Boy, do we know the feeling of THIS episode title after the past few weeks! Technical glitches and daily-life dramas have tied us up the past few weeks, but now we're back... and Amy and Jacinta firmly believe this book is worth the wait! They uncover and unpack Mary Roberts Rinehart's 1915 emotional ensemble drama, "K"—primarily because who can resist a book title that's only one letter?? Plus the all-new history segment profiles a little-known master from the Golden Age of Illustration, Charles E. Chambers.

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public domain book for FREE!

Other books and authors mentioned in this episode include:

Poor Dear Theodora!

Jan of the Windmill

The Notting Hill Mystery

Hearts and Masks

P.G. Wodehouse

Agatha Christie

Anna Katherine Green

The Circular Staircase

Little Women

Cranford

Little Dorrit

Pearl S. Buck

W. Somerset Maugham

Other topics and shout-outs in this episode include: the Golden Age of Illustration, WWI, Castle, Murdoch Mysteries, Bob Newhart, Jeeves & Wooster, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, Steinway & Sons, Chesterfield Cigarettes, Fannie Munsell, Pauline True, Winston Churchill, King Albert & Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, Queen Mary and King George V of England, The Saturday Evening Post, Melrose Place, Coronation Street, Ballykissangel, Forrest Gump, Lark Rise to Candleford, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Richard Munsell Chambers, Pearl Harbor, Norman Rockwell, the Art Institute of Chicago, soap operas, the friend zone, nursing school, Pittsburgh, breast cancer, and rental cars.

It's a Gibson Girl first—TWO guest reviewers! Gwendolyn Gage makes her third appearance on the podcast (is it time to start calling her a co-host?), along with longtime show fan Anne Skelly, a docent at the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, NY. They join Amy in the studio for a deep dive into the first novel written by the legendary Western artist Frederic Remington, JOHN ERMINE OF THE YELLOWSTONE (1902). Plus Anne, with her expertise on all things Fred, is the show's first-ever guest historian for the history segment!

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public domain book for FREE!

Other books and authors mentioned in this episode include:

The Way of an Indian by Frederic Remington

Richard Harding Davis

True Grit by Charles Portis

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Other topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Charles Dana Gibson, the Gibson Girl, the Gibson Man, the Golden Age of Illustration, the Crow (Absaroke) tribe, Dances with Wolves, Tombstone, John Wayne, John Ford, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the U.S. Cavalry, the Apache Wars, the Civil War, tuberculosis, fish-out-of-water tropes, anti-heroes, and scalping.

Hear ye, hear ye! An olde friend of the show has returned! Amy is joined in the studio by the original co-host of The Gibson Girl Review, Katja Labonté, for our first-ever medieval story! But what will the medieval history major and the medieval fiction aficionado make of Howard Pyle's 1891 armor-rattler, MEN OF IRON? Tune in to find out! Plus Amy explores Howard Pyle's legacy as an artist in the next installment of our Golden Age of Illustration history segments.

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public domain book for FREE!

Other books and authors mentioned in this episode include:

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Richard Harding Davis

For Jacinta by Harold Bindloss

St. George for England by G.A. Henty

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle

The Elusive Truth of Lily Temple by Joanna Davidson Politano

The Pax Series by Sara Pennypacker

The Parish Orphans of Devon Series by Mimi Matthews

Louisa May Alcott

What Katy Did by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

Elsie Dinsmore by Martha Finley

Other topics and shout-outs in this episode include: the Golden Age of Illustration, medieval history, library cards, Victorian travel, historical romance, knights, Quakers, Teddy Roosevelt, injustice, unions, the Brandywine School, the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art, Drexel University, the strenuous life, rugged individualism, vengeance, Scribner's Magazine, Chadds Ford, bullies, imagination, Henry IV, Henry V, the Battle of Agincourt, Ecclesiastes, coming of age, jousting, damsels, and pirates.

