Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Anne Gracie | Author-Reader Match: THE RAKE’S DAUGHTER
Author Guest / July 27, 2022

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Anne Gracie! Writes: Regency-era romances that will make you laugh and cry and leave you smiling. Stories that will sweep you away from the gloom and doom of today, into a world where you’ll meet spirited heroines in gorgeous long dresses and handsome heroes in tight buckskin breeches and high, shiny boots. You’ll meet rakes and wallflowers; heroes in need of a life lesson and heroines who really deserve and need to be loved. You’ll meet cunning and eccentric old ladies, nosy neighbors, scandalous chaperones and one or two outright villains. In Anne Gracie’s Regency world, lonely people and orphans come together and form families. Most of all, it’s a world where love always triumphs.   About: Anne Gracie started her first novel writing by hand in notebooks while backpacking solo around the world. Published by Berkley, her award-winning books have been translated into many languages, including Japanese manga editions, which she thinks is very cool. Anne will eat carrot sticks and celery but would trade them…

MARRY IN HASTE — Anne Gracie
Author Guest / May 3, 2017

My new book, MARRY IN HASTE is the start of a brand new “Convenient Marriage” series. It stars Cal Rutherford, an officer in the army, who has just become Lord Ashendon. Cal is a man’s man, a career soldier who thinks he knows how to handle women, but really has no idea. Hint: they’re not the same as soldiers; strangely, women don’t take kindly to being ordered around. Cal does, however, know how to kiss. Here he is walking our heroine, Emmaline Westwood home at night, after she was caught up in a brawl at a political meeting. They’re in Bath. It’s their first kiss. He broke off, noticing, in the light of the lamp overhead, a stain on her otherwise pale face. “Stand still,” he ordered, and when she glanced at him in surprise he caught her by the shoulders and turned her toward the light. A bruise was forming on her cheekbone, and dried blood made a dark crust around one of her nostrils. And, now that he looked, drops of blood stained the front of her clothing. “Dammit, you were injured too. Why didn’t you say something?” Flustered, she tried to move away. “I’m perfectly all r—”…

Anne Gracie | A Hero’s Trouble
Author Guest / April 2, 2014

If I told you you’d love a hero who was frightened of literary societies and muffins, would you believe me? Probably not, but read on, and maybe I can change your mind. For me to enjoy a romance, I have to love the hero. Generally I like one who’s strong, tough, and honorable, a take-charge kind of guy, the kind of guy who relishes trouble, who’s a fighter as well as a lover. But sometimes an unexpected hero simply arrives on the page. The hero in THE WINTER BRIDE, Freddy Monkton-Coombes appeared in the previous book (THE AUTUMN BRIDE—a RITA finalist) as a minor character. He was the hero’s best friend, a sidekick kind of guy. He’s neither tough, or take-charge —he’s a beta-hero, a funny, charming, bad-boy rake. Freddy isn’t even a heroic kind of name. But somehow, I knew he had to be the hero of the next book. Even though he’s horrified by things like literary societies and muffins. Freddy on the literary society Damaris (the heroine) attends: “The horror stories those girls read are enough to make a fellow’s hair stand on end.” Max frowned. “Horror stories? They don’t read horror stories, only entertaining tales of…

Anne Gracie | On Beloved Books and Banter
Romance / February 12, 2008

I write in a room lined with beloved books – it’s like being with old friends. I know chunks of some of these keepers by heart. For some reason it’s usually dialogue I remember, some favorite exchange between the characters. I love the banter that takes place between a hero and heroine, particularly where they’re talking about one thing, but there’s a delicious sexual undercurrent underlying the whole conversation. I’m not talking about suggestiveness, but banter as a sexy duel, a form of courtship, a dance, a game that neither can lose. Good banter always makes me smile.Some books, some heroes, lend themselves to it more than others. For me, it’s usually the hero who starts it. For instance, here’s an example from my current book, THE STOLEN PRINCESS, where the Regency hero gets the heroine all hot and bothered with just a few teasing words. She gave him a severe look. “I told you, I have no desire to put myself under the thumb of any man, ever again.” “But it wasn’t my thumb I was thinking of.” He said it with such a— such a wicked, laughing look she was hard put to know what to say. So…