A Most Improper Magic

A Most Improper Magic by Stephanie Burgis.  Or Kat, Incorrigible.  It's had both titles in different editions.

And here is a different Regency.  For one thing, Kat, our heroine, is a twelve-year-old who's not Out yet.  Her older sisters are, and her stepmother is arranging away for Elissa, the older, to marry money so that their brother Charles can be saved from the debtors' prison for his gambling debts.  A major problem, given that their mother had once served the tea and been so negligent as to do it without hands, revealing her magic, impoverishing her husband, who did not receive a second living he had been promised, and tainting the family with scandal for years.  (Their mother had died in childbirth with Kat.)  Kat attempts to scuttle the marriage with more scandal by running away disguised as boy, and gets nowhere.

( Read more... )

where there's a will

there's leeway.

Unfortunately, a good number of writers tend to overestimate how much leeway a testator has. 

( Read more... )