All the podcast rules are out the window this week, as Amy and Amanda dive deep into THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY, an 1862 novel that claims to be "the first detective novel." But wait—didn't they already review "the first detective novel" in an earlier season? It's an unvarnished, no-holds-barred episode unlike any we've ever done before! Plus the girls celebrate Charles Dana Gibson's birthday week with a special history segment tribute to Gibson's artistic idol, George du Maurier. CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public domain book for FREE! Books and authors mentioned in this episode include:

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Angela du Maurier

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Trilby by George du Maurier

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Edgar Allan Poe

Paul Collins

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Authentically Izzy by Pepper Basham

Novels of Mystery from the Victorian Age edited by Maurice Richardson

Other topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Charles Dana Gibson, the Gibson Girl, the Gilded Age, the Golden Age of Illustration, Charles Warren Adams, George du Maurier, Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, murder mysteries, the 1980s, remote controls, hypnotism, twin sympathy, detective novels, Victorian literature, and author reviews.

We're back!! After a summer break full of many ups and downs, Amy and Jacinta return to the studio with more than just a new old book review... it's a new theme for the entire season! We are celebrating the Golden Age of Illustration with each episode of Season Four, and we kick things off with a rollicking romance story illustrated by the one artist whose work is most often mislabeled as "Gibson Girls," Harrison Fisher.

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public domain book for FREE!

Books and authors mentioned in this episode include:

Husband Auditions by Angela Strong

Jen Turano

Paul Leicester Ford

In the Bishop's Carriage by Miriam Michelson

The Princess Aline by Richard Harding Davis

The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope

Topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Charles Dana Gibson, Gibson Girls, Harrison Fisher, Fisher Girls, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, Clara Bow, European travel, the Northwest Montana History Museum, the Humane Society, Harlequin cats, and hearing impairments.

It's the Season Three finale of The Gibson Girl Review, and we are bringing it home with jangling spurs and a rollicking BANG! Amy, Jacinta, and Amanda all gather in the studio to discuss the Godfather of the American Western genre, Owen Wister's 1902 classic, The Virginian. Filled with humor, pathos, and some immortal characters, this meandering tale may very well change the way you think about Westerns forever!

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public-domain novel for FREE!

Topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Bret Harte, John Wayne, the Old West, American mythology, animal abuse, lynching, racism, High Noon, Angel and the Badman, the Wyoming Territory, and western tropes.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the very first author to appear a second time on our podcast, Richard Harding Davis! Today's all-new episode explores Davis' 1895 royal romance, THE PRINCESS ALINE—approved by none other than Queen Victoria herself! And we already know that Amy is a fan... but what does Jacinta think of her very first Dick Davis novel? Tune in to find out!

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including companion episodes, and a link to download this episode's public-domain story for FREE!

Topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Richard Harding Davis, Charles Dana Gibson, Queen Victoria, Princess Alix of Hesse, Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian Revolution, the Gilded Age, The Prisoner of Zenda, Somewhere in Time, Ward McAllister, the Patriarch's Ball, Delmonico's, Irene Langhorne Gibson, Cecil Clark Davis, Fairfax Downey, the Gibson Girl, the Gibson Man, Jeeves and Wooster, P. G. Wodehouse, the Atelier Julien, European tourism, and Ethel Barrymore.

She's back!! Katja Labonté, the original co-host of The Gibson Girl Review, returns as a guest reviewer for this all-new episode, as she and Amy crack open the cover on Henry James' scandalous 1878 novella, Daisy Miller. But is this story as shocking for us today as it supposedly was during the Gilded Age? And how does this story relate to Amy and Katja's very first episode of the podcast?

And speaking of scandals, Amy introduces us in the history segment to Evelyn Nesbit, the most notorious of all the real-life Gibson Girl models, whose story is a surprisingly close parallel to that of our featured book's heroine.

CLICK HERE for complete show notes, including a link to download today's public-domain book for FREE!

Topics and shout-outs in this episode include: Charles Dana Gibson, Gibson Girls, the Gilded Age, Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, the Redwall series, Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, Hannah Linder, The Girl from the Hidden Forest, Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, The Trial of the Century, murder, scandal, insanity, jealousy, Gilmore Girls, American ex-patriots, Newport, Paris, London, Geneva, World War I, the Nobel Prize for Literature, Impressionism, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Pink and White Tyranny, The Vassar Miscellany, Vassar girls, A Study in Bloomers, Miss Bayle's Romance, and Mr. Darcy.