Wish List Wednesday: The Heir of Starvelings by Evelyn Berckman

I was so inspired by the Teaser Tuesday idea that I decided to do Wish List Wednesdays! Yes, I know, someone is probably doing it, too, but if I stole the idea I repent forthwith.

At any rate, every reader has a mile-long wish list of books she can’t wait to get her grubby little hands on. So, on Wish List Wednesdays, we’ll share the following:

• The title of a random book from our wish list,
• How or where we found out about the book,
• How long the book has been on our wish list,
• And why we want it so badly!

Post your Wish List Wednesday book to your blog/Twitter feed and link to it in the comments. If you have neither, just share your info in the comments. I can’t wait to see what’s on your wish lists!

Happy Halloween (or Hallowe’en, if you’re particular), precious ones!

In honor of the holiday, today’s Wish List Wednesday title is a creepy Gothic from the way back machine. It’s Evelyn Berckman’s The Heir of Starvelings (isn’t that a deliciously Gothic title?), and here be the book’s synopsis, courtesy of Fiction DB:

Lovely Davina Milne refused to stay away from Starvelings because of its sinister reputation. Village talk about the evil Lord Stanyon and his reclusive wife could not keep her from the youthful heir of the manor who so clearly and painfully needed her. But when the lovely young girl entered the bleak mansion, she found herself moving ever deeper into a labyrinth of fearful secrets. And when suddenly she could no longer ignore the dark chasm opening before her unbelieving eyes, she realized escape had become impossible…

Now doesn’t that just give you the creeps in a very good way?

I can’t remember where I heard of The Heir of Starvelings, but I strongly suspect it was from browsing the huge archives of vintage paperback covers over at Book Scans Database. Please visit Book Scans, by the way — the good people there are not getting nearly enough credit for the wonderful work they do!

I put the book on my Wish List on April 26th of this year.

As to why I haven’t made the purchase yet, I’m embarrassed to say I stuck this on my Wish List and promptly started wishing for 1000000000 other things. For once, the problem is not lack of copies to choose from; unlike most Gothics, there are more than just a few raggedy paperback copies to choose from. The Heir of Starvelings, which was first published in 1967,  has gone through more than one printing, and was even published in hardback. That says more about the author, Evelyn Berckman, than about the Gothic genre, which was, unfortunately, infamous for churning out forgettable books by forgettable authors during the genre’s 1960s-1970s heyday.

In fact, it’s the story of the author as much as this book that intrigues me. While The Heir of Starvelings most certainly hews to almost all Gothic conventions, as do many of Berckman’s books, Berckman is rarely identified as a Gothic author, but instead as a mystery/thriller author. This, however, may be a case of a rose by any other name; according to her Goodreads bio, Berckman wrote “post-war detective fiction, horror and naval history, with a gift for engaging titles, featuring no one detective but a series of independent young women.” Hmm. That sounds strangely like the premise of many a Gothic to me.

The gift for engaging titles was strong with this one; in addition to the delightfully creepy The Heir of Starvelings, Berckman’s Gothic (or not) titles also include A Finger to Her Lips, No Known Grave, Wait, Just You Wait and the evocative The Victorian Album.

At any rate, Kirkus Reviews had no doubt that Berckman was writing Gothics, as summed up by this pithy 1967 review of The Heir of Starvelings:

True Gothicism. Complete with ragged innocent heir, a little boy entombed in the blackness of his home–nicknamed “”Starvelings”" by frightened villagers, a lovely governess who comes to take care of him having lost her true love, and the evil that his father and his father’s manservant represented. Miss Berckman can impart an air of doom to the sound of a broom. She’s almost too clever but it’s for the ladies who will thrill along.

I’ll just bet Ms. Berckman put a hex on that reviewer.

Goodreads Review: Lady Elizabeth’s Comet by Sheila Simonson

Lady Elizabeth’s Comet by Sheila Simonson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lady Elizabeth’s Comet is a quirky, unusual Regency that features a first-person narrator, in the form of the titular Lady Elizabeth who is likely the least romance-minded romance heroine in the history of the genre. Unfortunately, the first-person narrator is the book’s best and worst attribute.

For a first person narrator to be successful, the narrator must be, if not reliable, likeable. Lady Elizabeth is not particularly likeable heroine — she’s probably an anti-heroine. She’s short-tempered and snobbish, treating the hero (and various other characters in the book) unkindly or dismissively during much of the rest. Yet she’s also funny and smart, if in a mean-girl sort of way. Interested more in astronomy than the people around her, it seems amazing that she could somehow attract not one but two suitors, her father’s heir, Tom Conroy, Lord Clanross, and Clanross’ close friend, Lord Bevis.

