Most likely to be attracted to bad boys?  Unfortunately, Abigail Carrington Monroe, Lady Worthing, has a soft spot for daring men with checkered pasts. Her husband, James Monroe, Lord Worthing, was once accused of embezzlement. Abigail famously saved him from execution and gained a marriage proposal. Then there’s the mysterious next-door neighbor Abigail is beginning to grow closer to. Stapleton Henderson gives off bad-boy vibes. At times, the war hero likes to bicker, grow poisonous flowers, and seems to be engrossed in secrets.   Which character is most likely to dance until dawn? The most likely character to dance until dawn is solicitor Wilson Shaw. Wilson is a charismatic man who is a favorite among the bored ladies of the ton. He excels in charm and loves courting scandals and making money. If he goes to a ball, he will be the most resplendently dressed and have his pick of partners who want to flirt, invest their widowed fortunes, and dance until the last partier leaves.   Most likely to bail on a social engagement? Florentina Sewell is the most likely to bail on a social engagement. While not quite a wallflower, she enjoys quiet moments without danger. Being friends…

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 Vanessa Riley!   Writes: Ready for an intimate look at true history? Vanessa Riley writes award winning fiction showcasing the power women time has erased. Get swept away in court intrigue, politics, and scandal in Riley’s QUEEN OF EXILES.   About: Looking for a good time, and want to learn a little something? Take a spin with Vanessa Riley. Vanessa Riley is an award-winning author of Island Queen, A Good Morning America Buzz Pick and the forthcoming Queen of Exiles. Riley’s historical novels showcase the hidden histories of Black women and women of color, emphasizing strong sisterhoods and dazzling multicultural communities. Her works encompass historical fiction, historical romance, and historical mystery and have been reviewed by the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Publisher Weekly, and the New York Times. Riley was named the 2023 Georgia Author of the Year Awards Literary Fiction Winner for Sister Mother Warrior.    Vanessa’s looking for soul mates – readers who want: Women in power Intense love relationships Sisterhoods Hidden histories…

History was one of my least favorite classes in school. Don’t get me wrong–I had some great teachers and I enjoyed a lot of the South Carolina history we were taught, but a lot of what we learned seemed far off and not relevant to my life. I knew that wasn’t true because one of my awesome teachers quoted us time and again about not forgetting the past or being doomed to repeat it, but I didn’t see it reflected through the history books we studied. Very little was taught about the various individual lives of people, in particular the women in history. Anne Frank’s story brought to life what the Jewish people suffered under Hitler, but I learned about her mainly through my literature classes. In fact, it was through literature classes that I learned about how women were treated as property or outcasted from society for exhibiting behaviors identical to the men of their times. Now here I sit, many, many years later, and I am still learning through literature. Whether it’s a graphic novel, such as PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi, or a novel such as BRIGID OF KILDARE by Heather Terrell, there is so much history to…

LONDON 1824: KENSINGTON HOUSE Never knew a moment made better standing still. Never knew an hour made perfect by silence. It’s been a long time since I’d had peace—moments of dance, hours in hymns. It disappeared when the Demerara Council forced its tax. Fidgeting, I sit in the front parlor of Kensington House switching my gaze from the sheers draping the window to the finishing school’s headmistress. Miss Smith, she’s across from me in a Chippendale chair sipping her chamomile tea. Her fingers tremble on the china handle. “Mrs. Thomas,” she says with eyes wide, bulging like an iguana’s. “Your visit is unexpected, but I’m pleased you’ve taken my offer to stay at Kensington to review our school. You’ll see it’s a worthy investment.” “I was always fond of the name Kensington.” My voice trails off as I think of walks, of choices, then my aptly named plantation. Kensington is a set of squiggled letters chiseled in a cornerstone back home. The headmistress chatters on, and I nod. The white egret feather on my bonnet jiggles and covers my brow. I bat it away like the memories I want gone, but you never get to choose what comes to mind….

