thomas Fink - 2006
     Do you know how to tie a bow-tie, mix a martini, or make a potato gun? Do you know when to get married and how to break up, or the difference between a bock beer and a bitter? Do you know which urinal to choose or how to start a fire with a Coke can? The answers to every man's burning questions are within these pages, from the morning wet shave to the whiskey night-cap, from hunting deer with a .30-06 to wooing women like 007. At a time when the sexes are muddled and masculinity is marginalized, The Man's Book unabashedly celebrates maleness. Organized by subject in a man-logical way, it's the go-to guide for anyone with a Y chromosome.

The Importance of Being Wicked


Miranda Neville - 2012
    But when passions flare, even the strongest will surrender to the law of love... Thomas, Duke of Castleton, has every intention of wedding a prim and proper heiress. That is, until he sets eyes on the heiress's cousin, easily the least proper woman he's ever met. His devotion to family duty is no defense against the red-headed vixen whose greatest asset seems to be a talent for trouble... Caroline Townsend has no patience for the oh-so-suitable (and boring) men of the ton. So when the handsome but stuffy duke arrives at her doorstep, she decides to put him to the test. But her scandalous exploits awaken a desire in Thomas he never knew he had. Suddenly Caro finds herself falling for this most proper duke...while Thomas discovers there's a great deal of fun in a little bit of wickedness.This is the first of a four book series centered around a group of badly behaved late-Georgian art collectors.

Merely Magic


Patricia Rice - 2000
    Both her class and calling have isolated her from companionship and love. But according to legend, her beloved village cannot thrive without a magical Malcolm in residence.Drogo Ives, Earl of Ives and Wystan, cares only for honor, science, and reason--unlike his unruly brothers and the illogical and untrustworthy female of the species. Love and marriage are two unknowns he has no desire to explore. His married brother can inherit.But fate and Drogo’s meddling stepsister bring Drogo and Ninian together for one night...with shattering consequences. Having dealt with the inconvenient result of his father’s bastards, Drogo has vowed to marry any woman who carries his child—and now the irresistible Ninian does. Only, the last time a Malcolm married an Ives, disaster destroyed Wystan and both their families. With all the odds against them, can they find a place where science and mystery meet, and build a bridge into a future where love saves both their families and their homes?

Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen


Dexter Palmer - 2019
    His apprentice Zachary knows John is reluctant to believe anything that purports to exist outside the realm of logic. But even John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local farmer, manages to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, John realizes that nothing in his experience as a village physician has prepared him to deal with a situation as disturbing as this. He writes to several preeminent surgeons in London, three of whom quickly arrive in the small town of Godalming ready to observe and opine. When Mary's plight reaches the attention of King George, Mary and her doctors are summoned to London, where Zachary experiences for the first time a world apart from his small-town existence, and is exposed to some of the darkest corners of the human soul. All the while, Mary lies in bed, waiting for another birth, as doubts begin to blossom among the surgeons and a growing group of onlookers grow impatient for another miracle...

An Almond for a Parrot


Wray Delaney - 2016
    But alas sir, I would be lying…’London, 1756: In Newgate prison, Tully Truegood awaits trial. Her fate hanging in the balance, she tells her life-story. It’s a tale that takes her from skivvy in the back streets of London, to conjuror’s assistant, to celebrated courtesan at her stepmother’s Fairy House, the notorious house of ill-repute where decadent excess is a must…Tully was once the talk of the town. Now, with the best seats at Newgate already sold in anticipation of her execution, her only chance of survival is to get her story to the one person who can help her avoid the gallows.She is Tully Truegood.Orphan, whore, magician’s apprentice.Murderer?

Birdcage Walk


Helen Dunmore - 2017
    Soon his plans for a magnificent terrace built above the two-hundred-foot drop of the Gorge come under threat.Diner believes that Lizzie’s independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him: law and custom confirm it, and she must live as he wants.In a tense drama of public and private violence, resistance and terror, Diner’s passion for Lizzie darkens until she finds herself dangerously alone.

Yorkshire


Lynne Connolly - 2008
    Lord Hareton has deliberately run down the once great Hareton Abbey until it's a near ruin. The only other guests at Hareton are the twin Kerre brothers, intimidating and haughty leaders of society, together with the fiance of the older brother. When the Earl of Southwood's son and heir, Richard, Lord Strang is badly injured in the same accident that kills her cousins, Rose is forced into the position of nurse--and detective. The attraction between Richard and Rose is instant and undeniable, but Richard is to marry the frigid Julia Cartwright in a few weeks, and has deliberately closed his heart to love. In order to offer Rose his heart he must extricate himself from an engagement he has long come to regret. When they discover that what at first appeared accidental was in fact a deliberate act of sabotage Richard and Rose set out to solve the mystery. Can Rose trust her instincts, ignoring Richard's reputation as a seducer and give him everything she has to offer? Can they clear Rose's family name by discovering her cousins' murderer?