Bea Koch, one of the owners of the famed romance-only bookstore The Ripped Bodice, is ready to prove there's more to the Regency era than Jane Austen and the all-white high society that tends to populate books set during the time period. Koch's Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency delves into the forgotten stories of women like Dido Elizabeth Belle, whose mother was a slave, but who was raised by her white father's family in England, and early LGBTQ+ trailblazer Anne Lister, who lived with her common law wife and ran her own estate.
Out Sep. 1