The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

In her delicious latest slice of historical genre fare, Goodman (the Lady Helen novels) introduces readers to Lady Augusta "Gus" Colebrook and her twin sister, Julia, two strong-willed Regency-era spinsters who wield their age and station to liberate struggling women in London. Hoping to distract a grieving Julia after her fiancé's death, Lady Gus volunteers to retrieve compromising letters from a blackmailer as a favor for a friend. But what begins as a lark soon becomes a serious plot to aid women in trouble who have no other recourse, including a wife trying to escape her murderous husband, some girls kidnapped by a brothel, and a group of women unjustly committed to a madhouse. With the help of their loyal, quick-witted butler and a disgraced nobleman turned highwayman, Lady Gus and Julia risk their lives and reputations to solve cases and save women from bleak fates. Fierce, funny, and often dark, this is an eye-opening portrait of a colorful yet misogynistic period in English history. Readers will be eager to return for the duo's next adventure. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (May)

In 1812, Lady Augusta "Gus" Colebrook and her twin sister Julia are 42. They are considered spinsters, lucky to have their own income and their own household. Despite their status in society, Gus is bored. After a successful retrieval of letters for a friend threatened with blackmail, she has an idea: Why shouldn't she and Julia have adventures while helping other women? For their first case, they plan to rescue the childless Lady Caroline Thorne, who fears her husband intends to kill her. If the sisters can get her out of her house, her relatives will shelter her. On the way to the Thorne estate, the sisters' carriage is attacked by highwaymen. Gus shoots and injures one of them, but Julia recognizes him as Lord Evan Belford, convicted of murder in a duel 20 years earlier and exiled to Australia. Now the sisters have an escaped felon as a secret partner in their attempts to save women and children in Regency England. VERDICT Fans of Georgette Heyer's Regency novels will savor this mystery from "Dark Days Club" series author Goodman. Well-developed characters, a touch of romance, and cases involving social issues of the period enhance the experience.--Lesa Holstine

Three interlinked stories that give their twin heroines a chance to shine in much more physically active roles than early-19th-century England would ever have allowed. It seems the fate of 42-year-old spinster Lady Augusta Colebrook to be constantly called on to rescue other women from the clutches of evil men and male-dominated institutions, and the fate of her widowed twin sister, Lady Julia, to be swept along as her accomplice while they keep their snooty and entitled brother, the Earl of Duffield, ever in the dark. After a spirited prologue suggesting a lower-tech James Bond pre-credit sequence, "Till Death Do Us Part" is kicked off by a report from Georgina Randall, an old friend of the twins' late mother, that Millicent Defray, one of her daughters, suspects Sir Reginald Thorne of having imprisoned his wife, Caroline, Millicent's sister. Gussie's plan to find and free Caroline brings her into close contact with Lord Evan Belford, back in England after having been transported to Australia for a fatal duel he fought 20 years ago. The sparks between the two are so quick and hot that it's no surprise to see Lord Evan, aka Jonathan Hargate, return in "An Unseemly Cure" to help Gussie rescue Marie-Jean, a 12-year-old who's been kidnapped, kept in a brothel, and offered as a Virgin Cure for the pox, or in "The Madness of Women," in which Gussie eagerly responds to Lord Evan's plea to help him spring his sister, Lady Hester Belford, from Bothwell House asylum. All three adventures are marked by successively mounting complications that fans of either the Regency period or take-no-prisoners feminism will cheer. Think of the Bridgerton novels with the steamy sex replaced by female-forward action sequences. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In 1812, Lady Augusta "Gus" Colebrook and her twin sister Julia are 42. They are considered spinsters, lucky to have their own income and their own household. Despite their status in society, Gus is bored. After a successful retrieval of letters for a friend threatened with blackmail, she has an idea: Why shouldn't she and Julia have adventures while helping other women? For their first case, they plan to rescue the childless Lady Caroline Thorne, who fears her husband intends to kill her. If the sisters can get her out of her house, her relatives will shelter her. On the way to the Thorne estate, the sisters' carriage is attacked by highwaymen. Gus shoots and injures one of them, but Julia recognizes him as Lord Evan Belford, convicted of murder in a duel 20 years earlier and exiled to Australia. Now the sisters have an escaped felon as a secret partner in their attempts to save women and children in Regency England. VERDICT Fans of Georgette Heyer's Regency novels will savor this mystery from "Dark Days Club" series author Goodman. Well-developed characters, a touch of romance, and cases involving social issues of the period enhance the experience.—Lesa Holstine

In her delicious latest slice of historical genre fare, Goodman (the Lady Helen novels) introduces readers to Lady Augusta "Gus" Colebrook and her twin sister, Julia, two strong-willed Regency-era spinsters who wield their age and station to liberate struggling women in London. Hoping to distract a grieving Julia after her fiancé's death, Lady Gus volunteers to retrieve compromising letters from a blackmailer as a favor for a friend. But what begins as a lark soon becomes a serious plot to aid women in trouble who have no other recourse, including a wife trying to escape her murderous husband, some girls kidnapped by a brothel, and a group of women unjustly committed to a madhouse. With the help of their loyal, quick-witted butler and a disgraced nobleman turned highwayman, Lady Gus and Julia risk their lives and reputations to solve cases and save women from bleak fates. Fierce, funny, and often dark, this is an eye-opening portrait of a colorful yet misogynistic period in English history. Readers will be eager to return for the duo's next adventure. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary. (May)