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scalziwhatever_feed
And what is Monsters of Ohio? Why, it’s my 20th(!) novel.
What’s it about? Well, if the title is to be trusted, it’s about monsters! In Ohio!
How would I describe it? Two words: “Cozy Cronenberg.”
When can you have it? November this year.
I like it. I hope you’ll like it too.
More to come about this. Stay tuned.
— JS
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alfreda89
mdlbearI seem to have spent a lot of this week catching up on the sleep debt from Contabile plus the overnight ferry trip (three and a half; my usual is more like six). The con itself was a good one -- I had fun, and did some singing. Only three walks as such; however the ferry's gangway is long enough that it counts as walks for Monday and Tuesday, especially the 4.2k steps on Monday. (My goal is 3k/day, and I usually at least come close on days when I actually get out of the house and walk.)
I didn't post about it at the time, but my father died 27 years ago last Thursday. I still find myself wanting to call him to tell him about some recent development in software or science. He got me interested in both, along with science fiction. And wine. He got interested in wine and gourmet cooking to have something interesting to talk about at parties.
Links: Germany and Denmark Just Fired Microsoft: 15 Million Euros Saved | by Can Artuc and Microsoft's Quiet Exodus: Why Enterprise Developers Are Abandoning Windows for Linux Workstations (the last one is from Don Marti, who is well worth following).
And of course Meet Tombili: Istanbul’s Most Famous Street Cat And His Iconic Statue.
james_davis_nicoll
cosmolinguist1 what's your favourite kitchen appliance?
I never really thought about ranking them. The kettle is probably my favorite because it gets used the most.
2 do you have a collection of anything?
Random things related to Stitch (from Lilo & Stitch)
3 what's the best job you've ever had?
Probably the one I have now.
4 what's the worst job you've ever had?
Temping for minimum wage in a team that chased people up for overdue loans. I was new to the UK, so my partner and I were ineligible for all benefits, and I had a lot more in common with the people on the other side of these phone calls I could hear all day long as I was becoming The One Who Could Make the Printer Work and learning to like bananas because we had free fruit in the office and I needed the calories.
5 what's your favourite piece of furniture and where did you get it?
The green couch I bought the WonderHouse is pretty good. I can't remember where it came from; V sorted it out online of course.
6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
"Minimal effort" to me is taking something out of the freezer and putting it in the oven, which isn't a recipe. I guess in terms of things that I'd call a recipe that aren't difficult (and really pay off in how delicious it is, there's always the broccoli halloumi thing.
7 are you married or do you intend to get married?
I am not. I wouldn't say I intend to but I didn't intend to the other time either and it ended up being useful for geopolitical reasons so I wouldn't rule that out again in the future.
8 do you have kids? do you want them?
No and...I do not want to have them in terms of from my own body, and I'm fine that my life doesn't seem to have brought me any, but also if it had I think that would've been fine too.
9 are you on good terms with your parents?
...yes? This kinda came up at transgym yesterday: on the spectrum between good parents and shit parents mine are kinda...shit in practice but also... I talk to them every Sunday evening, which a lot of people would consider being pretty close and my parents consider less than the minimum to be happy.
10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them?
ahahaha I have never found a good answer to this question. Do I have siblings in that I do and he turns up in anecdotes and suchlike? Or do I not in that if I say I do people ask stuff like "do you hang out with him?" and I can never hang out with him.
11 do you vote?
I vote in two countries! I just applied for a postal vote for the upcoming by election, because I can't remember if I'd done that since I got the notifications about it expiring.
12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made?
Technically the mortgage on my old house but that didn't feel like a purchase. Next up is my Indefinite Leave to Remain which cost me I think I calculated about £7500 -- at the time. Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, that'd be £12,828.24, and that's not counting that the Home Office has more-than-doubled the costs of those visas and applications since.
13 what are your hobbies?
Listening to podcasts, watching baseball.
