USA Today Bestseller List #123! OK… it’s not the top of the list, but considering that the cover features a chained teddy bear… we think this book did very well!
Bookcode: away
AWAY: Romantic Times BOOKClub finalist
Romantic Times BOOKClub finalist for Best Historical Anthology of 2004
Inside A Fool Again
- This story has one of my very favorite first lines: “A well-bred lady never ogles a man from behind her black veil, especially during her husband’s burial.”
- When I first wrote Fool for Love, I didn’t even know that Darby had two brothers. But suddenly they popped up on the computer (believe it or not, this does happen to writers!). When I finished the book I had no idea where they were, since Darby says that although his father sent private investigators all over the world, the twins hadn’t been heard from for years. When Avon asked me to write a novella, Tobias immediately came to mind. I hope someday to recover his twin as well.
- The heroine’s best friend in this story is Carola, who first appeared in Duchess in Love. Since this book takes place after Duchess, Carola and Tuppy are happily married. Tuppy doesn’t appear, because he’s off fishing.
- The carnival scene in this story is partially inspired by personal experience (see my introduction to the story, above), but also by stories of Barthlomew Fair, a wonderful fair from the Renaissance period. As you might know, I’m a professor during the day, and I sometimes teach a play by Ben Jonson called Bartholomew Faire. My fair is a great deal less earthy and less funny than his.
- A second and perhaps more important source for this book than Jonson’s play is a novel for young people that I read aloud to my son. It was written by Joan Aiken, and is called Black Hearts in Battersea. It’s the second in the Wolves of Willoughby Chase chronicles. I highly recommend it, not the least for its glorious description of a fair full of crazed side-attractions such as the Talking Pig.
- The novel is about getting a second chance at love, with an utterly delicious scene set at Bartholomew Fair that no one should miss!
Mea Culpa, A Fool Again
- Oops! On page 215, the couch stops and Genevieve almost tumbles into Tobias’s lap. Well…I suppose I meant that the coach (or carriage) stops. But in a Freudian kind of way, there could be a double entendre here!