Royal Pain

Megan Mulry has spent most of her life researching, traveling, and experiencing everything to do with the American/British cultural love affair. She studied nineteenth-century British fiction at university, lived in London for nearly four years, and has now written her first novel, A Royal Pain (November 2012), in which Mulry brings an American perspective and a fresh, witty voice to our never-ending fascination with British royalty.

A Royal Pain is the first in a new women’s fiction series imagining what it might be like for an average modern American woman who falls unwittingly in love with British royalty and is drawn into a glamorous and complicated world that a rare few get to experience.

Bronte Talbott is a smart, ambitious advertising executive, but after a disastrous breakup that leaves her confidence in shreds, she vows to embrace brutal honesty in all future skirmishes with men. No forays into emotional minefields. No grand gestures.

Soon after swearing off messy entanglements, she meets the ideal Transitional Man: Max Heyworth, an irresistibly handsome British doctoral student. She figures by the time he goes back to London, she’ll have gotten her heartbreak out of her system and be ready to move on.

But when their carefree affair turns meaningful, Bronte panics. And then she discovers her casual fling was with British royalty. Max failed to mention that he happens to be the nineteenth Duke of Northrop. Max sets about convincing Bronte that together they can have their happily-ever-after, despite false starts, familial duties, and a very disapproving duchess. Even as she’s falling for Max, Bronte is going to have to decide if she wants to stay with him for the long haul and deal with the opportunities—and challenges—of becoming a royal.

In this contemporary/regency mash-up, Mulry incorporates many elements of historical romance—balls, doyennes, country house parties, meddling friends, intricate meals, high fashion, and an acute attention to detail—and weaves them into a contemporary world where issues of a woman’s sexual, financial, and intellectual freedom can be explored and celebrated.

Mulry graduated from Northwestern University and then worked in publishing, including positions at the New Yorker and Boston Magazine. After moving to London, she worked in finance and attended London Business School. She has traveled extensively in Asia, India, Europe, and Africa and now lives with her husband and children in Florida. www.meganmulry.com