The Lawrence Browne Affair

February 1, 2017
A London swindler falls for his mark, a mad earl, in this Cornwall-set Regency romance.As Penkellis Castle falls to ruins around him, Lawrence Browne, the Earl of Radnor, hides in the tower, working feverishly on inventing a telegraphlike device. His servants have fled, the villagers think he's demonic, and Lawrence himself is convinced the madness and depravity that consumed his father and brother will claim his life as well. This gothic setup is punctured when professional confidence man Georgie Turner arrives on Radnor's moldering doorstep, posing as a secretary. Georgie recently aborted a lucrative assignment thanks to a sudden bout of conscience, a development his furious boss would like to properly, and violently, acknowledge. He's not impressed with the Mad Earl: "I had hoped for some good old fashioned howling at the moon, and all you do is build ingenious inventions and eat too much ham." Georgie is beautiful, slender, and graceful to Lawrence's bearded, hulking form. Lawrence dismisses his cool and neat secretary as a London dandy, but Georgie, a swindler practically from his birth in the slums of London, quickly, and astutely, assesses the situation and begins putting Penkellis to rights while at the same time appraising its valuables. Sebastian (The Soldier's Scoundrel, 2016) nicely contrasts Georgie's frankness and sexual openness with the deceitfulness at his core. Sebastian infuses a romance that could have been dark with a constant thrum of mild humor and steady wonder: "Then Radnor flashed him one of his rare smiles, and Georgie felt simultaneously like he had been given a precious gift and like he had been hit in the head with a shovel." Lawrence's character is complicated by social anxiety and sexual shame over his "perverse tastes": a thornier nest of issues than "madness" but an easier one to untangle. Georgie's change of heart is less effective because he was never much of a convincing scoundrel, but readers will be thrilled by the way his empowering love for Lawrence comes back to him in a time of need. In a crumbling castle in Cornwall, two inauthentic men from vastly different registers of Regency society find in each other an authentic and passionate love. Another exquisitely written, deeply romantic novel from Sebastian.

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Starred review from March 1, 2017
Lawrence Browne has a servant problem: none want to work in a house that could very well explode at any moment. Now, despite Lawrence's best efforts to convince everyone that his experiments on a new type of communication device are perfectly safe, he still finds himself in need of a new secretary. Meanwhile, con man and thief extraordinaire Georgie Turner finds himself persona non grata in London after he refuses to bilk a nice old lady, as gang-leader Jamie Brewster insists he should. Posing as a candidate for Lawrence's secretary job would not only get Georgie out of the city but would also repay a favor Georgie owes his brother Jack. It seems like the perfect plan, until Georgie arrives in Cornwall and finds himself falling hard and fast for his new employer. Readers will quickly be entranced by the depth of emotion and intensity of sensual desire Sebastian creates between her two protagonists. Pair this up with her flair for nuanced characterization and sly sense of wit, and Sebastian proves she is a new force to be reckoned with in historical romances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)