14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into?
Hiking.
15 do you collect anything?
Aches, cynicism, grudges... wait, is this a question about knickknacks?
16 how long have you known your oldest friend?
I'm not really in very good touch with anyone I knew before I moved here, so probaby 18 or 19 years (despite being partners and good friends before that, neither D or I can remember what year we actually met but it was either 18 or 19 years ago).
17 are you a member of any clubs or associations?
local Queer Club. I have a gym membership lol. I don't think anything else?
18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education?
I'm a millennial, we don't get fields and careers. Not the disabled ones among us especially.
19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed?
I had them all taken out at 18, I didn't want to, my dentist said I had to, they'd be causing me loads of pain. They never did. I'm still convinced he did it to get money out of my parents.
20 what's your favourite beverage?
Coffee
21 do you have any living grandparents?
I did until a year ago.
22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours?
D's niblings, his sister's two kids. They are great. They're also tweens/young teens now so increasingly absent/mysterious/incomprehensible, but still such good fun when we do get to hang out.
23 what's the coolest place you've visited?
There are so many, and it's hard to compare them. At the moment my first thought is the Atomium in Brussels.
24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you?
BA (Hons) Linguistics. It has been very useful to me: not in an employment sense (beyond the fact that I think having a degree made it easier to get my job), but it has been so helpful to me to be able to approach my life and the world through this lens.
25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a washing machine if you could only have one or the other?
Oh the times in my life when I haven't owned a (working) washing machine have been absolutely miserable. It's much easier to wash dishes by hand than to wash clothes by hand (or go to the laundromat even if there is one closer now than there used to be because it's where my barber was!).
26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it?
We mostly shop online. D has a kind of master list that we just tick off what we need each week(ish) when we do the order.
27 what's your favourite household chore?
Mowing the lawn.
28 what chore do you hate the most?
Cleaning things I don't know how to clean/never feel like I get it clean.
29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive?
We have so many, I'm so lucky. V looks after them; this is something else I would be shit at noticing in time. But I love living surrounded by them.
30 what's your living arrangement? (who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other?
I live with my boyfriend and his partner, in a suburban semi-detached house that I think was social housing? Sold in the 80s to a builder who...did things to it himself, many of which have consequences we're still living with. Technically the mortgage is D's and I'm a lodger but in practice all three of us contribute to the bills/food/household stuff.
smartbitches_feedThe latest bestseller list is brought to you by fresh snow, plush blankets, and our affiliate sales data.
I hope your weekend reading was magical!
james_davis_nicoll
tiggymalvern
cosmolinguistThis afternoon, diffrentcolours and I were watching a documentary about chemistry with Jim Al-Khalili. (D has done sterling work getting the TV to be able to talk to his file server, so it's way easier to watch random things he has downloaded for us...like this BBC documentary about the history of chemistry.)
Suddenly, out of nowhere, D said of Dr. Al-Khalili, "He has a good scientist head."
"He really does!" I replied immediately.
Then I paused.
Then I said "Wait, I don't know what that means, and I don't know why I was so convinced of it."
Maybe it's the baldness?
Bald/shaved heads are so good. This came up at transgym this morning too: I was complaining about how much sweat my hair has absorbed because it's too long now --the last haircut I had was on my birthday! 3-4 weeks is plenty for my hair to need cutting again; the one problem with really short hair is it doesn't stay that way for long. And my barber has suddenly turned into a laundromat -- seriously, it only took a month for it to be open as a completely different kind of business! -- so I need to try a new one and I haven't had time and ugh...maybe tomorrow.
Anyway, as I was complaining, I was overhead by F, a guy with a shaved head, who said "enjoy it while it lasts!" Apparently he's still in his 20s, bless him. But it got me and our friend A talking about how much we like bald guys as an aesthetic, and then D told us about the subreddit for bald people, where guys share photos of them with thinning/receding hair, all sad about it, and then photos of them bald, happy, no longer giving a fuck. I think it's that "the way to win the game of conventional attractiveness is not to play" transformation that makes this seem sexy to me.
