Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Bitchery Reader PattiR says:

Since I suffer from C.R.S.S. (Can’t Remember Shit Syndrome) I am asking you Bitches for help.

I have seen how amazing you all are at this, so I am really hoping you can help me out.  It’s driving me crazy that I cannot remember this book.  I have no idea how many years ago I read it, (at a guess, I’d say 20 years) and I can’t remember anything but the basic story line. And I mean basic.

I know, not much to go on, but if you can just help me get that much closer to figuring it out, I would be thankful.

Well, here goes:

I think this book takes place in the Turn of the Century American South.  I really want to say Louisiana, but I am not positive.

There is a (Gypsy??) prophesy about a light and a dark child, and how one will destroy the other.

The Villain of the story is a fair haired man, married/engaged to/dating the Heroine, and he is in politics of some kind. He also abuses/beats the Heroine.

The Heroine is trying to figure out her life/try and get out of her abusive relationship, and along comes this very handsome, dark haired man (the Hero).

He helps her out, in what way I have no idea (I told you I read this a really long time ago).  I think he tries to help her get out of the abusive relationship she is in.

Really not sure about the middle of the story, but at the end, Villain and Hero get into a big fight at a really big house, a party was going on or was about to go on and I think the Hero shoots the Villain. That is about all I can remember.  Pitiful, huh?

Sound like anything any of you have read?? Can anyone help this Bitch out?

The fair villain and the dark hero? Is it Othello in turn-of-the-century Louisiana? 

Bitchery reader Gabby has a big challenge for y’all: identify this book based on the excerpt chapter she read in the back of a book. It is ON!

I’ve been checking your site everyday for quite a while now and I know how helpful you guys are at finding books. I have one that I’ve been trying to find for ever with no luck.

It was only an excerpt in the back of a book so I only got to read the first chapter. I think it was set in colonial America, where there were a lot of bandits and stuff. The heroine was a bit homely and she worked in a jewelery store. She was extremely competent and the owner of the store trusted her. There was another girl who worked in the store. She was drop dead gorgeous but not the sharpest tool in the shed. I think she might have been a bitch as well.

Anyway, the hero comes along and he is all handsome and sexy. He charms the pretty girl but I think he also flirts with the heroine as well. He looks at all the jewelery and ends up stealing a necklace. The heroine sees it and does something that sounds an alarm. Then all hell breaks loose with the officials coming in and arresting the man.

The heroine in infatuated with the hero whilst resenting him at the same time. The only other thing that I remember is the hero actually getting away with the necklace despite getting arrested. Or at least I think he did. He winked at her and she almost swoons or something.

I don’t think there’s a lot of information there but if you could help me out I would be so grateful!!

I almost thought it sounded like Jude Deveraux’s “Wishes,” except I don’t think Nelly works in a jewelry store. And the competitive beauty is her sister. So that’s not it. 

Bitchery reader Jen writes:

After seeing all the success you people have at ID’ing books, I have one for you.

This was when I was still sneaking books from my mother’s reading, but before I got smart enough to start writing my favorites down (because she doesn’t like to re-read books, and I do).

The book is a Regency-era Romance and it happens in a city.  The hero is investigating… something.

The heroine I remember more clearly.  She gets “hunches” that oftentimes come true.  In one part of the book one of the villans gives her something to drink that makes her sick and maybe helps her hunches get better.  I seem to remember cards in the scene.  The heroine also happens to invest a sum of money in a ship that she thinks will give her good returns when it comes back, and when it doesn’t come back in time means that she is put in an awkward situation that might be the reason that she is thrown together with the hero.  At the end of the book the ship comes back and she gains financial freedom, and thus doesn’t have to work for the hero anymore, and the subsequent parting has him (I think) realizing how much of an ass he’s been.

Other details… I think there’s sex in a carriage.  Or at least he pulls out at the last moment and cums on her thighs and then they have to get out of the carriage and she’s walking around with a sticky mess.  I’m fairly certain that she might have been a virgin.

The hero may have had a limp.  The book may also have been part of a series.  The bad guy’s may want the heroine to be part of their plan.  Someone takes morphine in the book, and it’s not one of the main characters.

