Miss Charity's Case

by Jo Ann Ferguson

En route to London to snare an aristocratic suitor for her pretty younger sister, Charity Stuart, the twenty-six-year-old spinster daughter of a vicar, has a fateful encounter with the notorious, roguishly handsome Lord Blackburn. Original.

Genres: Regency, Romance

223 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1996

About the author

Please note, this author also writes under the name J.A. Ferguson, Jocelyn Kelley and Rebecca North.
"One of my favorite memories is lying on the grass on a knoll on a late summer day and telling my sister stories I was making up," says Jo Ann Ferguson, who also writes as J.A. Ferguson, Joanna Hampton, Jo Ann Brown, and Rebecca North."There's something magical about being able to spend time with people you enjoy in your imagination. As a writer, I get to go with my characters to their time and place so I can share their adventures and falling in love for the first time…all over again."

She has had a few adventures of her own, including a stint as an Army quartermaster officer where she was the first and only woman in her unit. She still enjoys traveling to the locations of her books and learning all about those places and people. Researching her novels is part of the fun. Whether it's ghosts, calling cards, how to fire an antique gun, or traveling to a world that exists only in her imagination, she pays a great deal of attention to the details that delight her reader. She's even learned a bit of Russian, Arabic, Welsh, and a lot of Regency slang.

Her work has been honored with award nominations from Pearl, ROMY, Romantic Times, Rom/Con, and Affaire de Coeur magazine. Amazon Books chose her novels to showcase. And Romance Writers of America bestowed the two ARTemis Awards for Jo Ann's Zebra Regencies: The Counterfeit Count and A Christmas Bride.

Nonfiction also appeals to her, because it's where she got her start, seeing her first byline when she was twelve years old. She contributed to an encyclopedia of the English Regency period published by Garland Press. For all three editions of the New England Chapter's Now That You've Sold Your Book…What Next?, she has served as co-editor.

Believing in giving back, Jo Ann has served Romance Writers of America on both the local and national levels. She has served on the national board as president as well as a director and at term as vice president. For her volunteer work, she was given RWA's highest honor, the Emma Merritt National Service Award. She is also a creative writing instructor. She was awarded a Massachusetts Art Grant to teach creative writing and then established several creative writing courses at Brown University. Many of her students have gone on to publishing careers of their own.

She lives in Massachusetts, where her favorite hero—her husband, Bill—and their children and two cats. She's not sure which is the most spoiled.

Reviews

[Scout Langley · Rating 2 out of 5]

♥sisters. I love that this book was about two sisters. You can always understand something more when you see it in its native habitat, and seeing these sisters interact with each other lets us see these characters more deeply than if we just saw them independently.
♥setting. I really loved at the beginning when the ladies when to a sketchy inn. In these Regency novels, everything is always happening at the same exact places. It was nice to see a bit of variety and gave us a chance to understand the characters better as they were out of their native environment.
❌captain. The book kept referring that the male lead is a captain of a ship and would rather be out on the open sea than here in London, but it never really did anything with this so I don't really know why it kept being mentioned. I think part of it is that romantic trope of the male lead having been a sailor with the muscles and the decisive attitude is really popular, but I don't think it added anything to the book
❌the build up. The whole book is hinting about something that their father hid from them and that there might be more to everything than they know about. However, it really wasn't that shocking when everything was revealed. The buildup did not develop a climax instead it just got annoying. If you want to read a book about the parent not telling them everything, I would suggest "Everything They Never Told You" while I gave it a three-star rating it really did shock me on the revelations that were made.
❌blamed the girls. At the end of the book as things are coming to light, the male lead and the narration of the book is blaming the sister for the decisions she has made and the people that she trusted, but this drove me absolutely crazy as she made the best decision she could with the information she had. It is not her fault that the male lead hid a bunch of information that relates to the sisters. It was also very frustrating because the girls don't really have a lot of choices in that they don't have any money are living with an aunt who wants them to marry well to basically give the middle finger to their mother and basically say, "This could have been you if you had just listened to me". Both the sisters make decisions on who to trust TO SURVIVE and yet their decisions are so criticized.

[ChristineZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read to chapter 10 or 11, skipped a bunch, and read the last two. It was painful, but I kept thinking this book had potential! Two sweet sisters. Nice male character, who is a ship captain/owns a shipping company/Earl/spy? Something like that. He knows a big secret about the father that is revealed in the last chapter. Really annoying use of language: bibble-babble, gibble-gabble, fiddle-faddle, blamblusterated, feather-minded and more!

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of annoying.

[Georgeanne]

I could have done without the spy plot, especially since the reader was kept as much in the dark as the heroine, which was more exasperating than anything. Not a keeper.