(Not that baldness can't be conventionally attractive, but a lot of balding guys seem to think that. Even if they're just having to get used to the change or confronting their mortality or whatever they do, I don't know. But it seems to do them some good to have to come to terms about it, if not embrace it.)
(Plus obviously bald heads are sexy because a nice close shave is fun to touch, and in the right circumstances I think the stubble can feel good too...)
scalziwhatever_feed
Though I’ve followed Nadia’s Healthy Kitchen on Instagram for years, I’m not entirely certain I’ve ever actually made anything from her before. I am not vegan, gluten-free, or overly worried about sugar being in my baked goods, so I’m not entirely sure why I wanted to make these “healthy,” vegan, gluten-free, no-bake peanut butter and chocolate brownie batter bark bars, but I did! And now I’m here to tell you how difficult they were to make, and if they’re any good.
To start things off, let’s look at the video she posted that I saw:
You know, that didn’t look too hard! Here’s the recipe so you can follow along while we take a look at the ingredients list.
Despite having King Arthur’s measure-for-measure gluten-free flour in my pantry, this recipe did not call for 1-to-1 gluten-free flour, and instead calls for oat flour and ground almonds.
Now, you might notice a typo in the recipe in the measurements section. Nadia mentions ground almonds four times in the post leading up to the written recipe, and once in the instructions portion of the recipe, but makes the mistake of typing “ground oats” right below “oat flour” in the measurements. One of the comments on her recipe actually points this out, as well.
Moving on, I did not have oat flour or ground almonds, but I did have the cocoa powder, maple syrup, peanut butter, coconut oil, dark chocolate, and, of course, salt. So there I found myself in Kroger’s baking aisle buying Bob’s Red Mill’s Gluten-Free Oat Flour which is different than their Whole-Grain Oat Flour which is not gluten-free, and their Super-Fine Almond Flour (not their Natural Almond Flour, but that one is also gluten-free). I know the recipe says ground almonds, but I figured since the almond flour is basically just really finely ground almonds it’d be like the same thing, right?
Thankfully, this recipe is measured by weight, so this ended up being a very easy, one bowl recipe in which I just dumped all the ingredients in and measured by weight the entire time (except the 2 tbsp of coconut oil and 2 tbsp of peanut butter that are separate for the ganache). You literally just weigh it out and mix it all together, easy peasy!
After mixing the “dough” together (I don’t know if it’s technically considered a dough. What are the qualifications of a dough?), you just roll it out into a thin rectangle and pour the melted chocolate and peanut butter over top, then freeze it just long enough to solidify it enough to cut into bars.
I was genuinely surprised how quick and easy this recipe was, and it’s honestly not very many ingredients. Obviously the oat flour is something that not everyone just has on hand, but if you are gluten-free then maybe that’s more of a common household ingredient for you and this would actually be super convenient for you to whip up.
Okay, so it wasn’t hard and didn’t take very long, but it did it actually taste good? Well, honestly, I quite liked it! I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim that it tastes exactly like a fresh-baked, full-sugar, non-vegan brownie, but it definitely is rich and chocolatey, with some nice flavor from the peanut butter and a melt-in-your-mouth texture. One thing I really like about them is that it can feel like gluten-free treats are always super dry and crumbly, but these are pretty fudgy and not like crumbly sand.
Honestly they look just like they do in the video, and I’m happy I gave them a whirl. I wouldn’t say they’re life-changing, but if you have a gluten-free person in your life you want to whip up a treat for, these might be a really good option.
Final note, the chocolate ganache gets pretty melty at room temp, so I recommend keeping these bad boys in a container in the fridge.
