«Lola Montez & The Poisoned Nom De Plume» by Kit Brennan

Kit Brennan's frothy, sexy second in the Whip Smart Series opens with the gorgeous, ever-headstrong Lola Montez careening around Europe, on the run from the haunting memories of Spain and the wild adventure that nearly cost her life. It is 1844. Lola encounters celebrated pianist and composer Franz Liszt at a concert near Dresden, and he encourages her to set her sights on Paris to establish her dancing career. The night that Lola performs her racy Spider Dance at the Paris Opera, she meets quite possibly the man of her dreams: the co-owner of La Presse Newspaper and best friend of novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas, whose recent novels about three musketeers and a certain Count of Monte Cristo are running concurrently in newspaper serialization. Lola seems on the verge of breaking Victorian tradition and actually having it all, but forces are at work to foil her designs. Shadowy figures will stop at nothing to sabotage Lola's new endeavour (unheard of for a woman): to pen an adventure novel about a feisty female character…using a nom de plume. In the heady atmosphere of Parisian writers, artists and courtesans, with reckless duels fought over every small slight, will Lola survive to find true love and the career of her dreams?