Beverley Oakley is the author of eight historical romances published by Pan Macmillan Momentum, Robert Hale, Ellora's Cave and Total-e-Bound. Recently she won UK Women's Fiction publisher Choc-Lit's Search for an Australian Star competition.She's been shortlisted twice for a Romance Readers of Australia Award in the Favourite Historical category — in 2011 for A Little Deception (as Beverley Eikli), and in 2012 for her racy Regency Romp, Rake's Honour, written under her Beverley Oakley pseudonym.
Beverley wrote her first romance when she was seventeen. However, drowning the heroine on the last page was, she discovered, not in the spirit of the genre so her romance-writing career ground to a halt and she became a journalist.
After throwing in her job on South Australia's metropolitan daily The Advertiser to manage a luxury safari lodge in the Okavango Delta, in Botswana, Beverley discovered a new world of romance and adventure in a thatched cottage in the middle of a mopane forest with the handsome Norwegian bush pilot she met around a camp fire.
Eighteen years later, after exploring the world in the back of Cessna 404s and CASA 212s as an airborne geophysical survey operator during low-level sorties over the French Guyanese jungle and Greenland's ice cap, Beverley is back in Australia living a more conventional life with her husband and two daughters in a pretty country town an hour north of Melbourne.
Places to find Beverley:
Thanks so much for having me here today to talk about my latest release – and my first with Ellora’s Cave – Her Gilded Prison.
My inspiration for this story, I must confess, was the British TV drama, Downton Abbey. The complex relationships have had me riveted to my seat for three seasons now.
Why? Because the characters are so deeply engaging and the plot forever has me wondering what unexpected direction it’ll go next. That’s the sort of thing I love to watch, read and write about.
So, yes, Her Gilded Prison has overtones of Downton Abbey – except that it’s set 100 years earlier - and there’s quite a bit more sex. The plot is based around the lives of a British aristocratic family and it explores a way of life in which money is no object but where reputations can be damaged by the merest whiff of scandal.
That’s what makes the sex so compelling and dangerous.
Her Gilded Prison is the first in a series (the second – Dangerous Gentlemen - has just been contracted) and tells the story of Lady Sybil, Viscount Partington’s lovely, unloved wife of 20 years.
Lord Partington has no heir, nor any desire to try to sire one on his wife. He’s totally committed to the mistress he’d planned to make his wife before his parents insisted on a marriage that would combine the wealth of two great families.
Thus Lady Sybil – the wife he was pressured to wed - has never known love or even affection from a man.
She’s loyal and virtuous so not susceptible to flattery, but when her husband’s distant cousin, charming, laddish, ex-army captain Stephen Cranbourne, arrives at the estate, a strange set of circumstances has her drawn into an unexpected world of humour, tenderness, and finally sensuality.
At last Lady Sybil believes she can be happy, guilt-free and provide an heir that will depose the unworthy incumbent, thus ensuring her two daughters are not cast out of their family home.
Then an unexpected complication throws everyone’s lives into disarray.
Beverley would love to offer a giveaway of either her award-winning erotic Regency Romcom Rake's Honour or her award-winning Regency Intrigue A Little Deception to one lucky, random commenter.
Lady Sybil’s perfect life is a perfect lie. Her husband spends more time with his beloved mistress and illegitimate children than he does with her. Worse, since he no longer beds her, they’re left with only a distant cousin as heir. While her husband lives, Sybil knows no erotic touches, no passion. No love. If her husband dies, her home will be entailed to Stephen, a stranger.
When Stephen visits the property that will one day be his, he’s instantly ensnared in a web of lust, longing and lies. For how can he resist Lady Sybil, a woman so full of beauty and life? A woman who deserves to be loved and worshipped and set free from the gilded prison in which she’s trapped? Stephen is determined to show Lady Sybil every pleasure she’s been deprived of, even if it means being forever condemned in society’s eyes.
Inside Scoop: This erotic Regency romance features an intense, taboo relationship between an older woman and a younger man.
A Romantica® historical erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
Note* Although Her Gilded Prison is, technically, an erotic romance, it would be classified according to the usual rating system, as Sensual rather thank Sizzling, as although there are some fully developed sex scenes, they're not overly explicit.
Purchase: | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | All Romance | Ellora's Cave |
Check out what's up for grabs.
Up For Grabs:
- 1 lucky winner will win an eBook copy of Rake's Honour or A Little Deception
To Enter:
- Please leave a meaningful comment/question for Beverley.