Do you like using measure-for-measure gluten-free flour for your GF recipes, or do you prefer recipes that have flour alternatives like this one? Do you like the addition of the peanut butter, or do you wish this recipe were also nut-free (then I guess the almonds would be out, too)? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
james_davis_nicoll
Which of these look interesting?
A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (June 2026)
12 (40.0%)
Lord of the Heights by Scarlett J. Thorne (July 2026
5 (16.7%)
Some other option (see comments)
1 (3.3%)
Cats!
24 (80.0%)
feuervogelsmartbitches_feed
I don’t know why, but I am a total sucker for books about Arctic and Antarctic exploration. Bring me your frostbite, your scurvy, your long marches, and, above all, bring me my warmest pajamas and a hot cup of tea and we have what I consider to be the perfect ingredients for a cosy night in.
The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration (1897ish – 1922ish) and the many efforts to locate the Northwest Passage in the Arctic are simply crammed with stoic imperialist White men who suffer terribly for what, frankly, does not strike me as terribly good reasons. Perhaps my ability to read of their sufferings with ghoulish fascination stems from the fact that none of these guys needed to be either North or South in the first place. To borrow and bend a common phrase: you live by the poorly sealed canned goods, you die by the poorly sealed canned goods*.
Of course, in the case of the Arctic, people were already living there long before any White explorers staggered upon the scene. Yu’pik and Inuit peoples were instrumental in exploratory expeditions in the Arctic and, less directly, the Antarctic. I’ve already written about Ada Blackjack, an Inupiaq woman who survived on Wrangel Island alone for eight months after the other members of her party died.
Other Indigenous women often supported expeditions, especially Arctic ones, by sewing, skinning and preserving fur and leather and cooking. Taqulittuq (also known as Tookoolito and as Hannah), an Inupiaq woman, accompanied Charles Francis Hall on many expeditions including one in which she and some crew members were marooned for months and survived because of the skills of Taqulittuq and her husband. Many other Indigenous women accompanied and supported expeditions and were never formally recognized for their valor.
Arnarulunnguaq, the first woman to travel from Greenland to the Pacific, was born in Greenland in 1896. She related that when she was six or seven, her father, a hunter, died and the family became so desperate for food that they prepared to sacrifice Arnarulunnguaq so the the rest of the family could live, having one less mouth to feed. However, at the very last minute, her brother started crying and her mother decided not to kill Arnarulunnguaq after all. Arnarulunnguaq was (of course) powerfully changed by this experience. According to the explorer Knud Ramussen:
She says herself that the gratitude that she came to feel many years later, and the life she had almost received as a gift, has made her placid towards people.
Arnarulunnguaq married a hunter named Iggiannguaq (allegedly she had a previous marriage that failed because she was “too lazy,” a trait which truly does not match the historical records of her life!). The two planned to accompany Knud Rasmussen on his Fifth Thule Expedition (1921 – 1924). This trip involved travelling from Greenland to Siberia via dogsled. Iggiannguaq died before the trip commenced, and Arnarulunnguaq asked to be allowed to continue with the trip. Her cousin, Qaavigarsuaq Miteq, filled the role of hunter.
Arnarulunnguaq cooked, built peat shelters, sewed, and maintained skins and furs as well as helping with the dogs. She drove dog sleds, gathered specimens, and assisted with archeology. She also documented the trip in drawings. Rasmussen said of her that she had:
that good humour about her that only a woman can instil [and was as] entertaining and courageous as any man when we were out on our journey.
Rasmussen hoped to use the journey to document the lives of Indigenous people of the Arctic.
Danish anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup says that because of Arnarulunnguaq’s and Qaavigarsuaq’s influence:
…what resulted was a ‘collaborative ethnography’ because “‘he Polar Eskimos were no longer being studied but studying with him, and clearly Rasmussen sees the American Inuit very much through Inughuit eyes.’
