Help A Bitch Out - SOLVED!

HaBO: Hilarious Request

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

RedHeadedGirl emailed me with one of the most hilarious HaBO requests ever. I laughed so hard when I read it, Hubby made me read it to him – and he giggled for about ten minutes, too. Even if you don’t know the book, enjoy the request.

Okay, so back in the Bad Old Days of Zebra books in the gas stations, with
the Classic Historical Bodice Ripper covers and conviniently placed
postcards in the middle, I ran across this book in Toby’s Restaraunt in
Hinkley, Minnesota on our way up to Duluth. I never bought it because I was
maybe about 13 at the time, had no money, and my parents would have shat a
brick, and while the Shatting of the Bricks was always fun, I chose to save
my chips for something more substantial than a romance novel. (granted these
details are not important, except that I remember exactly where I stumbled
on this book, and EVEN NOW, on the rare occasions I end up at Toby’s, I
find myself looking at their book rack, wondering if it’s there).

But I’ve been wondering about this book for 18 years now (I need a life),
and have no idea what the title is or anything. So here’s the summary I
remember:

Probably English dude is in a tavern in Scotland, Scottish woman appears in
his room, he thinks she’s a whore his buddies bought him for the night,
there’s Happy Fun Times (given that this was 1991 or so, I’m assuming Old
School Rules are in play, and it was less fun for her). She leaves before he
wakes up, leaving behind 1) proof of her erstwhile virginity and 2) a single
strand of long red hair. He freaks out because she was in possession of the
Magic Hoo-Hoo that matched with His Mighty Wang, and goes off in search for
her (like you do). Or something.

I also vaguely remember that she needed something and thought she could get
it (information? a pardon? a cookie?) from him, and that’s why she ended up
in his room.

Is that vague enough?

I bet it was a cookie she was after. Don’t you think? Anyone remember this book? And who is up for a stop at Toby’s book section after lunch?

 

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  1. Ellen says:

    I don’t know if I’ve read this book, but I have definitely read this plot.  Sally Mackenzie has a series of books with titles involving nakedness and an assortment of members of higher classes of British society.  I don’t think they’re old enough, though.

  2. Donna says:

    Could it be Scandal’s Captive by Steph. Laurens?

  3. Emma says:

    This is the first time I have read a book with the same plot as a HaBO.  I don’t remember the title, but I know I read a very similar plot, except that that (I think) maybe the scottish girl had the wrong room?  She might have been looking for a relative but ended up in the ‘hero’s’ room by accident.  Is that helpful or is this a red herring?

  4. Jennifer Armintrout says:

    LOL, I read that book.  It’s called “50% of all historical romances in the late 80’s/early 90’s”.  It was a best seller.

    I bet the red-headed heroine had “fiery tresses and a temper to match”.

  5. MelB says:

    Donna, I think you’re talking about Scandal’s Bride by Laurens. Scandal’s Captive is Mandalyn Kaye. Both stories have red-headed heroines, I believe, but in Scandal’s Bride, the heroine knocks out the hero with drugs after he takes her virginity. She believes she’s some reincarnation of a magic Lady. I remember thinking this woman had to be the looniest wing-nut ever and that Laurens beat me over the head with her constant references to “The Lady.” All this magical deliciousness was paired with Laurens’ annoying habit of writing every action three times. “He tempted, teased, tormented her…” Ack!

    Wish I could remember this story for RedHeaded Girl, it sounds vaguely familiar to me.

  6. miz_geek says:

    I have no idea, but I could really go for a Tobie’s Crispy or Cinnamon Roll right now.  Mmmmmm.

  7. Rubyruberube says:

    I just posted a link this posting on one of my favorite groups on goodreads. Maybe we’ll have some luck figuring this one out….

    http://www.goodreads.com/topic/list_group/185.What_s_The_Name_of_That_Book_

  8. Lora/LitDiva says:

    HA!!!!

    I definitely want to read it if you find it! 

    My fave bit was

    I also vaguely remember that she needed something and thought she could get
    it (information? a pardon? a cookie?) from him, and that’s why she ended up
    in his room.

    I feel certain it was an oreo she was after.

  9. Sandra says:

    The name escapes me at the moment, but there was a Joan Wolf with this sort of plot. (Not the HaBO, though. Wolf was published by Signet Regency).Virginal young heroine with laryngitis is at the inn for some semi-plausible reason; drunk hero assumes she’s there for his convenience. Naturally, with no voice, she’s unable to protest (or fight, apparently). Hero realizes he did wrong, does the right thing by marrying her, and they the rest of the novel falling in love. There was a suspense sub-plot whose details I forget, which precipitated the final crisis.

