The Literate Kitty

Anyone who’s ever gone on a trip knows that traveling is HARD.   Whether trying to follow the rules and make it to the airport literally   hours   before your actual flight... worrying about whether or not your toiletries are “small enough” to please the TSA gods... or   knowing   you forgot something vitally essential back at home (be it turning a would-be flammable electrical thingy off, or packing the laptop you’re definitely gonna need)... the whole act of traveling is A LOT.   But one thing most of us rarely factor into that already-bonkers list of variables is... MURDER.   Jessie Garcia’s no-holds-barred debut,  The Business Trip , seems destined to add that concern to your list of OMG-what-ifs, though.     Jasmine is like plenty of women you may have met—or not, depending on how you spend your off-hours. She’s a middle-aged bartender in a low-brow tavern in Madison, Wisconsin. She lives with a boyfriend who... well, leans way more...

There’s   so much   glamorization of past eras which, frankly, were probably, all-too-frequently, anything   but .   I’ve done it, you’ve done it.   The Regency era, though, certainly wasn’t without its charms.    That showiness—of anyone who had a title, money, or was somehow positioned favorably—of the time, combined with the delicious intricacies of what was (and was not) acceptable, have made for compelling reading in more modern ages since... well,  the Regency , when Austen, and others, were penning their tales (of men with fortunes in want of wives, and whatnot).   The clothing... the manners... the balls and luncheons and teas and promenades... the rules that polite society (mostly) followed...  We need look no further than the  massive  success of  Bridgerton  (both book series  and  Netflix show), to understand the widespread appeal of it all.   But what if something even more exciting th...