After the expedition, Rasmussen took Arnarulunnguaq and Qaavigarsuaq to New York City. Arnarulunnguaq loved riding elevators and described New York city as the coldest place she had ever been. She married Kaalipaluk Peary, son of explorer Robert Peary. Like so many other Arctic Indigenous people, she contracted tuberculosis and battled it for years. In 1925, Arnarulunnguaq returned to Thule, where she died in 1933.
*Was the Franklin Expedition of 1845 (which has nothing directly to do with Arnarulunnguaq other than being an Arctic expedition) doomed by lead seeping into their canned goods? Lead poisoning was long thought to have been one of many trials that beset the men of the expedition, but according to Smithsonian Magazine, it was probably not a factor after all. More prominent factors were starvation, hypothermia, scurvy, illness, and exhaustion.
If you like exploration stories set in cold places, I recommend the3 following, with links to those that have been reviewed on Smart Bitches:
Sources:
scalziwhatever_feed
It’s February, again, and look! The groundhog brought a bunch of books with him! What here would you like to keep with you during the coldest part of the year? Share in the comments!
— JS
smartbitches_feed
IT SUCKS when great shows are on the platforms of fuckass companies, but here we are.
The Muppet Show reboot was a direct hit of nostalgia, dopamine, and earnest joy that I needed and I was more and more charmed the longer I watched.
I’m old enough (ahem) to remember the original Muppet Show, and this reboot is faithful to the format while updating with jokes, references, and the presence of Sabrina Carpenter, whose resemblance to Miss Piggy is played perfectly, and who is somewhat of a Muppet herself.
Some folks just have Muppet energy. Carpenter has Muppet energy. Off the top of my head, Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Pattinson, the late Catherine O’Hara – they have Muppet energy. Eugene Levy pretty much is a Muppet, per my husband – that tracks. (Honestly this show might have been engineered in a lab for Adam. There is nothing, he says, that he has loved longer than the Muppets.) John Leguizamo, Bowen Yang, Biz Markie…Tim Curry has Big Muppet Energy, which is why he rocked so hard in Muppet Treasure Island.
These are performers who don’t take themselves too seriously, and who are seriously talented. (The “performers with Muppet energy” game is going to be playing nonstop in my house today.)
Carpenter was a perfect first guest and I liked pretty much every sketch she was in.
I don’t know whose idea it was to have her sing “Islands in the Stream” by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers but this was a God tier decision for a Muppet Show sketch. It plays off Carpenter and Miss Piggy’s similar aesthetic to Dolly Parton, for one thing.
And it was vintage (1983) but still lovely to listen to, and there is plenty of room for visual comedy because the song is replete with cheese and earnestness.
I think it’s in Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs due to the lyric, “I set out to get you with a fine toothed comb.” What the hell does that even mean?
While the Kermit voice is quite different, nothing else felt disconnected to the original – there were even Muppet characters I hadn’t seen in years, like Rolf and Beauregard. It’s a 30 minute sketch show with on stage and offstage plotlines, and it has the sharpness of SNL in its most impressive years, but trades skewering humor with bite for more wholesome and cheerful optimism, mixed with slightly bewildered theatre kid perseverance.
I hope it gets picked up, and I hope the same attention to tone and the relentless embrace of nutritious fromage remain.
So, yeah, if you’re looking for something nostalgic, charming, silly, and wholesome to watch tonight, you might really, really like The Muppet Show reboot. This is especially true if you grew up with the Muppets in one of their many showcases, and most especially for those of us who have enduring fondness for the original.
cosmolinguistToday's Teddywalk took us a slightly unusual way -- I let him choose, within reason. He didn't spend as long sniffing the grass triangle as before, and afterward when I wanted to drag him more directly back toward his house he scampered off the other way. This took us to a tree-lined residential street where he decided to poop next to one of the trees just as a man parked his land barge just behind us and the kids that got out of it were entertained by this free show.
