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It’s the first cover reveal of 2020! I’m excited to share this one with y’all. I got to introduce you all to Evie Dunmore’s debut novel, Bringing Down the Duke, early last year, and the follow-up looks just as great! Check out the cover and read an exclusive excerpt after it.
(We’ve got a lot to talk about on Thursday, so keep an eye out for another extra-long KB.)
In this second book in the League of Extraordinary Women series, we land back in the world of Suffragist England, and this time we’ve got a female protagonist who is very vested in having total control over a newspaper and the lord who will offer it to her…at a cost.
(I hesitate with that kind of conflict—especially if beds are involved—but knowing Evie, she’ll twist it on its head.)
So, here it is; yet another magnificent cover directed by Rita Frangie and designed by Farjana Yasmin:
The details! The tea; the cat. You can practically tell what their expressions are even without actual faces.
We wouldn’t leave you with just the cover, though! Here’s a brief excerpt from A Rogue of One’s Own.
He halted before her, too close, and she raised her chin. By some irony of fate, she had gained a bare inch in height since their first encounter in Wycliffe Park.
“You shouldn’t idle on our doorstep,” she told him.
A gleam lit his eyes. “You shouldn’t traipse about alone at night.”
On his right ear, his diamond earring glimmered coldly like a star.
Her lip curled. “Don’t trouble yourself on my behalf,” she said, and resumed walking.
“I rather wouldn’t.” He was next to her, needing only one stride where she took two. “However, I’m afraid I’m obliged to escort you.”
“Truly, there is no need for gentlemanly overtures.”
“A gentleman would insist on carrying your bag. You are veritably lopsided.”
He was, notably, not insisting to carry it.
And she was walking in the wrong direction, she realized, appalled. Blast. She could hardly turn back now—it would look as though had been running from him, quite mindlessly, too.
“A lady’s reputation is in greater jeopardy when she is in your company than when she’s on her own after dark,” she tried.
“Your faith in my notoriety overwhelms me.”
“It certainly worked a charm on Lady Henley.”
“Who?”
She sniffed. “Nevermind.” And, because it did irk her that he would endanger their household’s reputation for nothing at all: “I suppose where the chase is the aim, names are but tedious details.”
“I would not know.” He sounded bemused. “I never chase.”
“What a worrying degree of self-delusion.”
He tutted. “Have you not read your Darwin? The male flaunts himself, the female chooses, it has ever been thus. Beware the determinedly chasing male—he is hoping you won’t notice his plumage is subpar.”
“Whereas, yours is of course superiorly large and iridescent.”
“I assure you it is not iridescent,” he said in a bland voice.
Annoyance crept hotly up her neck. “The ladies do not seem to mind.”
“My dear,” he murmured, “do I detect jealousy?”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her satchel. Could she make her wrong turn look deliberate? Unless she changed direction, she would end up in Oxford’s town centre.
“I think that is exactly what it is,” Tristan said. “It would certainly explain your frequent sabotage of my liaisons.”
“I know you find your own banter highly entertaining, but it is wasted on me tonight.”
“I remember the one time with Annie.”
Despite herself, her mind began listing the Annies she had known. She wrinkled her nose. “The parlor maid?”
“Yes, her.”
“Please—any member of my family would have chased you off the girl.”
“Not with such genuine howls of outrage. Besides, the girl was quite vexed about the interruption after she had so diligently stalked me all summer.”
Was there a creature vainer than him?
“She had a poor taste in men,” she said. “It does not mean she deserved to be despoiled on a garden table.”
“Despoiled? Good Lord.”
He sounded vaguely affronted. Admittedly, he had only been sixteen, perhaps seventeen years of age, and Annie a good few years older, but a servant had no recourse against a nobleman in case she did not wish for his attentions, and most often, they did not.
They were halfway down Park Road, and she wished him gone.
“Who would have thought,” she said, “the infamous rake remembers his liaisons.”
“Oh, I don’t,” came his soft reply. “Only the ones who got away.”
Who probably were very few.
She stopped in her tracks and faced him. “Was there anything in particular you wanted, my lord?”
His eyes glittered yellow in the streetlight, not unlike Boudicca’s.
“It would not be too particular, I think,” he said, his voice low. Almost a purr.
Text copyright © 2020 by Evie Dunmore. Used by permission of Berkley.
What do you think?
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