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| Click on the title of the book(s) you want to learn more about: The Reluctant Guardian Seducing Mr. Heywood The Sicilian Amulet My Lady Scandalous: The Amazing Life and Outrageous Times of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Royal Courtesan The Reluctant Guardian Regency Press, December 1999, ISBN 1929085079 (out of print); Thorndike Press (large print), August 2001, ISBN 078389533X  Colonel Sir Isaac Rebow, traumatized by his parents' unhappy marriage, vowed never to be legshackled; he's successfully avoided the parson's mousetrap. Enter his errant uncle, caperwitted squire Matthew
Martin, who disappears from his Chelsea townhouse late one night, abandoning his two daughters. Isaac must step in as guardian until Matthew reappears, a situation not at all to his liking.Mary Martin, the elder sister, is stubborn, independent, and strong-willed. She's also been in love with her handsome cousin forever, but he's never deigned to notice her. Chafing under his reluctant guardianship, they cross swords immediately and often. Lady Sophia Rowley, one of the ton's most beautiful and ruthless women, determined to lead Isaac to the altar when her ailing husband dies, further complicates matters. A situation in Isaac's library leads to an offer of marriage, an offer Mary refuses. She adores him, but how can she enter into a loveless union, thinking his affections are otherwise engaged? She has no idea he's mad for her-he's hidden his feelings so well. Meanwhile, her father turns up, plunging them into a dangerous series of events that reach their climax at bucolic Alresford Hall, where Mary has retired to reconsider what she believes is Isaac's reluctant proposal. "Jo Manning makes an impressive debut into full-length fiction with The Reluctant Guardian, a meticulously plotted, well written romance, which exudes all the rich flavor of Regency England." --Mary Balogh Seducing Mr. Heywood
The Sicilian Amulet
My Lady Scandalous: The Amazing Life and Outrageous Times of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, Royal Courtesan, Simon & Schuster, September 2005, ISBN 074326262X  A wicked turnabout on Jane Austen's oft-quoted adage--"a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife"--is My Lady Scandalous, a richly raucous history that traverses the notoriously licentious British Regency era in the company of its most celebrated courtesan.Following a simple Edinburgh girlhood, Grace Dalrymple Elliott came of age in the Sin City of London, where wealthy men ruled society and women had everything to lose, starting with their reputations. As an impressionable bride of seventeen marrying a man more than twice her age, Grace's remarkable beauty (likened by journalists to "a May morning") attracted the attentions of men who were not her husband. A disastrous liaison with a consummate rake not only branded Grace as a demi-rep--a woman with half a reputation--but the scandal provoked Doctor John Eliot, her philandering husband, to pursue a divorce. Grace became mistress to the most infamous peer in England, George James, Lord Cholmondeley, whose "secret perfections" were reputed to inspire "female enthusiasm." Cholmondeley commemorated the relationship by commissioning two works from eminent portraitist Thomas Gainsbrough, first in 1778, and later in 1782, the same year Grace gave birth to a daughter, Georgiana (who may in fact been the child of the Prince of Wales). Had Grace been an aristocrat, she and Cholmondeley might have had a future together, but it was not to be. The tabloids broke the news: "Miss Dal---ple has embarked for France, and it is said parted with her noble gallant." Grace was soon to find a new protector in that nation's richest man, Phillippe, Duc d'Orleans. Though ensconced as "one of the most brilliant and popular among the fashionable 'impures'," the liaison turned perilous when d'Orleans fell to the Revolution's guillotine, just as Grace narrowly escaped with her life. "People die, but love may not," declares author Jo Manning of her subject's romantic and historic misadventures. A connoisseur of the times, Manning ably demonstrates--through excerpts from contemporary newspapers, magazines, prints, and portraits--how life in George III's England and Marie Antoinette's France can seem strangely familiar, especially when history turns to affairs of the heart. "A wickedly good read about a lady no better than she should be. A joy to read; a storehouse of information as well as a witty commentary on the times. My Lady Scandalous is non-fiction that reads like the very best fiction." --Edith Layton "What a delight! Jo Manning's My Lady Scandalous brings to life the scandals and excesses of the late Georgian period through the life of a strong, unconventional woman who was not only the mistress of royalty, but who barely survived the Reign of Terror. A feast for lovers of social history, My Lady Scandalous entertains as well as educates." --Mary Jo Putney
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