A regency romance murder mystery that acknowledges the societal problems of the time and cares about explicit consent. Also banter. Oh, you’re still here? Alright. Plot: Lady Katherine Bascomb is an independently wealthy widow who runs a newspaper. Among her interests is the crime beat, for which she writes regularly. The book starts with her meeting her soulmate, Caroline Hardcastle, a fellow writer. Together, they decide to start a guide to address the intolerable gap in crime reporting that considers the female perspective (with goals […]

I have probably just been reading and watching too many murder mysteries (and listening to too much Shedunnit) to be won over to the charms of the first book in Manda Collins’s new series, named for its first book: A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem. The setup is pretty simple: in the earlyish (maybe mid) Victorian era, the widowed Lady Katherine Bascomb and her friend, Caroline Hardcastle, begin writing a column together for Kate’s newspaper; however, they foolishly dabble in crime reporting, and publish a […]