    (I’ll have to find and re-read my Wolf’s. When I purged my shelves a few years ago, hers were about the only Signet Regency’s I kept. I really liked her back in the day. For one thing, she was one of the few writers who had real, if tame, sex scenes in the Trad Regency lines.)

  10. Nix Winter says:

    Oh my goodness… I don’t remember that book, but I remember a lot of them like it…

    I read so many books back in the day…

    If you find it, I”d like to know though. Oh such old times that plot brings back!

    Nix

  11. Maria says:

    Sorry, don’t know the book. But I do know Toby’s, the nicest truck-stop on the way Up North. I’ll definitely have to pick up a book next time I’m there :>).

  12. Greg Stolze says:

    Given that it’s Scotland, maybe she was after a haggis instead of a cookie?

    -G.

  13. fifi trixibelle says:

    Uhm, if he was a MacDonald, she was probably looking for a 1/4 pounder.

  14. TaraL says:

    Uhm, if he was a MacDonald, she was probably looking for a 1/4 pounder.

    …and instead ended up with a foot-long.

    Sorry… you know you were thinking it…

  15. Ben P says:

    ROFLMAO!

    A smartbitches hattrick: Three days in the row the assorted HABO posts have made me howl with laughter. Smartbitches rock.

  16. @Lora/LitDiva

    My fave bit was

      I also vaguely remember that she needed something and thought she could get
      it (information? a pardon? a cookie?) from him, and that’s why she ended up
      in his room.

    I feel certain it was an oreo she was after.

    this almost made me choke…

  17. Barb says:

    @Sandra—Well at least there will be one answer in this stream of cookie comedy—(Thanks to the responding Bitchery for the day’s giggles—and a thanks to RedheadedGirl for the original HaBO).

    (Ahem)—Sandra, the Joan Wolf title is Convenient Marriage—it was her first Signet Regency (1980).  Not my favorite of her’s in that line—but better than most.

    And sorry I do not have an answer for the original query.  But I didn’t read Zebra Romances in their heyday— I think it was those hologram thingies on the covers that squicked me out!!

    Spamword—field47.  Well, I’m not sure exactly where to go with that, except there’s a baseball comment in there somewhere!

  18. Not set in Scotland, but Shirlee Busbee’s Deceive Not My Heart (1984) had a plot very similar to this.  Hero was a guest somewhere and his host promised to send a prostitute to his room.  The heroine was sneaking into the same house that night to steal or retrieve a voucher for something (her family home, I think), which a relative had gambled away. 

    The hero thinks she is the promised prostitute and assumes her struggles are part of the way she likes to get off.  He rapes her and tries to give her money afterward, which she throws in his face.  She runs away, leaving behind, not hair, but a necklace of some kind, I want to say one with a cross or crucifix.

    He keeps this necklace as a memento.  She gets pregnant. They meet again years later under very strange circumstances—his lookalike cousin has been impersonating him and married her to scam her, so she believes she is his wife, while he believes she is a scam artist claiming to be his wife.  But they fall in love, and eventually straighten that mess out.

    In the very last scene of the book they put everything together—he gives her back the necklace, and they realize he is the father of her son.

    This book takes place somewhere in the American South though—I want to say Louisiana or Mississippi.

  19. Sherri says:

    Can I vote to give RedHeadedGirl the job of writing backcover copy?  I would totally read any book that summarizes the quest of the Mighty Wang to find his one true Magic Hoo-Hoo.

    The description of the book sounds similar to Iris Johansen’s “The Tiger Prince”. It was published in 1992, has a red-haired heroine and IIRC while it’s not set in Scotland the hero is from there.

  20. Karmyn says:

    I don’t remember the title, but I do know this book. I’ve been wondering about it for years myself. I remember the red hair because he thought her hair was dark. She was in disguise as a street person to help the poor or something.
    I hope somebody finds out what this one is, but it’s been driving me crazy for years, too.

  21. She only gets a cookie and he gets her Magic Hoo Hoo? I don’t know about the fairness of this . . .

    Anyway, I don’t remember this particular book, but like a lot us here I do remember reading others with that same kind of setup.