There’s also a part where the hero tells her to stay behind, or tells her she shouldn’t go “investigating” into the villains house when they are there for some reason and she doesn’t listen.  A scene afterward has them running over a lawn.  Maybe.

I hope these details work.  I think I’ve built the book to be better than it actually was, but I would still like to read it.

I have to confess: after the hunches and the drugging and the villainy, getting to the part where he spooged man pudding on her thighs in a carriage and then she walked around IN the wet spot had me laughing harder than I care to admit. Because… whoa. That is some fucked up mess right there. So, who can guess this one?

Bitchery Reader Pennifer sent me this HABO request, and I seriously had to read it twice because it was SO AMUSING OMG LIKE DAMN HELL WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST:

Given the incredible success rate of the bitchery at helping people re-discover long lost favourites, I thought I would add my request.

It’s a book I read 10-12 years ago (but it may have been older than that) and the heroine was called Charity or Chastity or something like that. It was set in America in the 1500s/1600s (I’m sorry, my American history is pretty rusty). I do remember the highlights of the plot, though. The book starts with the heroine living with her cousins or distant family of some sort, who were Puritans. Her cousin forced her to have sex with him, and she was put on trial for witchcraft, because the cousin said that she tempted him. The judge sentenced her to something (death? maybe?) because she was so darn beautiful that she must have been a witch. On her way to her punishment she was rescued by a highwayman, who happened to be rescuing a friend who was also sentenced to death. She sexes up the highwayman, then runs away from him and ends up on a plantation, where she falls in love with the owner. The owner is devoted to his wife, and so resists our heroine’s wiles, even though there is something funky going on with the wife (there was some business in here about a green dress, although I cannot for the life of me remember what the relevance of it was).

She then gets taken away from the plantation by pirates, and ends up with the head pirate, who of course, is having an affair with the plantation owner’s wife. The head pirate decides to pimp out the girl, and her first customer is the highwayman, which makes her happy but pisses the pirate off, because she’s his twoo wuv. Eventually, the pirate takes her back to the plantation, because she keeps going on about the insipid owner, but then she has an epiphany and realises that it’s the pirate she loves, but he won’t have anything to do with her by this stage. So, she basically emasculates him in front of his crew, taunts him with her nekkidness and then they live happily ever after.

I would love to find out if this book is as insane and hilarious as I remember it being, because that right there is a lot of sexxoring. Any help would be greatly appreciated. You can imagine doing a google search on variations of “pirate highwayman puritan” is turning up some freaking weird crap and not really helping me find this book.

At first I thought she’d conflated (2 sips!) at least two books, maybe three, because that book is crazy lettuce with a delicate dressing of moonbat. But if it’s real, oh MAN. That’s just epic. 

Bitchery reader adb is impressed with your sleuthing abilities - and asks for your help identifying a book she read when she was 12:

It was a really, really weird book in that it had two distinct subplots. There was the cute romantic comedy subplot, which I remember more clearly, and the weeeird space-opera-y lasers 'n' spells subplot. I can't remember which was the "main" plot, or even if they shared airtime, but the spacey one had something to do with finding the long-lost prince or princess or something of this kingdom that was falling apart. The hero was the one who was involved in all this, and the heroine was the one who didn't know about it (though she eventually found out).

The story flipped between the hero and the heroine's viewpoints. The first time they met, they hated each other. (Of course.) Then the hero went back to his house and realized that he'd fallen madly in love with her and was really angry about it. Then they somehow met later at a fantasy/sci fi convention (oooh, meta!) and wacky things happened, and somehow alien porn was involved. The alien porn sticks in my mind for some reason. The hero's ex-girlfriend popped in, but she was nice and not meddlesome like most exes are, and she was also involved in the long-lost-prince part of the plot. Then some Horrible Magical Sickness befell the heroine, and the hero wigged out because he'd realized that she was his True Luuurve, and some stuff happened that I forget and she got better and they got married and raised ducks. In a pond in their kitchen. The End. Oh, and they found the prince in the end, I'm pretty sure.

The really neat thing that I remember is that the heroine was really average-looking. She was fat and wore glasses, and she was a tough little cuss in general. That's all I remember, though.

Average looking with magical sickness and ducks? Not-your-typical-heroine? COOL. Anyone remember the book?