Countess Ashby de la Zouche Unnatural Fire, Book 1, (Paperback)

It is the ragged end of the 17th century, and the countess Ashby de la Zouche is having rather a bad day. Well, year.

...Several years, actually. The money is long gone, along with the count, and while the countess has no mealy-mouthed scruples about renting out her person, fewer gentlemen than one might think appreciate the mellow, nuanced charms of a mature lady. In short, it's looking like a very hungry winter, until a new possibility arises: A job as a professional gossip columnist for one of London's daily tabloids. Peering into bedroom windows may not be the most respectable of occupations, but respectability loses a certain amount of its allure when the alternative is debtors' prison. And if someone else holds the ladder, one can discover really quite surprising--and sometimes murderously dangerous--things.

Unnatural Fire is the first novel in this very funny historical series by Fidelis Morgan, which draws on the author's expertise of the era and is partly based on the real historical figure of Delarivier "Delia" Manley, a famed 17th-century playwright, satirist, and pamphleteer.