Romantic Reads to sweep you back in time
Alison Lloyd's newsletter #37
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Much as I like roses, love is far more than flowers. Valentine gifts express something truly beautiful — high regard and value set on another human being. Finding loveliness in someone different from yourself. Placing another’s interests above your own. Ah my! Love is stirring, story-worthy stuff.
In lieu of red roses, this newsletter offers:
a bunch of my favourite romantic reads
an exclusive Valentine’s Day short story, from me to you!
10 Romantic Reads
Ready to be swept off your feet into a story? These are 10 of my favourite historical novels.
(None of these books are erotica. Those marked with an asterisk* contain a couple of explicit sex scenes. I’ve provided links to free, legit online versions where they exist.)
1. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
I know — it’s not an original choice. But it is the OG regency romance. It just works. The scene where Darcy first professes his love makes you squirm, then the end is all the more satisfying. And the narrative is layered through with Austen’s famous, biting irony.
2. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This historical novel isn’t strictly a romance, but a sweeping, romantic story of love and hate, set in the French Revolution. Love in this tale takes many different forms, and finally triumphs, in a powerful, redemptive ending.
3. The Black Moth, by Georgette Heyer
Georgette Heyer reinvented historical romance for twentieth century readers. This was her first novel, written for her younger brother while he was sick. Unlike later romances, it hasn’t been trimmed down to the basic her-and-him plot. This swashbuckling story of love and derring-do gallops about the countryside, swords drawn.
4. The Secret Duchess, by Eva Ibbotson
If you like Downton Abbey, or ‘found family’ stories, I think you’ll like The Secret Duchess. It’s a truly charming story about an English house and its lord won over by an incognito emigree, who has fled the Russian revolution. It’s sweet and funny.
5. The Governess Affair, by Courtney Milan*
For once the hero of this modern Regency romance isn’t some dandy Duke but his somewhat ruthless serving man, which I really liked. This novella has a bedroom scene that’s memorable and quite touching (in the emotional sense, mostly!)
6. Gallant Waif, by Anne Gracie
I was lucky enough to do a writing course with Anne a little while back. She plots her stories from the male and female protagonists’ characters, setting them in opposition to each other. They’re classic modern Regency romances, with all the tropes, including witty banter. Gallant Waif is a romantic version of Pollyanna, but Anne has written plenty of others.
7. Lila, by Marilynne Robinson
This is the story of a battered woman and a preacher finding their way to love and peace, in mid-twentieth century rural America. Perhaps more about love than romance, it’s also about hurt, and loneliness, and healing, and God… Not a lot happens on the surface of Marilynne Robinson’s novels, but I adore their depth.
8. Bringing Down the Duke, by Evie Dunmore*
I like the way Evie Dunmore researches the social issues of the day and works them into her story. The main characters are politically opposed — the Duke is a conservative landholder and influential advisor to Queen Victoria. Annabelle is an impoverished blue-stocking on a scholarship to Oxford. But they’re both serious, responsible sorts who’ll go to great lengths for what they think is right. And eventually for each other, of course!
9. The Harp in the South, by Ruth Park
I want to offer something Australian, and this one is a classic. It’s the story of a poor Irish family in Sydney in the 1940s, particularly the innocent Roie Darcy and Aboriginal orphan Charlie Roth. It’s realistic, and somewhat sad, but a bright thread of true love runs through it. Not historical fiction when it was written, but it is now.
10. The Goldminer’s Daughter, by Alison Stuart
You might have noticed I like a dash of adventure, as well as sound historical research with my romance. This Australian novel set on the gold diggings delivers all three. The schoolteacher and the mining engineer must investigate mystery and skulduggery, and avoid the mineshafts of misunderstanding… But all ends well.
This list is of (largely) happily ever after stories. You can close them with a happy sigh. One day I will give you a list of my favourite heartbreakers. But not today.
Today I’ll finish with something of my own. Here is a fun story set in the marvellous Melbourne of 1888. It features Beatrice, another telephone operator from my draft novel, as she sets out to right the wrongs of the world, just before Valentine’s Day…
The February 14th Story
By Alison Lloyd
After Beatrice’s shift she was roiled up like a steamship. She ploughed through crowds of bank clerks and boot-shine boys. So what if she’d signed solemn declarations as an Exchange employee. She’d sworn not to eavesdrop on calls, nor divulge customer information, et cetera. But she could not let that ruddy marriage agency get away with it. They were aiding and abetting rotten scoundrels, marrying them off for money. To girls who had no idea. School girls and shop girls who had no one to look out for them. Girls like herself or her little sisters.
He thought it was funny! ‘All care and no responsibility’, was what he’d told his mate. Snort, snort, snigger, snigger. She’d pulled out the brass plug and cut him off. Let him complain to the Exchange. She’d always suspected romance was a scam, perpetrated for the comfort and convenience of men. Well, the services of ‘holy matrimony’ offered by Holt’s Matrimonial Agency were definitely hokum.
She knew better than to bowl up to the Agency office. No. It was the Argus newspaper to which she caught the tram…
[This story is exclusively for my newsletter subscribers. Subscribe for free and read the rest here!]
That’s all for this month.
I’ll end with a famous wedding scripture, which reminds me what my priorities should be as a writer and a person:
‘If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong’. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Love-ly story on Valentine’s Day! 💕
As always, the twist in the tail!
Love it. ELL