Tamsin Harte
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
When her husband dies and she is forced to take in paying guests, Harriet Harte feels she has come down in the world. For her lively and forward-thinking daughter Tamsin, however, their lapse from Society is a welcome release. No more tiresome balls, supper parties, and musical evenings for her; instead she is free to concentrate on her main ambition in life: to restore the family's fortunes by becoming Penzance's principal hotelier.
There are, of course, obstacles in her path, such as the dashing and attentive Standish Coverley, who already is the town's leading hotelier. Is Tamsin to succeed at the expense of a friend and devoted admirer? There is also Victor Thorne, a handsome dilletante who makes no secret of his interest in her, to the fury of his protective and scheming mama.
And then there is Newlyn fisherman, David Peters, last surviving son of local character “Captain” Benny Peters. All he can offer is his skill as a smuggler — and the lobsters he sometimes catches by accident. Small wonder that Tamsin prefers to keep her thoughts strictly to matters of business — until some surprising revelations about all three of her admirers compel her to consider them in an entirely different light.
When published by St Martin's in New York and Piatkus in London, in 1999, Tamsin Harte attracted the following notices:
* Set in a Cornish fishing village at the turn of the last century, Macdonald's latest historical romance evokes the moment when England's rigid class structure first began to loosen and the upper classes began to reconsider their conventional injunction against the self-made man, or, in this case, woman. ... There is plenty of social intrigue and high adventure, including brandy smuggling ... fine dining and skinny dipping. Delightful descriptions of Victorian-era practices ... add historical color. Macdonald tells a lively and engaging tale. — Publisher's Weekly
* The heroine of the prolific Macdonald's latest historical novel is a feisty young entrepreneur corralled into running a bed-and-breakfast with her mother after her beloved father's death. ... No matter what she gets up to, [she] retains her light-hearted innocence and joie-de-vivre. — Booklist
And—of Macdonald himself:
*He is every bit as bad as Dickens – Martin Seymour-Smith
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in a Cornish fishing village at the turn of the last century, Macdonald's latest historical romance (after Like a Diamond) evokes the moment when England's rigid class structure first began to loosen and the upper class began to reconsider its conventional injunction against the self-made man, or in this case, woman. Tamsin Harte and her mother, Harriet, fall from the upper echelon of society when Tamsin's father dies and his shipping firm goes bankrupt. They open a boarding house to get by. Energetic, enterprising and ambitious, Tamsin discovers that she has a mind suited to business enterprises. (Her secret ambition is to build "the best hotel in Cornwall.") When it comes to romance, however, she is still bound by tradition. Though attracted to handsome fisherman David Peters, she cannot consider him as anything more than a friend, since he is not of the right class. Instead she sets her sights on Victor Thorne, a spoiled young man from an upper-crust family whose snobbish, scheming mother, Cicely Thorne, provides much of the story's conflict. Tamsin also finds herself attracted to Standish Coverley, a helpful and engaging man who owns the region's most posh hotel, but who appears uninterested in romantic liaisons with women. There is plenty of social intrigue and high adventure, including brandy smuggling, narrow escapes from the custom officers, fine dining and skinny dipping. Delightful descriptions of archaic Victorian-era practices, such as the use of "ladies' bathing machines," add historical color. Though a number of interesting and amusing secondary characters disappear or play disappointingly minor roles in the plot, Macdonald tells a lively and engaging tale.
