Cover Reveal - Dangerous to Know: Jane Austen's Rakes and Gentleman Rogues Anthology, Edited by Christina Boyd

As you might have seen, there's a new anthology coming soon, featuring short stories from some fantastic authors. The theme drawing all the stories together is that each one is focusing on the 'bad boys' of Austen. While we love our heroes, it'll be a change to instead have stories spotlighting the the more rakish characters. I'm not entirely sure what we're going to get, whether it's back-stories, alternate points of view or perhaps reformations, but I am really excited about this new project, which is being brought together by editor Christina Boyd. If you enjoy reading Austenesque books then the likelihood is that you've already read and loved a book that Christina has worked on, as well as so many of the authors who've contributed to this anthology.

Today, Christina Boyd has joined us with a guest post where we'll reveal the cover of Dangerous to Know: Jane Austen's Rakes and Gentleman Rogues, and she's brought an international giveaway too!

Jane Austen’s masterpieces are littered with any number of unsuitable gentlemen—Willoughby, Wickham, Churchill, Crawford, Tilney, Elliot—adding color and depth to her plots but often barely sketched out to the reader. Have you ever wondered about her rakes, rattles, and rogues? Surely, there's more than one side to their stories. Dangerous to Know: Jane Austen’s Rakes & Gentlemen Rogues, the book designed to expose certain histories about Jane Austen’s anti-heroes, reveals its cover today.

Shari Ryan from Mad Hat Books created the gorgeous book cover from a rough sketch by the editor, Christina Boyd, and she quickly and professionally created the beauty it is today. 

The back cover suggests the stories might have some steam (the collection is about Jane Austen’s bad boys after all!) Like in The Darcy Monologues, these authors can turn up the heat with but the turn of a phrase. However, the love scenes are not graphic, and the handful of stories with “mature content” are marked as such in the Table of Contents.

Author Beau North came through again by creating the stunning individual short story promotional graphics. She is quite an accomplished woman. Those individual story graphics will roll out over the next days from their facebook page The Darcy Monologues, et al., and other social media.

As an editor, Christina Boyd has been extremely fortunate to work with some incomparable authors. Several authors from The Darcy Monologues anthology including Karen M Cox, J. Marie Croft, Jenetta James, Beau North, Sophia Rose, and Joana Starnes joined Amy D’Orazio, Lona Manning, Christina Morland, Katie Oliver, and Brooke West in crafting this current collection. The intent: create clever, well-informed short stories, each from one of Austen’s male antagonists’ point-of-view—a backstory and, or parallel story from off-stage of canon. This Dream Team certainly upped their game accepting this challenge by undertaking characters that few even like and slyly earn the reader’s sympathies—maybe even adoration—whilst remaining steadfast to the characters we recognize in Austen’s masterpieces. This wickedly delicious anthology is scheduled for release mid-November.

The international giveaway: When Christina published The Darcy Monologues, readers expressed how the blend of the authors’ writing styles worked well to make the overall collection stimulating. One reader suggested that she was so familiar with some authors’ writing styles, she was sure she could match the writers to their stories without being told. This Giveaway Challenge was thus inspired. To win a $25 Amazon gift card, follow the Google link and complete a multiple-choice quiz, matching lines of prose to the author and her rake/gentleman rogue. Last day to enter is October 18. In case of a tie, a winner will be chosen at random in a Facebook Live drawing. Since it’s for an Amazon gift card, of course, it’s a worldwide giveaway. Gotta play to win. 

“Dangerous to Know” Challenge

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Isn't that cover a stunner! Thank you so much to Christina for dropping by today with this post.

Remember, while comments on the post are most definitely appreciated, they won't enter you into the giveaway - to enter you will need to fill in the quiz, linked here. Good Luck!