Here’s Lady Elizabeth’s Comet’s biggest problem — Lady Elizabeth is, as I state previously, the least romantic female lead I’ve ever personally encountered. However, the hero is a honorable, lovely man. But because we never see the relationship from his point of view, which is probably as much to create a sense of drama around who Lady Elizabeth will choose as anything else, this unfortunately means there is very little romance in the book. It also makes you wonder what on earth the hero sees in Lady Elizabeth.

Despite this glaring problem, I really enjoyed Lady Elizabeth’s Comet. It’s a fun read, but it’s no romance. Rather, it’s an amusing Austen clone that’s an entertaining way to pass an afternoon.

View all my reviews

Rediscovered: Lord of Vengeance by Tina St. John/Lara Adrian

The new e-book “cover” for “Lord of Vengeance”

If the e-book revolution has done one thing for romance readers (aside from making us less ashamed of reading romance), it’s the fact that it’s given new life to hard-to-find and out-of-print romances, helping bring buried treasures into the the light. I can think of no better example than Lord of Vengeance by Lara Adrian.

Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

Taken captive by Gunnar Rutledge, a dark knight sworn to destroy her father, Raina d’Bussy must teach forgiveness to a man who knows no mercy and lives only to exact revenge on his enemy. But time in Gunnar’s keep stirs an unwanted passion in Raina, and something far more perilous, when she finds herself falling in love with the one man she should never desire.

For Gunnar, vengeance is all that matters. He seeks the ultimate price from his enemy’s beautiful young daughter, claiming Raina as his hostage. But the proud beauty defies him at every turn, tempting him like no other. Setting out to break Raina’s glorious spirit, Gunnar instead finds himself bewitched by her goodness, her strength. Can he seize the justice he is due without losing Raina forever?

Lord of Vengeance made quite a splash when it was originally published under Adrian’s pseudonym, Tina St. John, in 1995. The book won the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best Medieval Romance of the Year, and was a HOLT Medallion Finalist for Best Historical Romance of the Year. But like all save a select few romance novels, within a few years the book was out of print, and largely forgotten.

Lara Adrian, however, went on to write a number of paranormal romances. Now, she’s brought the medieval romances she wrote as Tina St. John back out in e-book format. Since I missed Adrian/St. John’s books the first time around, I’m so glad to have found them now.

I have to confess I’m not a big fan of medieval romances, so I’m not sure why I decided to buy Lord of Vengeance, but I’m glad I did. Adrian/St. John takes a number of the romance conventions that have been done to death, especially in medieval romances  — the revenge romance, the kidnapping romance, the big secret romance — and makes them both believable and entirely new.

Gunnar’s obsession with avenging his parents’ death and his own terrible experiences at the hands of Raina’s father is understandable, but Adrian/St. John never lets the obsession veer into crazy; although he’s been damaged by his past,  there are several times in the book when Gunnar himself begins to question his motives, as he begins to see how d’Bussy has changed and aged in the years since he murdered Gunnar’s parents. Adrian/St. John also eschews that other romance convention related to revenge — blaming the child for the sins of the father. Gunnar never allows his hatred for d’Bussy to color his feelings for Raina.

The kidnapping, however, dovetails perfectly into Gunnar’s plans for revenge, and never seems forced (pun intended). In more romance novels than I care to count, a kidnapping serves only to sequester the heroine and hero for a period of time, so that they can realize how perfect they are for each other, and there’s rarely any but the merest hints that the victim is uncomfortable or distressed. While Gunnar and Raina do come to love each other while she’s in his keep, Adrian/St. John is careful to show Raina’s discomfort and anger at being held against her will.  Although Gunnar never mistreats Raina for no reason, in more than one instance he’s compelled to treat her less than politely, and Adrian/St. John handles this well, and, in turn, so does Raina.

Much of the plot of the book hinges on two big secrets that I won’t reveal for fear of ruining the book, but, again, unlike in many romances, the secrets are both believable and understandable, and, rarer still, serve to make the book’s two villains more human and more frightening; to me, a villain must have legitimate motives in order to be truly scary — evil for the sake of eeeeeeeevil is just cartoonish.

On top of all that, there’s the sheer beauty of Adrian/St. John’s prose. Here is one lovely example:

But he saw her face at every turn, felt her softness in the brush of the summer air, smelled her essence in the waft of heather rolling off the hills. The sound of his name on her lips lingered in his mind… She was under his skin and in his blood, and he could not deny it.