This route also took us past a school where, even though it was nearing 5 o'clock, kids were going toward the school, with their grownups. They kinda looked like they were wearing pajamas? Some were in bathrobes or oodies. Some seemed to carry pillows or soft toys. One was almost hidden behind a Stitch that must have been fully half her size. It was adorable.
I had a pretty good day otherwise too.
Work was oddly satisfying.
A bunch of things happened to coincide today: I presented my new train report twice, first to a panel of subject-matter experts and accessibility advocates that I'm on, where people were very kind about it (especially as it was at the end of an hour and a half meeting that some people had to leave early and/or thought was only an hour long; one made sure to apologize for leaving halfway through but told me he'd read the report and it was good, which was very sweet).
Then in the afternoon I presented it to a group of lived-experience campaigners, a group I attended back when I was a volunteer who didn't have this job yet. They did their usual thing of wanting to vent their spleens on any tangentially-related topic, but I'm used to that and I kinda love it. Afterward, my colleague who runs these meetings messaged me to thank me and say she appreciates that I always handle the questions so well. I didn't think I'd done anything special! But despite that (or actually because of it!) this was really nice to hear.
And as well as feeling particularly competent with the different audiences my work is for, I also had a quick one-to-one(ish) with my manager which indirectly addressed the stuff I've been stressing about lately and where seemed much happier than I'm used to hearing with the work that I have done in the last year and the stuff that's coming up this year.
It's funny because the other day, on our way to the theater, D pointed out where transgym yoga had moved to: one of those "not actually far away but hard for me to find/get to on a bus" places. So I actually looked at yoga on the transgym website and not only was it on this Friday (it's every other week), but it was back at its old location! My hips are so much happier now, and it'll be good for my brain too.
And now, after a week that was really truly about a month long, it's the weekend! We have basically no plans, and the fascists aren't even yelling at the hotel this Sunday!
So many good things.
smartbitches_feed
Unromance by Erin Connor is $2.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! Connor has a new book out this month that I’m excited for. I believe this is in the queue for Cover Awe and it was mentioned on Hide Your Wallet.
A recently dumped TV heartthrob enlists a jaded romance novelist to ruin romance for him—one rom-com trope at a time—so he never gets swept off his feet again . . .
Sawyer Greene knows romance. She’s a bestselling author of the genre—or she was, until her ex left her with nothing but writer’s block and a broken heart. But when she gets stuck in the elevator with a handsome stranger, she sees their meet cute for what it is: just a one-night stand. It might have worked, too, if they could stop running into each other.
Actor Mason West sees Sawyer’s reappearance in his life as a sign. Obviously, they’re meant to cure each other. Him of the hopeless romanticism that only ends in heartbreak—and tabloid trainwrecks—and Sawyer of her writer’s block. Their agreement is simple: 1. No (more) sex, and 2. No matter how swoony the circumstances, absolutely no falling in love.
It’s a foolproof plan–until Sawyer and Mason find that, once set in motion, some plots can’t be stopped—and that they might be hurtling towards a happy ending…
The Duchess Hunt by Lorraine Heath is $1.99! This is book two in the Once Upon a Dukedom series and wow, she’s about to be tits out in that field. The heroine is also named Penelope Pettypeace, which is a mouthful.
Hugh Brinsley-Norton, the Duke of Kingsland, is in need of a duchess. However, restoring the dukedom—left in ruins by his father—to its former glory demands all his time, with little room for sentiment. He places an advert encouraging the single ladies of the ton to write why they should be the one chosen, and leaves it to his efficient secretary to select his future wife.
If there exists a more unpleasant task in the world than deciding who is to marry the man you love, Penelope Pettypeace certainly can’t imagine what it might be. Still, she is determined to find the perfect bride for her clueless, yet ruthlessly charming employer.
But when an anonymous note threatens to reveal truths best hidden, Kingsland has no choice but to confront the danger with Penelope at his side. Beguiled by the strong-willed, courageous beauty, he realizes he’s willing to risk everything, including his heart, to keep her safe within his arms. Could it be the duchess he’s hunting for has been in front of him all along?