  22. boogenhagen says:

    The book is Surrender to the Night by Evelyn Rogers

    description from the back by fictiondb

    THE MAGIC OF HIS TOUCH

    Orphaned as a child, Jenna Cresswell was used to living by her wits on the rough streets of London. But a perilous secret forced the redheaded beauty to pose as a deaf girl and earn her keep at a tawdry tavern. There she was in the perfect position to overhear a plot against the American, Clay Drake, the only man who’d shown her any kindness. Intent on warning the ruggedly handsome Texan, Jenna sneaked into his bedroom in the dead of night. But before she could explain, Drake had her pinned to the bed, every sense alive to the magic of his exploring lips and hands…

    THE MEMORY OF HER KISS

    Drake assumed his midnight visitor was a birthday gift from his London friends and enjoyed her surprisingly potent charms to the fullest. But in the morning she was gone, leaving behind a strand of red hair—and the disturbing evidence of her innocence. Who had she been, and would she be as beautiful in the day as she had seemed in the shadows of the night? Drake was determined to track down his mystery lover, and turn one night of sweet splendor into a lifetime of passionate loving.

  23. minna says:

    Not Scandal’s Bride for sure.  Sounds like the above Evelyn Rogers more likely.  Have to say I have learnt not to eat or drink while reading HABOs (this saves me from asking my IT brother-in-law from fixing my laptop too often).

  24. Gina L says:

    I also vaguely remember that she needed something and thought she could get
      it (information? a pardon? a cookie?) from him, and that’s why she ended up
      in his room.

    I feel certain it was an oreo she was after.

    Uhm, if he was a MacDonald, she was probably looking for a 1/4 pounder.

    …and instead ended up with a foot-long.

    With ‘cookie’ and the Magic Hoo-Hoo being interchangable on so many boards, you really gotta feel sorry for the poor girl…no cookie AND she gets stuck with His Mighty Wang!  What’s a young-orphaned-fake-deaf-readheaded-waif-who-sneaks-into-strange-men’s-hotel-rooms gotta do to get a break?

    …or a freakin’ cookie.

  25. Tamara Hogan says:

    What’s a young-orphaned-fake-deaf-readheaded-waif-who-sneaks-into-strange-men’s-hotel-rooms gotta do to get a break?

    Or at least a Tobies Cinnamon Roll? Which, come to think of it, just might be worth giving “it” up for…

  26. Faellie says:

    There are significant elements of this HaBo which remind me strongly of Elizabeth Thornton’s Fallen Angel, which was definitely one of those Zebra jobs with the postcard, and has been a keeper of mine since some time fairly shortly after it was published in 1989 (yes I know).  Fallen Angel definitely has an English hero, a red-headed Scottish heroine, the “mistaken early wedding night” and a scene or two in a tavern.  It might not be precisely the book that is being searched for (it doesn’t have the pimping best buddies), but it shouldn’t disappoint.

    Sadly, a quick google for Elizabeth Thornton, an author I’ve loved since reading Fallen Angel, has revealed that she died last month.

  27. Karmyn says:

    Yes, that’s it. Surrender to the Night. Finally, after all these years.
    Not sure I want to read it, but nice to know it really did exist.

  28. Sharon says:

    “He freaks out because she was in possession of the
    Magic Hoo-Hoo that matched with His Mighty Wang,”

    oh, snap! heehee

  29. OH MY GOD boogenhagen, THAT IS IT.  THANK YOU.  “The disturbing proof of her innocence.”

    Now *I* want a goddamn Tobies cinnamon roll.  I live in Boston now, so it’s rare indeed that I get up there.

    You guys are the bestest and I’m glad people think I’m funny.  Thank you!

  30. orangehands says:

    LMAO at the HaBO and thread.

  31. boogenhagen says:

    Glad I could help, enjoy the book!

  32. Tracy says:

    May have to stop at Tobies on the way up next weekend.  These cinnamon rolls must have crack baked right into them….

  33. BH says:

    Laughing my ass off at the HaBO thread tonight.

    I think I read that book, or something close to it.

    I think I need a cookie.

  34. What Jennifer said.[g]

  35. Theresa Meyers says:

    I think boogenhagen deserves a bitchery title for identifing that one!  Perhaps the mighty Countess DeWang?

  36. Jeannie says:

    ‘cause ya know … once you find the perfect Mighty Wang that fits your Magic Hoo-Hoo all others fail in comparison. Am I right? I thought so.

  37. Stephanie says:

    anyone else craving oreos?

  38. cursingmama says:

    I have no clue what the book is, but I am shockingly close to taking a long lunch break & heading to Tobys.  I know I shouldn’t – but it’s tempting.

  39. Melissa W. says:

    Surrender to the Night! Hahaha! This thread was great and brought back memories. I read this book when I was too young to be doing so. 😉 So funny.

  40. Karen says:

    I think boogenhagen deserves a bitchery title for identifing that one!  Perhaps the mighty Countess DeWang?

    Countess “Cookie” DeWang.

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