Georgette Heyer

I had heard from several friends that Georgette Heyer is the next best thing to Jane Austen and I am starting to believe them.  I gather that she is considered to have established the genre of the Regency romance novel.  Since she was not writing about her own time period, as was Jane Austen, she had to do extensive research and included many details about Regency life in her novels to help her readers better understand the plots.  I find the novels richer for these details.  From what I've read about Georgette Heyer she was meticulous in her research and rarely made a mistake.

I read Devil's Cub last week and just finished its prequel, These Old Shades, today.  They were both charming, delightful, funny and romantic.  These Old Shades especially picked up the pace the further I got into the novel and if I weren't reading in the bathtub, I would have been on the edge of my seat  during the climactic confrontation between the hero, the Duke of Avon, and the villain, the Comte de Saint-Vire (or that "pig-person" as our heroine, Leonie would say).  Previously I had read The Reluctant Widow and enjoyed it, but maybe not as much as these two I just finished.

So today, I went to Barnes and Noble and ended up buying a copy of the four Regency romances that were currently available at the store.  When I first heard about Georgette Heyer, her books were no longer in print, but many have been re-issued and are now available.  I am hoping that the same thing happens with D.E. Stevenson, another recent personal discovery.