THE TAMING OF THE ROGUE - Amanda McCabe
Harlequin Historical
ISBN-13: 978-0-373-29690-3
May 2012
Historical Romance

Elizabethan London, 1589

Anna Barrett lives with her father and takes care of him when he is drunk. She also collects his rents and keeps his ledgers, and runs her father's White Heron Theatre. Gratefully a widow with no intentions of remarrying, Anna won't put herself in any man's complete power again. Yet one of the actors at the White Heron, Robert Alden, makes her heart beat faster. He is a rogue, though, and constantly in fights, usually over women. A womanizing heart breaker is definitely not the man for her, although he writes superb plays, and attendance always increases when he is on stage.

A past mistake still haunts Robert Alden, and spying for Secretary Walsingham just drags him lower, but he enjoys writing plays and acting in them. Self-contained, self-sufficient, nosy, but beautiful Anna Barrett intrigues him, but he knows he isn't good enough for her. When Walsingham gives him a new assignment, he discovers himself in a dilemma. His efforts might expose Anna and her father as traitors.

Author Amanda McCabe catches the flavor of the exuberant and dangerous Elizabethan era. In a plot that twists around thwarted love and treasonous actions, the characters are lively, brave, secretive, and passionate. These are not aristocrats, so often found in romance novels, but commoners living in the stews of London . This gives a refreshingly new view on life during this turbulent time. Danger, lust, and love make a potent mix in reading, and this story has it all.

Robin Lee