When you read this blog post, I’ll probably be flying through the air on my way across the country to see family I haven’t seen in person in well over a year. I’m beyond excited to get on a plane and go somewhere I haven’t been for some time, see people I adore, and get out of my house! I’m also traveling with my mom and we’re having a tiny girls’ trip before we reach our final destination of Southern California. We are PUMPED. That being said, over the last year+, books have really been my salvation and a way for me to travel, so to speak. I love when a sense of setting is just as important to the story and I feel immersed in the place the characters are figuring out their lives. Here are a few recent reads where I felt like I was truly there, and felt a sense of escapism through reading: SCANDAL IN THE VIP SUITE by Nadine Gonzalez When two people accidentally get double-booked in the same luxurious suite at a gorgeous resort in Miami, instead of trying to find different rooms, they just decide to share. What could happen? A whole lot!…

The Summer BBQ Recipe Roundup continues with another scrumptious recipe! Today, Vanessa Riley shares an amazing coconut bread recipes, which is also featured in her new historical romance, A DUKE, THE LADY, AND A BABY. And check out our earlier recipes from earlier this week: Day 1, an appetizer with Lynn Austin: https://freshfiction.com/page.php?id=10708 Day 2, a main course with Dylann Crush: https://freshfiction.com/page.php?id=10709 Day 3, a side dish with Elise Hooper: https://freshfiction.com/page.php?id=10710 Vanessa Riley here, Patience Jordan is the fierce heroine of A Duke, The Lady, And A Baby. As the newest recruit to the Widow’s Grace, she’s undercover in her old house, trying to find evidence of the plot which caused her husband’s death and restore her custody of her infant son, Lionel. The Duke of Repington has command of her house and dictated the care of her son, his new ward. The handsome man demands order but from Nanny Patience, but she quick to discover his secrets. To protect Lionel from his late cousin’s conspiracy, the wily duke has filled Patience’s home with soldiers, wounded warriors recovering from the Peninsula War. To keep the peace, Patience bakes Coconut Bread. If the boys are good and put away their canons…

Last fall, the leaves started turning gold and brilliant red. The birds sang as they migrated South, and I was forty-thousand words into creating, The Bewildered Bride. Everything was wonderful. Peace and love seemed to be everywhere. Then, the words stopped.   Nothing. Not a jot. Not even an extended ellipse.   I’m not one to panic, but for a writer to have their characters who had been happily chatting with you to go silent—that’s a Danger-Danger-Will-Robinson moment.   After a long sigh, several hazelnut lattes, prayer, and begging my muse, I closed up my laptop. I shut my eyes and listened. My heroine of The Bewildered Bride, Ruth Croome Wilke, had something to say, and it wasn’t the story on the page.   Her voice, I had suppressed. I’d convinced myself it didn’t matter. She would be happy in the end. When her story became tough and gutting, I stopped listening to her.   I didn’t want to face her truth. I wanted her to bottle up her pain.   I was hypocrite, and why would someone who’s been through so much want to waste her energy on someone who discounted the power of her voice.   Ruth had been…

Welcome back to the Fresh Fiction Valentine’s Day Recipe Roundup! Every day this week, some of our favorite authors will be on the blog chatting about their new books, their main characters, and a recipe for a meal or treat those characters would enjoy this festive week. Today we have the three historical romance authors of the novella anthology, LOVE BY THE LETTERS! Enjoy, and come back tomorrow for more fun! Missed our previous roundup posts? Check them out here! Mystery Authors Contemporary Romance Authors A is for Amorous by Grace Burrowes Ada Beauvais is a spinster in training and an amateur scientist. Her interests range from compost heaps to botany to corrective lenses. The last thing she would volunteer to do is swill tea while politely asking people to donate to a failing orphanage. Lord John Waverly, headmaster of that orphanage, is no better at soliciting funds than Ada is, and he’s too busy managing forty lively children to keep as close an eye on the ledgers as he ought. Lord John’s family despairs of him, and wonders why he can’t take up a country parsonage like all the normal younger sons do. They are a little bit of…

I read a tweet this week that went something like this: “Meghan and Harry have met, fallen in love, married, and are now having a baby in under three years, and I haven’t put up the fallen towel rack in my bathroom.” Life is hard and comparing our self to others is a difficult exercise, often ending in futility. In The Butterfly Bride, I was able to explore the quest of trying to be perfect in the most unlikely vessels, Frederica Burghley. Frederica is the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Simone. In the Regency, this was a scandalous pedigree but depending on how the duke acknowledges his daughter, she would not necessarily be rejected. But Frederica’s situation is worst. She is the love child of the duke and his courtesan, a black woman he setup as his exclusive mistress. Alas, 1820 was not 2018. In that year of our Lord, you can imagine the rejections, Frederica faces as she struggles for acceptance. Classism, racism, sexism, and ignorance are slights she endures. She does so not with grievances but from the perspective of being one of the lucky ones. For now, she’s escaped following in her mother’s footsteps of becoming a…