- Please fill out the Rafflecopter form.
Good Luck!
You killed the heroine of your 1st book?! LOLs! Please reassure me that all your published books have a very HEA!
ReplyDeleteYou're definitely reassured, Linda. No heroine has ever suffered irreparable harm in the creation of my stories. Every one has an HEA. (At 17 I was still going through my tragic and dramatic stage and didn't understand enough about real life to know that the world NEEDS feel-good books with guaranteed HEAs.)
DeleteThe villains and villainesses are another matter are the ones where I have my twisted bit of fun when it comes to giving them their just desserts:)
Sounds and looks like a very interesting read.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Olga. And thanks for the Tweet. I'm not very good at Twitter yet, but I've just followed you back and am trying to get my head around it all:)
DeleteCongrats Beverly on the new release! Thanks for sharing :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, Erin. It was a pleasure.
DeleteHave a lovely day - or night, depending on where you live:)
I'm new to historical romances, but have loved the ones I've read. This book looks very good and can't wait to read!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how you got into reading historicals if you've never read them before, Marcy. I'm just starting to read crime (not gory, gritty ones, though) and am enjoying the contrasting. It's fun to read out of one's usual genre.
DeleteIm really hoping that you no longer kill your heroines on the last page of the book! LOL But this book sounds so good im willing to take the chance! ;)
ReplyDeleteI can reassure you before you even feel you're 'taking a chance', Casey:) My lovely heroine definitely does not die at the end of this book. Happiness comes to her in an unconventional way. We leave her happier than she's ever been.
DeleteCongrats Beverly on you newest release.
ReplyDeleteDid you have your children after you settled down in Australia or before?
Hi Lori,
DeleteI had my kids after we settled in Australia. I had met my husband - a Norwegian bush pilot - around a campfire in Botswana when I was running a safari lodge in the Okavango. We had a pretty exciting life living in Botswana, then both flying survey jobs around the world. After 7 years I had our first daughter in Perth.
Enjoy your day:)
Hi, Beverley! It sounds like you have led an exciting life. I have lots of faith in you, and know that your books all have HEAs. Thanks for the giveaway!
ReplyDeleteHi Cathy, Your faith is not misplaced. There's an HFN in this book and an HEA further along in the series.
DeleteBeverly what made you choose to write historical books over modern? I'm an historical nut and prefer them over any other genre. Thank you for the giveaway and your time.
ReplyDeleteWanda Barefoot
flghtlss1(at)yahoo(dot)com
Hi Wanda. I wish I could put my finger on my passion for the historical when everyone says I should write stories based around the unusual life I've led. But I just love the past and writing about women who had to rely on their own devices to find happiness when they were completely dependant, financially, on men, and when they had so few of the rights we take for granted.
DeleteThat's such a WOW cover for HER GILDED PRISON. I'm looking forward to a fabulous read.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mary! I love the cover, too:) How are you? I think I you're on the mailing list for my newsletter which I sent yesterday showing picks of hubby, and me at RT:) Hope you enjoyed it.
DeleteHer Gilded Prison sounds like a great read!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the chance to win!
Good luck, Natasha. Thank you for dropping by:)
DeleteSounds wonderful!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cassie. It's the most unusual book I've written. Older women don't feature much in the historicals I've looked at and now that I'm of a similar age - with two young daughters - I felt I could really get into Lady Sybil's psyche.
DeleteWow - I go to bed in Australia and wake up 8 hours later to all these lovely comments! Thank you, everyone, for dropping by!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, rest assured, I have NEVER killed off any heroine since my first book and ALL my books have 'aaaah-inducing' HEAs.
Now it's back to final edits for my Choc Lit release The Reluctant Bride in the hour before dawn (after which it'll be chaos when my kids wake up:))
I LOVE historical Romances! Here's to finding another one to read!
ReplyDeleteHi Lilie - you're in good company! Don't they just transport you to another world?
DeleteThis looks so great! Thanks for sharing with us! I adore that cover as well.
ReplyDeleteDid the author have any say on the design of the book cover? Also, who in the author's life encouraged them to sit down and write their first book?
Thanks for the giveaway!
mestith at gmail dot com
Hi Meghan - No, I had no say in the cover of the book but I really do love it! As for wanting to write, I think it's coded into my DNA. I can't not!
DeleteThank you for dropping by!