Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome author Nancy Means Wright to the blog.  Nancy is the author of 2 mystery novels featuring one of my favorite Scandalous Women, Mary Wollstonecraft. While Parisians stormed the Bastille in 1789 and freed the starving prisoners, a masked Henry Fuseli coolly dealt with an abusive, fancy-dress devil at a London masquerade and released years of pent-up libido in his companion. Mary Wollstonecraft, a virgin of twenty-nine, who preached independence for women and declared “I shall never marry!” had been secretly longing for a grand passion. And here he was. Artist Henry Fuseli was all she hoped for: a man of fire and genius. She recalled scenes of exalted emotion in his art: heaving breasts, tensed and muscled thighs. His celebrated painting, “The Nightmare,” depicting a naked woman, asleep in a translucent shift with a grinning goblin on her chest and a voyeur horse (a mare) looking on, both thrilled and horrified her. “Like Milton,” Mary wrote, “...

From the back cover: Mitchelstown Castle in County Cork, seat of the notorious Anglo-Irish Kingsborough family, fairly hums with intrigue. The new young governess, Mary Wollstonecraft, witnesses a stabbing and attends a pagan bonfire at which an illegitimate sprig of the nobility is killed. When the young Irishman Liam Donovan, who hated the aristocratic rogue for seducing his niece, becomes the prime suspect for his murder, Mary - ever champion of the oppressed, and susceptible to Liam's charms - determines to prove him innocent. My thoughts:  When I read about this book on the blog Reading the Past, I was intrigued. Mysteries with real life historical personages as the detectives are big right now, with series starring Jane Austen, Abigail Adams, and Beau Brummel on the shelves. I've also done a great deal of reading on Mary Wollstonecraft while researching SCANDALOUS WOMEN, and I thought the idea of Mary as a detective was fascinating. Most people know Mary Wollst...