Lord of Vengeance is one of the best romances I’ve read in months, and one that should be much better known than it is. Check it out — Adrian is offering it for only .99 at Amazon right now.

Lord of Vengeance by Lara Adrian/Tina St. John

Print Length: 329 pages

Publisher: Lara Adrian, LLC (April 11, 2012)

Did you like Lord of Vengeance, sweety-pie? Then check out these books that are similar to Lord of Vengeance:

The Devil of Kilmartin by Laurin Wittig

A Winter Ballad by Barbara Samuel

Classic Review – The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

This is the copy of “The Ivy Tree” I wish I had.

This is the copy of “The Ivy Tree” I have.

Mary Stewart is Gothic Romance’s Shakespeare — an enduring talent whose books have become classics. Yet somehow, despite my love of Gothics and Stewart, I had never read The Ivy Tree until recently.

Here’s what I was missing out on (synopsis courtesy Goodreads):

If Mary Grey looked so much like the missing heiress, why should she not be an heiress? And so plain Mary Grey became the glamorous Annabel Winslow. But she did not live happily ever after. In fact, she almost did not live at all. Because someone wanted Annabel missing . . . permanently.

First published in 1961, The Ivy Tree has everything that a classic Gothic should: a mysterious heroine, a brooding but darkly attractive hero (anti-hero, perhaps?), a large estate and fortune at stake, and menace in spades.

The plot synopsis tells little about The Ivy Tree, and likely because to reveal much more than the bare bones of the plot would give much of it away. The book’s heroine is Mary Grey, recently relocated to England from Canada. Within days of her arrival, Mary is approached by the handsome, but gruff Conner Winslow, who mistakes her for his distant cousin and almost-fiancee Annabel, who’s missing and presumed dead. Conner, the manager of Annabel’s grandfather’s estate, Whitescar, hatches a plan: if Mary will impersonate Annabel, the heir to her grandfather’s estate and fortune, just until the old man kicks the bucket, they’ll divvy up Annabel’s inheritance. But only if she can fool her grandfather, her young cousin, and all the others in and around Whitescar.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The impersonation plot is a difficult one to pull off in any situation, but leave it to Mary Stewart to make it appear child’s play. Mary is, of course, Annabel. And if you haven’t figured this out by, oh, say the the first third of the book, once the reveal comes, you’ll realize that you should have known it all along. But the mystery of Mary/Annabel is only one of many that unfold during the course of the story. Nothing’s what it seems at Whitescar.

To reveal any more of the plot would deny you the pleasure of seeing it unfold layer by layer. But it gives nothing away to tell you that like all of Stewart’s books, The Ivy Tree has style and atmosphere to spare. Stewart’s descriptions of the Pennines/Hadrian’s Wall setting are gorgeous, as are her characterizations. Mary/Annabel is mysterious, yet sympathetic. Julia, Annabel’s younger cousin and harbinger of the Swinging 60s, brings a sparkle to the story that lightens the dark themes of the book.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!

Since no Gothic would be complete without a enigmatic hero, Stewart outdoes herself and provides two. The first, of course, is Conner.
There’s no besting Stewart, so let’s let her describe Conner:

He was tall, and slenderly built, with that whippy look that told you he would be an ugly customer in a fight–and with something else about him that made it sufficiently obvious that he would not need much excuse to join any fight that was going…he had the almost excessive good looks of a certain type of Irishman, black hair, eyes of startling blue, and charm in the long, mobile mouth…all his movements had a grace that seemed a perfectly normal part of his physical beauty.

Whippy! Certain type of Irishman! Grace! Be still my beating heart! A better anti-hero than Conner Winslow will not be found anywhere, believe me. He lies, he cheats, he schemes and he calls Mary/Annabel a bitch. He’s tormented by what he can’t have. And he’s sexy as hell.

And then there’s Adam. Hmm. How to describe Adam? I wouldn’t know where to start, and neither, evidently, did, Stewart, because he’s hazy — dark eyes, dark brows, thin. Scarred. Suffering and sad.

Whom, do you think, is the most interesting of the two? And whom, do you think, survives the book?

That’s it. I’ll say no more. I don’t want to ruin anything. Just pick a day/weekend when you have nothing to do, and settle in for the ride. You won’t regret it.

Did you like this book, honey boo boo? Here are a few more books like The Ivy Tree:

The Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt

Sea of Secrets by Amanda DeWees

By the way: Conner?

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