Wit and Witchery — Geraldine Burrows

 Winner, Paranormal Romance, Book Buyers Best Contest A Jane Austen-esque romance skillfully injected with a magical twist. --Kirkus Reviews... WIT AND WITCHERY lives up to the promise of its title. There's both wit and witchery aplenty, as well as drama, danger, and a steamy romance... --IndieReader An IndieReader Best Reviewed Book of the MonthCan a country hedge witch outwit a rakehell lord and out-witch the Red Queen of blood magic in London?Annis Fulton is a wellborn young widow and a descendant of one of England's oldest hereditary witch families. Trained in her secret heritage by her elderly nurse, Annis's hedge witchery can't save her from marriage to a cruel, much-older man in order to reclaim her family's estate.Now happily widowed, she travels to London, where she matches wits with Lord Nicholas Ryder with whom she has a long-standing quarrel. Ryder is determined to seduce her, for no other woman has aroused his ire and desire the way she has. Annis is equally determined to thwart his desire, and the two of them wage their private duel against the glittering backdrop of the London Season.However, they soon must unite against a common foe—Belle Barlow, proprietress of London's most decadent brothel and secretly the Red Queen of blood magic in London. She and Annis are born enemies who are destined to meet and clash, for white magic must always contend against the blood-fed red.But Annis is weakened in London, where she is cut off from the natural forces of hedge witchery and where her growing love for Ryder could prove her undoing. And now the Red Queen is plotting to ensnare them both in a fiendish deathtrap from which there is no escape.89,000 words