SWEETEST SCOUNDREL Maiden Lane, Book 9

What do a duke’s illegitimate daughter and a rough-and-tumble theater owner have in common? Narrator Ashford McNab makes Eve and Asa’s unlikely pairing a foregone conclusion. Further, her reading gives the story’s eighteenth-century-London setting verisimilitude for contemporary listeners. Eve Dinwoody holds the purse strings to Asa Makepeace’s theater production, HARTE’S FOLLY. Her prickly manner doesn’t hold up long against Asa’s blunt masculine appeal. Add in the mystery of who is sabotaging the production and solid secondary characters, whom McNab voices in Cockney and Caribbean accents, and it’s hard to imagine better historical romance. McNab’s greatest success is her projection of the undercurrent of longing between Eve and Asa. Her realistic delivery of their shared secrets makes the romance that much more convincing. C.A. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2016]