Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from THE DUKE KNOWS BEST by Jane Ashford When you’ve finished reading, please tell us what you think of Verity and Lord Randolph and you’ll be entered to win the first four books in the series! Verity Sinclair looked around the opulent drawing room, drinking in every detail of the decor and the fashionable crowd. She had to resist an urge to pinch herself to prove she was actually here, and not dreaming. It had taken her five endless years to convince her parents that she should have a London season. They hadn’t been able to see the point of it, no matter what advantages she brought forward. Papa and Mama were quietly happy living in a cathedral close and being held up as models of decorum for the whole bishopric. Verity, on the other hand, often thought she’d go mad within those staid confines. She sighed. She loved her parents dearly, but for most of her life she’d felt like a grasshopper reared by ants. Indeed, at age eight, she’d shocked her parents by asking if she was adopted. She hadn’t meant to hurt their feelings or to imply any lack of affection. Their differences…

The world of romance certainly has changed since LAST GENTLEMAN STANDING was first released. The genre has blossomed and grown in so many ways since then. Most noticeably, there are many more kinds of romance in 2017. Beyond just historical and contemporary, now these can be further broken down into paranormal, inspirational, steampunk, sci fi, m/m, bdsm and other kinds of stories undreamed of years ago. Readers have many more choices to match their individual tastes. And not only of plot and setting – they can get their fix electronically as well as on paper. They can order a book out of thin air and plunge into it in the next minute. Reading on your iPhone was not a phrase that would have had any meaning when LAST GENTLEMAN STANDING was first published. Brief digression: do you ever find yourself marveling at a sentence coming out of your mouth that would have made zero sense when you were young? For example: Email me the url. How do I make Bluetooth discoverable? Find me on my website and Facebook. More than romance has changed in these years! The Regency has expanded in scope during this time, too. That phrase once meant…

People sometimes ask me – who’s that black sheep with you in your author photo? He’s a little guy I watched being born during one of Heifer International’s Women’s Lambing Programs at Overlook Farm in Rutland, Massachusetts. I’ve attended several of these wonderful sessions, with sheep and goats. It had to be the black sheep I posed with because of the long tradition of romance heros who are black sheep. (Wiki says the idiom arises from a genetic quirk in sheep, but readers know the black sheep as an engaging rogue.) In my most recent historical romance The Bride Insists, the hero is a bit of a black sheep. Jamie Boleigh, seventh Baron Trehearth, can’t be blamed for running a little wild. He’s been struggling nearly all his life to salvage an estate teetering on the verge of ruin. His mother died giving birth to his twin sisters, and he lost his father in ambiguous circumstances the following year. Aged sixteen, he had to take over managing ancestral acres that were falling to pieces and mortgaged to the hilt. He loves every inch of Trehearth. The thought of losing it is agonizing. He tries everything he can think of, but…