The Early Edition of Mailbox Mondays

Regency Buck  by Georgette Heyer, wish granted on Paperbackswap.com

"Miss Judith Taverner and her brother travel to London to meet their guardian, Julian St. John Audley, Lord Worth, expecting an elderly gentleman. To their surprise and utter disgust, their guardian is not much older than they are, and is determined to thwart all their interests, hoping to return them to the country until they reach majority and his job is done.

But Miss Taverner begins to move in the highest circles of society and Lord Worth can't do a thing about it ...

While Heyer's sparkling Regency romances usually depicted the secondary nobility, with an occasional Duke, in Regency Buck, Heyer mixes her fictional characters with real-life personages of the highest of the haut ton-the circle of the Prince Regent and his brothers (all huge men with huge appetites), and Beau Brummell, the famous dandy who single-handedly set the fashions for male attire and manners".

The Russian Concubine  by Kate Furnival, used one reserve credit on "pbs" because I had to have this one.

"A sweeping novel set in war-torn 1928 China, with a star-crossed love story at its center.

In a city full of thieves and Communists, danger and death, spirited young Lydia Ivanova has lived a hard life. Always looking over her shoulder, the sixteen-year-old must steal to feed herself and her mother, Valentina, who numbered among the Russian elite until Bolsheviks murdered most of them, including her husband. As exiles, Lydia and Valentina have learned to survive in a foreign land.

Often, Lydia steals away to meet with the handsome young freedom fighter Chang An Lo. But they face danger: Chiang Kai Shek's troops are headed toward Junchow to kill Reds like Chang, who has in his
possession the jewels of a tsarina, meant as a gift for the despot's wife. The young pair's all-consuming love can only bring shame and peril upon them, from both sides. Those in power will do anything to quell it. But Lydia and Chang are powerless to end it".