de Evie Dunmore
“This series balances friendship, politics, history, and romance in just the right mix.”—U.S. Representative Katie Porter
A stunning debut for author Evie Dunmore and her Oxford suffragists in which a fiercely independent vicar's daughter takes on a powerful duke in a fiery love story that threatens to upend the British social order.
England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women's suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain's politics at the Queen's command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can't deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for.
Sebastian is appalled to find a suffragist squad has infiltrated his ducal home, but the real threat is his impossible feelings for green-eyed beauty Annabelle. He is looking for a wife of equal standing to secure the legacy he has worked so hard to rebuild, not an outspoken commoner who could never be his duchess. But he wouldn't be the greatest strategist of the Kingdom if he couldn't claim this alluring bluestocking without the promise of a ring...or could he?
Locked in a battle with rising passion and a will matching her own, Annabelle will learn just what it takes to topple a duke....
“With her sterling debut, Evie Dunmore dives into a fresh new space in historical romance that hits all the right notes.”—Entertainment Weekly
“There is nothing quite so satisfying as seeing such a man brought to his knees by a beautiful woman with nothing to her name except an inviolable sense of her own self-worth.”—NPR
“This series balances friendship, politics, history, and romance in just the right mix.”—U.S. Representative Katie Porter
A stunning debut for author Evie Dunmore and her Oxford suffragists in which a fiercely independent vicar's daughter takes on a powerful duke in a fiery love story that threatens to upend the British social order.
England, 1879. Annabelle Archer, the brilliant but destitute daughter of a country vicar, has earned herself a place among the first cohort of female students at the renowned University of Oxford. In return for her scholarship, she must support the rising women's suffrage movement. Her charge: recruit men of influence to champion their cause. Her target: Sebastian Devereux, the cold and calculating Duke of Montgomery who steers Britain's politics at the Queen's command. Her challenge: not to give in to the powerful attraction she can't deny for the man who opposes everything she stands for.
Sebastian is appalled to find a suffragist squad has infiltrated his ducal home, but the real threat is his impossible feelings for green-eyed beauty Annabelle. He is looking for a wife of equal standing to secure the legacy he has worked so hard to rebuild, not an outspoken commoner who could never be his duchess. But he wouldn't be the greatest strategist of the Kingdom if he couldn't claim this alluring bluestocking without the promise of a ring...or could he?
Locked in a battle with rising passion and a will matching her own, Annabelle will learn just what it takes to topple a duke....
“With her sterling debut, Evie Dunmore dives into a fresh new space in historical romance that hits all the right notes.”—Entertainment Weekly
“There is nothing quite so satisfying as seeing such a man brought to his knees by a beautiful woman with nothing to her name except an inviolable sense of her own self-worth.”—NPR
Critiques-
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Starred review from June 17, 2019
A bright, penniless suffragette in Victorian-era England melts the heart of a notoriously icy duke in this delightful romance. Annabelle Archer is granted a scholarship by the National Society for Women’s Suffrage to become one of the first women to study at Oxford University. In exchange, she’s required to publicly support their cause. When she brazenly offers a political pamphlet to the Duke of Montgomery, it is just the first of many times that she shocks him with her brains and courage. Montgomery is obsessed with getting back the castle his father gambled away and is willing to sell out his own ideals and work with the Tory Party if it will get the queen to grant his request. He is entirely unprepared for a beautiful, radical woman to derail his mission. But when Annabelle finds herself ill and snowed in at Montgomery’s home, the pair discover they are more compatible—politically, emotionally, and physically—than either would have believed. Despite their mounting passion, their disparate circumstances make a relationship impossible, but they set out to find a way to make it work. Charming, sexy, and thoroughly transportive, this is historical romance done right. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary. -
Narrator Elizabeth Jasicki depicts a romance between a suffragist at Oxford and a powerful duke that shows why the political is always personal. Anabelle Archer is a brilliant scholar who has managed to secure a place in the first class of women at Oxford. Jasicki does a wonderful job portraying Annabelle's constant frustration with the various limitations and restrictions placed on her by society. The Duke of Montgomery has no such constraints placed on him, of course. He merely chafes at familial responsibilities. Jasicki perfectly captures his annoyance at being thwarted by such seeming trivialities. Overall, Jasicki's narration is excellent, but the wide power imbalance between Annabelle and the duke may hinder this story from being enjoyed by all. K.M.P. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
