Up All Night with a Good Duke

Secrets abound in Bennett’s (Lady Beauchamp’s Proposal) first “Byronic Book Club” novel. The well-written book is stuffed to the brim with soapy subplots and features several reliable romance tropes that many readers will find delightful. Artemis Jones, a gothic novelist, dreams of opening a college for women, but needs a patron. She also would like for her aunt to stop trying to marry her off. A chance encounter introduces her to “the Dastardly Duke,” widower Dominic Winters, who is searching for a new wife amid rumors that he murdered the previous Duchess of Dartmoor. Among the novel’s other plot threads are the secret of Artemis’s scandalous first Season, a revenge scheme by Dominic’s brother-in-law, a disastrous courtship for Artemis’s sister, a scheming governess, even a sickbed scene. With a headstrong heroine and a head-over-heels hero at the core, the book shines.