Lady Darby

Anna Lee Huber: A Deceptive Composition

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Lady Darby #12

This enjoyable series centers on unconventional artist Lady Darby, aka Kiera Gage, who still carries her first husband’s title, though she’s since remarried one Sebastian Gage. That first husband was cruel, forcing her to use her artistic skills as an anatomical illustrator to sketch as he dissected corpses, an extremely disreputable occupation for a woman in the 1830s.  Fortunately for her, his passing left her free to marry her dishy second husband and have a baby with him.  She now uses those skills as a society portraitist, but it’s her eye that makes this series original, detecting colors and relevant details others would miss. It’s her incredible powers of observation that makes her such a valuable assistant to her husband, an operative for the crown. read more

Anna Lee Huber: A Fatal Illusion

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Lady Darby  #11

Anna Lee Huber’s most outstanding quality as a writer is her educated heart.  The way she parses human relationships is nothing short of brilliant.  In the latest Lady Darby outing, she and her husband, Sebastian Gage, are summoned to the bedside of his disagreeable father – Lord Gage has been shot as he was making his way home via coach.  It’s 1832 Yorkshire and travelling the highways could be dangerous – not only was Lord Gage shot (luckily in the leg) but one of his servants has been killed.  Sebastian is suffering from a plethora of emotions, all expertly dissected by Huber. read more

Anna Lee Huber: An Artless Demise

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The seventh in Huber’s enjoyable Lady Darby series, this novel finds the lovely and talented Kiera happily married to investigator Sebastian Gage and pregnant with her first child. At this point, the talented Huber is a nice cross between the romance of Tasha Alexander and the social commentary that Anne Perry focuses on in her novels. In 1830’s London, there’s plenty of social injustice to go around, though that is far from Huber’s main theme.

I’ve always loved the premise of these novels. Kiera is a painter who was forced, under her first husband’s tutelage, to create precise anatomical drawings from corpses he obtained probably through illegal means. At the time, the idea of an autopsy or of learning from a human body was considered something of a scandal. When Kiera’s first husband dies, she’s forced to retreat to her sister’s home in Scotland because her work for her husband has made her notorious.
It gives Kiera a fabulous backstory – her first husband’s treatment of her is always at the back of her mind, and her lack of acceptance by conventional members of the “ton” make every social occasion a minefield. Luckily, her present husband, Gage, is a model of kindness and they are a wonderful detecting pair. read more