Rose Sweetly is a mathematical genius with a passion for astronomy. Aside from her work, all she wants is a quiet life. For that, she has to guard her reputation, particularly because too many people will see a middle class black woman as not a lady and somebody of whom advantage can be easily taken. Stephen Shaughnessy, novelist and author of the "Ask a Man" column in the newspaper published for and by women which featured in the previous book in the series, is widely known as a rake. Rose knows that he's the last man that she should even let anybody think she associates with. Nevertheless, when he appears under the pretense of wanting to learn about astronomy for his next novel, she agrees to teach him.

I adored this book. Stephen is the best sort of romance rake: he genuinely likes women, he never hurts anybody, and he never pressures Rose to risk anything she doesn't want to. He loves her for her brilliance and the way she sees the world, and he makes it clear that if she marries him he'll support her continuing her work. Rose starts the book having learned to keep her head down and stay out of trouble as a method of survival; by the end she learns to take a stand for herself and her family, and when to dare to be a little bit outrageous. And when she *does* stand up for her sister... I can't give specifics without spoilers, but I love that Stephen joins in by threatening to help her rather than taking over the lead. Courtney Milan just writes the best beta heroes.

This *might* have became my new favorite Courtney Milan novel, except that as a novella, there just isn't enough of it to unseat the wonder that is The Suffragette Scandal. Which isn't to say that it feels too short in itself: it is exactly the right length for its own purposes.

Overall: A+

The Artful Dodger was always a far more interesting character than Oliver Twist, who mostly burst into tears and got rescued by other people. Why, then, did Charles Dickens choose to write the story of the latter rather than the former? Peter David here proposes the answer: because the story of the Artful Dodger is full of vampires and people simply were not willing to accept that. Having escaped transportation to Australia, the Artful Dodger stumbles into a conspiracy of vampires in high places. (As Peter David points out, Dickens was so known for giving characters revealing names that the practice has become known as Dickensian, and there was a character in the original called Magistrate Fang.) What happens from then is equal parts hilarity and adventure featuring the best known names of 19th century London, historical and fictional. It's terribly fun, with everything I expect from Peter David's fantasy and streaks of Douglas Adams and George MacDonald Fraser as well.

Peter David is in the middle of two series that I would very much like to see continued, and which I'm under the impression are supposed to be, but I have absolutely no bitterness that he chose to write this instead of the next installment of one of them. It might be my favorite book of his yet... or I may need to reread some of the others just to compare and make sure.

Overall: A

I rarely bother to review a cookbook, but that's because it's a rare cookbook that I read straight through. Garden and Table is framed as the journal of Harald Bumbleburr, a halfling. Harald included in his journal detailed notes about recipes he made or enjoyed, and so this book is both useful and entertaining, with the glimpses of Harald's life and hints of his relationships with his neighbors in the narration around the recipes. It was fun to read straight through and I'm looking forward to trying a few of the recipes in it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know one of the authors, Daniel Myers, who also happens to be Master Eduoard Halidai in the Society of Creative Anachronism. While that did have something to do with my buying it, it does not affect the content of this review. (Not having made any promise to review it, if it weren't worth a good review I'd probably have not bothered to write one at all.)

Overall: A

A middle aged man returns to his hometown for a funeral and wanders to the farm at the end of the road where he grew up. When he was a child, it was occupied by a young girl named Lettie Hempstock, her mother, and her grandmother. There, he remembers strange events that happened to him and Lettie when he was seven.

I didn't enjoy this as much as Anansi Boys, American Gods, or Neverwhere, but it's still beautifully written and has a number of wonderful, stand out quotes in it. It has a certain fable-like quality to it which, though while it is probably exactly the tone it was meant to have and which suits the matter of fact way the narrator accepted what was going on around him as a seven year old, also leaves the characters sketched rather lightly and made it hard for me to connect with them. Sometimes I hoped that the action was going to shift back to the present and that a true adult perspective (as opposed to an adult remembering childhood) would help, but after a few chapters and in such a short book it became evident that wasn't going to happen.

I still expect I'll be rereading this in a few years.

Overall: B

Frederica ("Free") Marshall publishes a newspaper by, for, and about women. She's an investigative reporter in the mold of Nellie Bly, and she has her share of enemies. One of them, James Delacey, is currently behind a scheme to ruin her paper by making it appear that it is plagiarizing from other papers.

Edward Clark was born Edward Delacey, James's older brother, but has been out of the country and unheard from in so long that he's about to be legally presumed dead and his title passed to his younger brother. Edward is fine with that. What he's not fine with is that James's scheme would also ruin Stephen Shaughnessy, the little brother of his childhood best friend. When he initially approaches Free with part of his story (leaving out that James is his brother and that his motive is protecting Stephen) he attempts to blackmail her into working with him. She blackmails him right back, and accepts.

This is quite possibly my new favorite romance, period. Free is a force of nature. She knows every bit of how ugly the world can be; she frequently subjects herself to it deliberately for the sake of a story. But she sees that ugliness and then finds bits of it that she can fix. And I love how Edward was utterly bowled over by her from the beginning. The author's note says that Milan's original intent was for Free to meet some guy who was opposed to women's rights, and I'd probably be writing a very different review if that hadn't changed. My favorite thing about Edward is that, even if he isn't always sure that there's much hope for Free to succeed, he never for a second thinks that she's wrong or needs to change.

There's also a secondary romance that was quite sweet, although not as integrated into the main plot as the one in The Heiress Effect. And as always with Milan's books, the dialogue was wonderful. I can hardly wait for the concluding novella in the series. For that matter, I can hardly wait for the next series after this.

Overall: A

Rumor has it that Lucien, Duke of Belliston, is a vampire. When a woman is discovered dead with bite marks on her throat, Sally Fitzhugh - certain that the vampire stories are nonsense and this murder has been staged to frame him - intervenes. The two join forces to find out who is behind the murder and possibly that of the Duke's parents, years before, which had been blamed on his mother.

This book is a delight. It's full of adventure, romance, and humor, most particularly in the form of a pet stoat. Sally has grown up to be a formidable heroine, brave but not foolishly so. She comes across as a sort of successor to Miss Gwen for the next generation. And Lucien, although his baggage sometimes temporarily gets the best of him, displays remarkable endurance. They make a perfect couple.

The only slight disappointment from this book is one that I have trouble describing because it would be incredibly spoilery. The best I can do is: although for most of the book, the characters believe that the murders are connected to the ongoing plot of the series, it turns out they have nothing to do with it. Change the names and have the characters not have a theory about who is behind the murders (just a need to investigate) and this could have been any stand alone romance. It was a fun one, but it was missing a crucial element of the series, as far as I'm concerned.

Overall Rating: B+

Theoretically The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla is released tomorrow, but since I didn't have an ARC, just a copy that shipped early from B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if you could find it already, too.