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

Dammit Candy! I stole her idea first.
Great minds, eh?

What a hoot!  Often wonder about those ditzy titles...didn’t realize they are part of a bigger game.  My kids are going to love this one, it will be bigger than scrabble.  Thanks for the info!!!!

The Greek’s Ultimate Revenge? That’s anal rape, right?

What is it with these Greek-bearing gifts, anyway?

OK, let’s take the six M&B Regencies from the last three months:

Betrayed and Betrothed by Anne Ashley
Marrying Miss Hemingford by Mary Nichols
The Rake and the Rebel by Mary Brendan
The Marriage Debt by Louise Allen
A Reputable Rake by Diane Gaston
Princess of Fortune by Miranda Jarrett.

Identical twins the Marquess of Winchelsea and Lord Percy Pikestaff, known to the entire Ton as The Rake and the Rebel, find themselves both Betrayed and Betrothed after The Marquess, thinking he is Marrying Miss Hemingford finds himself hitched to Lady Cassandra, a gazetted Princess of Fortune who is trying to pay off The Marriage Debt she incurred when she broke off her engagement to Lord Percy, once she discovered that it was not he but his brother who was A Reputable Rake.

And they say that writing a killer synopsis is hard…

There seems to be a thing for Greeks and Brides in the titles.  You know most of them don’t even sound that romantic.

You know most of them don’t even sound that romantic.

Damn straight they don’t. Most of them sound like an episode of COPS waiting to happen.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?  Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Sorry.

Victoria, you made me pee a little.

CindyS

From the M&B website, I’ve pulled out the titles of the Medical romances for December and come up with this:

When Coming Home to Katoomba after work, The Heroic Surgeon dropped a grand piano on his Bride by Accident. After he saved her life with The Consultant’s Special Rescue he got A Surgeon’s Marriage Wish and they spent their honeymoon playing Spanish Doctor, Pregnant Nurse.

Over here, Harlequin Presents are branded as Mills & Boon “Modern”. This would be “Modern” in the sense of betamax video recorders. Here are December’s offerings:

The Mistress to a Rich Man advertised a parsnip in the shape of the Virgin for Sale on eBay and it was Taken by the Highest Bidder, The Italian’s Convenient Wife, Frittata Porcini. She had been Tamed by her Husband into buying it as a gift for The Antonakos Marriage ceremony. But the statue was a cunning ruse, for with it Frittata was also Blackmailing the Society Bride, Avgolemono Dolmades, into complying with the Playboy’s Seduction by threatening to tell her Baby of Shame-ful indiscretions with root vegetables and the Soner* (sic) of Passion

Mwahahaa, my evil plan to take over the world by passing on my procrastination habits is working! 

I’m so glad you are enjoying the game, and love what you’re coming up with.  The more titles, the more complicated it gets, but occasionally I play with the strip box.  I never thought others would get the same enjoyment out of it that I do.

Check out the Men’s Action/Adventure category (Any of the Mack Dolan titles will do) for more title fun. 

Thanks for spreading the title love,

L

Spanish Doctor, Pregnant Nurse

…does what it says on the tin. What more do you need to know when book buying? When I saw it on the book rack last weekend, I did a double-take and was almost tempted to buy it for sheer comedy value.

I think Medical romances have quite a big market over here. Shows set in hospitals like “Casualty” get big ratings. Maybe because with the NHS, medical staff still have that heroic glow? Never got the entertainment appeal myself apart from the odd game of “Spot the Stiff”.

In any case, I suspect Candy’s right that doctor/nurse aka medical romances are one of the oldest sub-genres of category romance. Possibly because for years in the early 20th century, being a nurse was one of the few careers open to women, and one way for them to meet men outside their normal social circles.

I think a soner of Passion is the technical name for one of the sounds made by a couple indulging in a nooner in the stationary cupboard. Like a kind of choked-off grunt muffled by paper and caused by a box of staplers jabbing into a tender portion of the anatomy?