Dishonestly Yours by Krista and Becca Ritchie is $1.99 and a KDD! This is the first book in the Webs We Weave series. I mentioned this one in a previous Hide Your Wallet because I was tempted by the conwoman heroine.
Starting fresh is the only way Phoebe can escape a life of crime, but her best friend’s older brother complicates honest dreams in this gripping new series from the authors of the Addicted series.
Phoebe Graves grew up in a family where deception and seduction are as commonplace as breathing. The Graves and her best friend Hailey’s family have been on the run their whole lives, but after a high-stakes con job goes south, Phoebe and Hailey decide to run away and start over. The small Connecticut town they settle in seems too good to be true.
The biggest flaw in their plan is Hailey’s frustratingly handsome brother, Rocky, who insists on coming with them. Living honestly isn’t in his DNA, and his past with Phoebe is downright messy. He’s everything she wants, but nothing she can have.
Phoebe worries that Rocky will tempt them back into their old ways, where lying is second nature. She doesn’t want Rocky to mess up the new life she’s begun for herself. The longer she stays in town, the more she realizes what it means to have a reputation—and what a normal life with the man she loves could look like.
How to Steal a Scoundrel’s Heart by Vivienne Lorret is $1.99! This is book four in The Mating Habits of Scoundrels series. I’m not sure if we featured this on Cover Snark, but I definitely remember talking about that dog in the SBTB Slack.
In USA Today bestselling author Vivienne Lorret’s latest steamy romance, a determined debutante discovers that making a deal with a notorious rake might just give her more than she ever bargained for…
Ruined debutante Prudence Thorogood lost everything when she was ousted from polite society, including her inheritance. Now she’ll do anything to take back what’s hers… even if she has to steal it. Accepting a scandalous offer from Lord Savage seems like the perfect solution to disguise her criminal intentions from the ton. Until she discovers that there’s more to this scoundrel than meets the eye.
Leo Ramsgate, Marquess of Savage, has everything except for a heart. That organ dried up long ago after a devastating betrayal. Since then, he vowed never to trust or love again. He ensures that his dalliances are mutually satisfying, but always temporary… until he meets the reserved Miss Thorogood. Not one of his previous lovers has ever beguiled him the way she does. Not one has made him want to break his own rules. Not one has tempted him to keep her… forever.
Prue has every intention of disappearing from London after their affair ends. But her plan falters when she finds herself falling hopelessly in love with a man who may never love her in return. With time running out and so much at stake, she cannot help but wonder…
smartbitches_feedI’m going to need to make a logo for Friday Videos, huh? Suggestions welcome!
This week’s Friday Video comes from Varian via the podcast Patreon Discord, and when I say I sent to everyone I know, I mean every person I could think of.
Please welcome Lizzy and the Triggermen performing Irving Berlin’s 1941 chart, “When That Man is Dead and Gone.”
You’ll want the good speakers for this one.
I also found a recording from April 2, 1941 featuring Al Bowlly and Jimmy Mesene, “Radio Stars with Two Guitars.”
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra also recorded it, as did Mildred Bailey and The Delta Rhythm Boys.
I love the Mildred Bailey version. I think I’ve listened to it six times this hour.
Happy weekend, everyone, and enjoy the Bad Bunny concert!
And, speaking of, a bonus video!
For those who are in Canada, and especially for those who are still moving around all this snow concrete, please enjoy this parody of Bad Bunny’s “NUEVAYoL” by Carlos Bolivar: INVIELnO!
It’s in Spanish, but here’s the first verse translated (badly) by me:
“If you want to be depressed
with sadness and pain
you only have to live
a winter in Canada.
If you want to freeze
with sadness and pain
you only have to spend
a winter in Canada.”
May your snacks be excellent and may your toes be warm!
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