Amanda Rose

Amanda Rose (1986) by Karen Robards – Futura – Good Condition

Lady Amanda Rose Culver has several problems.

She is eighteen, orphaned, under the control of an unpleasant older brother, facing an arranged marriage she has absolutely no enthusiasm for, and living in England in 1840, when the available mechanisms for clicking “Decline” on somebody else’s matrimonial plans were regrettably limited.

Then she finds a wounded American fugitive on a rocky shore.

Obviously, things improve immediately.

In Amanda Rose, Karen Robards serves up a full-blooded historical romance involving aristocracy, escape, murder accusations, privateers, convent life, dangerous attraction, sea voyages and the sort of handsome wounded stranger whom sensible young ladies are traditionally advised not to conceal from the authorities. (

The stranger is Matt Grayson, an American who has narrowly escaped the gallows after being falsely convicted of murder. Badly injured and desperate to get back to America, he is discovered near the convent where Amanda has effectively been parked by her family while arrangements are made for her future.

Amanda could summon help.

She could inform somebody responsible.

She could step carefully backwards and allow the British justice system to continue pursuing the escaped convict.

Amanda does not do any of these things.

Instead, she hides him.

This is why novels happen.

As Amanda nurses Matt back to health, the relationship between sheltered aristocratic girl and worldly American fugitive develops with exactly the degree of restraint one might expect from an 1980s historical romance whose central characters are trapped together while one of them is being hunted by the authorities.

Not much restraint, in other words.

Amanda sees in Matt an escape from the suffocating future chosen for her. Matt initially sees Amanda as somebody whose assistance might keep him alive long enough to reach a ship. Both plans become considerably more complicated once attraction enters proceedings and starts dismantling everybody’s sensible intentions. 

Before long, the story expands beyond English shores into ships, captivity, misunderstandings and New Orleans, with Matt’s connection to the New World and life as a privateer giving the novel considerably more adventure than Amanda might reasonably have anticipated when she first went for a walk near the convent. 

Robards delivers the classic ingredients with admirable enthusiasm: a spirited heroine, a dangerously attractive hero, social restrictions, a cruel relative, accusations of betrayal, enforced proximity and enough romantic misunderstanding to demonstrate once again that approximately half of historical fiction could have been shortened considerably if everyone had possessed mobile phones.

But that would rather spoil things.

Part of the pleasure is the extravagance of it all. Nobody merely has a mildly inconvenient afternoon. People are threatened with hanging. Marriages are imposed. Ships leave unexpectedly. Hearts are broken. Reputations are endangered. Passion arrives at precisely the least administratively convenient moment.

It is historical romance operating at its natural setting of Full Drama.

The 1840 setting also provides the necessary social obstacles. Amanda may be an heiress and a lady, but wealth and rank do not necessarily translate into control over her own life. Matt, meanwhile, has the minor social disadvantage of being an escaped convicted murderer, however unjust the conviction may have been.

One can imagine the family introduction becoming awkward.

“Mother, this is Matt.”

“And what does Matt do?”

“He is currently avoiding execution.”

Still, nobody reads this sort of novel hoping Amanda will eventually meet a pleasant accountant with dependable prospects.

Published by Futura in 1986, this edition runs to the gloriously unapologetic tradition of popular historical romance in which adventure and love are expected to occupy roughly equal amounts of space, preferably while somebody is escaping from somewhere.

ISBN 9780708830185.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning that unlike Matt Grayson it has not recently escaped from the gallows, washed up wounded on the coast or required concealment in a convent. It may show the normal signs of previous ownership and age, but remains perfectly capable of transporting its next reader into several hundred pages of aristocratic rebellion, maritime adventure and spectacularly inconvenient attraction.

Ideal for readers of historical romance, Karen Robards fans, lovers of old-school romantic adventure, pirate and privateer fiction, spirited heroines, brooding fugitives, or anybody who regards “young woman discovers injured stranger wanted for murder” as the beginning of a romance rather than a reason to contact the police.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where wounded privateers are regrettably not stocked, arranged marriages are discouraged, and all fugitives must pay postage in advance.

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