The Husband List

 Shirley J.    Adult Fiction        American Heiresses in the Gilded Age (1894)   English titles

The Husband List by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly    309 pages

I really love Janet Evanovich's style of writing and the detail to which she and Dorien Kelly bring the reader to really feel the lifestyles of the privileged elite in American society in 1894 and how daughters were flaunted to English minor titled nobility to get the prestige of a title for their heiress daughters.   It was pretty much a pimping situation and mothers and fathers often turned a blind eye to what was actually transpiring in order to get the benefit of a titled lord within their family for bragging rights.    Love was never a part of the bargain it was all transacted as any business deal of the time within the upper 2%.   Fortunately, Caroline Maxwell has run off every suitor her mother has tried to snag for her.  But when broke, gambling debt ridden, English Lord Bremerton comes to call, Caroline has met her match in someone who wants her family fortune more than she wants to be shed of him.   Good story.   I would recommend this one to mature gradeschoolers on up.