Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen FIC Bowen First Published: 2007
In this special series, our librarians are introducing you to more series and authors that keep them reading long into the night. In this post, one of our librarians talks about one of her favorite series: Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen.
This series is my go-to when I'm in the mood for something light, amusing, and with just a touch of intrigue. The main character is Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, cousin to King George V of England, and affectionately known to all as "Georgie." When the reader meets Georgie, we learn that she is penniless and struggling to survive on her own as an "average" person in London in 1932. Throughout the next 14 novels, we follow Georgie's adventures, meet her friends, watch her trying to stay financially afloat, and dreaming of love and marriage. Georgie valiantly carries on, despite bodies showing up with disturbing regularity and threats of royal scandals constantly brewing.
Michaelle S. Popular Materials Asst.
Her Royal Spyness (Book 1)
Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter to the Duke of Atholt and Rannoch, is 34th in line to the throne. She grew up in Scotland at the Castle of Rannoch which is very isolated, cold, and boring. When her brother cuts off her allowance and Georgiana’s relationship with her sister-in-law becomes impossible, she leaves for London. In London the need to earn some income leads her to work behind a cosmetics counter—and she is sacked after five hours. She starts to fall for a quite unsuitable minor royal, makes some money cleaning other people’s houses (incognito, of course) and then is summoned by the Queen to spy on her playboy son. All this before an arrogant Frenchman, who wants her family’s 800-year-old estate for himself, winds up dead in her bathtub. Now her most important job is to clear her very long family name.
A Royal Pain (Book 2)
The Queen has asked Georgie to entertain Bavarian Princess Hanni, while at the same time conveniently placing the princess in the playboy Prince’s path, in the hopes that he might finally marry. But The Queen doesn’t realize that this will take money and Georgie has very little, which is why she moonlights as a maid. She must draw up plans: clean house to make it look like a palace; have Granddad and her neighbor pretend to be the domestic staff; un-teach Princess Hanni the English she’s learned from American gangster movies; cure said Princess of her embarrassing shoplifting habit; and keep an eye on her at parties. Then there’s the worrying matter of the body in the bookshop and Hanni’s unwitting involvement with the Communist Party.
Royal Flush (Book 3)
To avoid scandal, Lady Georgiana is shipped home to Castle Rannoch where her summer plans include honoring a promise to Her Majesty to keep Castle Rannoch's divorcée houseguest from seducing the Prince of Wales. She's also been coerced into helping Scotland Yard with a top-secret mission--namely keeping an eye on the shooting party at Balmoral and preventing someone from shooting the Prince. And Georgie must manage all this without strangling her extremely unpleasant sister-in-law Fig or spineless brother Binky.