Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Bodice Tipplers
She's Grace, the world's least qualified sex therapist! He's Julian, a sex slave who lives in a book! Together I really wish they fought crime! It's Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon, the first Dark Hunters book! We actually forgot to do content warnings in the recording (we are out of practice!) but this one does have some creepy stalker business, some off-screen magical "Cupid's Arrow" use by the "hero", a lot of sexual pushiness (light ravishing?), the f-slur, a white voodoo priestess, and it's also deeply stupid. This is the first episode of our Cringe Binge miniseries, where we read...
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Fall 2025 Preview! We missed you!
Bodice Tipplers
We're so back! We're so sorry we haven't been back! We've been struggling (I think maybe we are not alone?) but we are coming back with a celebration of a kind of book we're struggling to define but we totally know what we're talking about and hope you do too. They tend to be paranormal romances, but don't have to be. They come in long series and you can usually debate for ages about where you should stop reading them. Every woman you know knows about them but almost none of the men do. They have big worldbuilding (often to the point where by book 20 they're completely different books...
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Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
Bodice Tipplers
She's Anita, a zombie raising hate crime enthusiast! He's Jean Claude, a vampire who's in the Chamber of Commerce and shops exclusively at International Male! They do not do it until the fifth book! It's , the first Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter book by Laurell K. Hamilton! This was a serious thing for Sara back in college, who is currently having an existential crisis about the trashbag fakeass non-intersectional feminism of the all of it. It was new to Courtney, who hated it. It's halfway to Halloween, so we pulled this one out of a musty old crypt where we honestly kinda forgot about how...
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NYPL's Best New Romance Books
Bodice Tipplers
We had a great time sitting down with Grace and Kate from the New York Public Library (as I explained to my husband "the one with the lions") to talk about NYPL's "" list of their favorite 2024 romance novels. We talked about everything from Johanna Lindsey cover art to the sad dearth of true pirate romances these days to romantical rubber duckies! I cut the worst of the shop talk but it was so exciting to get to talk romance readers' advisory with like minded professionals!
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Heat Wave by Barbara Delinsky
Bodice Tipplers
We recorded this months ago, in the fall! We are sorry! He's Brendan, a DOJ attorney ferreting out white supremacists! She's Caroline, a counselor whose mom calls all the time! Will they ever buy curtains to spare the neighbors' tender eyes? Find out in Heat Wave by Barbara Delinsky, another of our “five heart romances”! If you’re new to this, we’re doing episodes on the list of books that Romantic Times reviewer Melinda Helfer awarded five hearts to (there are sixteen, out of ten thousand!) So far, Melinda did not miss. No real content warnings in this one except that I...
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Pandora by Anne Rice
Bodice Tipplers
He's Marius, a vampire who keeps getting stuck in things! She's Pandora, horny middle aged lady goals! Forget it, Jake, it's Anne Rice! We promised a special January 6 "we're not going back!" episode because... we thought it was going to be funny because we expected things to go somewhat differently! Ha! Ha! So funny! So it's a damn good thing we ended up all loving this book. We're joined by our usual Special Guest Claire and had a great time talking about ol' "yeah but can you fuck" Pandora, bless her. Content warnings are the usual vampire business, the usual Anne Rice xenophobia, and...
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Merrick by Anne Rice
Bodice Tipplers
Welcome to our fifth year of reading Anne Rice books for Halloween, with special guest Dr. Claire Mischker! He's David Talbot, nobody's favorite old man/young twink vampire! She's Merrick, too cool for these dusty losers, out here committing perfume crimes! In accordance with long-established tradition, this episode is rambling and yelly and has weird sound! Note: I promise we actually do know that Guatemala is in Central America, but once you make a mistake one time on a podcast it's really hard to not keep making it. As usual there are a slew of real content warnings about anything our...
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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Bodice Tipplers
Aye lads and lassies and wee bairns (wait, this is no place for wee bairns!) This is our hundredth episode, to our vast surprise, so we're gonna make enemies and talk about Outlander! He's Jamie, the only feminist in eighteenth century Scotland! She's Claire, a time traveling nurse with a boring husband! Buckle up, sassenachs, because if you know this book you know you're about to trip over a giant content warning. The book, the TV show, and absolutely this podcast have a great big neon "sexual assault" warning on them. There is no ignoring the rape in Outlander - it's an omnipresent (and...
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Lightning by Dean Koontz
Bodice Tipplers
He's Stephan, a time travelling good Nazi! She's Laura, a woman he will not leave alone! It's Dean Koontz's Lightning, the first of our summer road trip books! To explain the amazing graphic my husband ran up for this - I am almost certain this is Koontz's own Terminator fanfic, predicting Badass T2 Sarah Connor years before that movie came out. If you didn't see please enjoy this gift link! Why yes, it is weird! He really does wear his hair like that! Is it his hair? I dunno, I mean, I'm sure he owns it, yes. Every day! All the time! His wife just walks into a room and there it is!...
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Bear by Marian Engel
Bodice Tipplers
He's a bear. Like an actual bear. She's having a midlife crisis. This seems like a pretty extreme response. This is by Marian Engel, which won the Governor General's Award in 1976 and is evidently the most controversial Canadian novel of all time. Sounds like a skills issue to me. You know that joke about how you can build a bridge with your bare hands and they don't call you a bridge builder, and you can saw down a tree and cut it into boards and make these cabinets but they don't call you a carpenter, but if you fuck one bear... anyway this book is about Lou the bearfucker. This is, of...
info_outlineHappy Halloween! He's Clare, a baron with a very expensive contractor's bill and a suspicious number of black armbands in his wardrobe. She's Lucy, a sheltered seventeen year old girl with a big inheritance and absolutely no friends anywhere. What a great combination! It's Greygallows by Barbara Michaels, who is also Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Mertz and probably a ton of other names - you may remember that we did an episode on her Devil May Care last year for Halloween, and that book has a guest appearance from the actual Christian devil! Old Scratch! The Father of Lies! The Prince of Darkness! This one, sadly, does not - but it's a delightful read and a great book for spooky season.
Fair warning, it includes some extremely realistic and therefore disturbing depictions of spousal abuse, most notably the scariest gaslighting I've seen in a book in a long time but also financial, emotional, and physical abuse with some attempted murder thrown in. It's not gratuitous at all - it's very well done and the heroine's legal helplessness under 19th century British law is definitely a major point of the book, but it is definitely going to hit too close to home for some people.