Golden Urchin

4.5 stars In the course of my ongoing search for good old fashioned romantic suspense novels in the vein of Mary Stewart, I ve been down the path of gothic mysteries with Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt which didn t work out particularly well for me , and tried some of the modern ones by Susanna Kearsley a bit hit and miss, but there are definitely some good ones there A while back one of my friends recommended that I give Madeleine Brent s books a shot They re quite good, and this one is, at [...]

What a wild ride, with just about anything but the kitchen sink tossed in.

Mix together adventure, mystery, exotic locations and lightly sprinkle some romance and you have this fun and captivating story written from the POV of a very unusual heroine Mitji Meg was just two years old when she was kidnapped from her wealthy Irish family, abandoned in the wilds of the Australian outback, and taken in by the aboriginal tribe where she spent the next decade as not quite a member She s considered a freak and not a true person and grows up with much self loathing When her only [...]

Mitji Meg is one of my favorite characters ever And she is an inspiring character for any woman or young lady She is bright, clever, disarming and amazingly talented in ways that are so very unexpected For the time period she is quite feisty which is always a good thing She overcomes amazing ordeals throughout the story I suppose this could be called a coming of age story as she spans ages 14 18 or so as the story progresses I really enjoy stories such as this and will absolutely read of this a [...]

There are so many shelves I want to put this book under Adventure is at the top of that list and I think it can even go under thriller just for those last few chapters Mitji has never known anything or anyone but the Aboriginal tribe that brought her up They say she came from the Totem Gods, after all, she looks nothing like them Mitji is a freak of nature what with her fiery red hair and sparkling green eyes And then there is her nose No aborigine has a narrow nose, so she can not be fully huma [...]

Somebody recommended these books recently when I wrote a blog post about romantic adventure This book is so much fun I haven t had so much sheer reading fun for ages At the start, Meg is a reject from the aboriginal tribe she was adopted by Because she s white, she s a non person, and no one will willingly touch her So she runs away, stumbles across the aftermath of a gunfight One of the combatants is alive, so she saves him he turns out to be a rancher He takes her home to his lovely wife Rose [...]

I loved this book A girl is kidnapped and found by a tribe of aboriginies She grows up with the tribe and thinks she s a freak of nature left by the totem gods After many years she leaves the village, saves the life of a man dying in a desert, finds a new home and learns to live as a white woman But who is she Someone knows and an attempt is made on her life The question is why Her travels take her from Australia to Switzerland to England and finally to Africa where the adventure climaxes in a s [...]

This is an old fashioned adventure that chases across 3 or 4 different continents in just as many years But the beginnings are in Australia and that first half is incredible for detail, the tribal, in every aspect of Meg Mitji and her experiences with all the friends, enemies, associates that she meets This is clear and flowing prose and not difficult in the reading to context and languages Because Madeleine Brent is exceptional in translating to nuance and mood, particularly within the phrases [...]

A historical novel about a young woman who grows up among aborigines as a white skinned freak, until she stumbles across a dying white man and discovers the world of her own people 1986.Full review and other recommendations at Another look bookTotally amazing book This book represents the very best of historical fiction My favorite parts are the early parts, when the main character is trying to understand all the new things she s encountering in the new world of the white man I also envied her V [...]

I feel a little self conscious about liking this book, because I think there are a number of problems with it, but I actually did enjoy it I don t know enough about the ways of aboriginal Australians to judge whether that part was accurate, but if it is, I must admit that that part was very interesting to me The mystery of her past and the intrigue over her heritage was interesting enough for me to continue with the book, even though it reads a lot like a bodice ripping romance and was a bit pre [...]

Review to come

I loved the main character, Meg, Mitji, Red I thought it was a very intriguing twist to have her grow up as an aborigine She was fantastic I liked how the bad guys kept changing and revealing their true colors That was quite a change of pace I did not, however, enjoy the romance at all This novel did not thrill me or particularly draw me in I would say that overall, it was an okay book.

Another great book from M Brent The plot is about the same and now that I have read four of his books it is possible to predict the progress This one is taking place in Australia, England and Africa.I like them in this order Merlin s keep my favorite Himalyan mountains, India, England supernatural element Moonraker s bride China, England Tregaron s daughter Cornwall, Kent, Italy Golden urchin

This is a great adventure story that mostly takes place in the Australian Outback at the turn of the century.This is a wonderful story about outcasts, secret identities, and relationships.Quick read

What utterly lovely perfection I m so glad I finally got my hands on this A concoction of all the ingredients that I m weak for in a book adventure, suspense, survival, romance, humor, etcetcetc all written very engagingly in first person from the perspective of a girl growing up with Aborigines thrust into civilised society.There is a slight feeling of the character being a bit too perfect against the hardships she has to face, but the charm of the writing makes it work And it is quite in depth [...]

A WONDERFUL story Great twists, adventure, romance has it all I just wanted to story to keep going after it ended.

I try to balance my reading with fiction, non fiction, and fluff Fluff being fun, escapist books that are fast to read andwell, you know Madeleine Brent fills the bill She is really a he named Peter O Donnell, a British writer famous for his Modesty Blaise books He wanted to break into the American market, so he decided that romance novels were the way to go His her romances are adventure novels and don t have explicit sex in them Golden Urchin is one of my favorites A little girl is separated [...]

This was read from a recommendation from forever ago, so I had no expectations I really, really enjoyed it It was a fairly quick read I read it in about 4 5 hours and just fun to read especially after reading Mutant Message Down Under I liked the character development, the morality in it, etc Just a great book

Pretty good, I enjoyed it except I couldn t get over the idea of her being a redhead and living mostly naked as an aboriginee and somehow getting acclimated to the sun and not burning up I am a redhead, and I just couldn t suspend disbelief on this issue.

More like a 4 1 2 I have been looking forward to reading this book since I read Tregaron s Daughter by the same author I flew through it It s an easy read with an inspiring, interesting heroine and an eclectic cast of characters Some of the overall plot, I ve read before ahem Tregaron s Daughter but I still truly enjoyed the read There are twists and turns and I like the slight touch of romance that keeps the reader looking forward to the moment when all will work out I was happy to read a book [...]

Long out of print, I was really glad that certain books stick around much longer in library collections in large print editions when I decided to track it down Madeleine Brent being primarily an adventure story writer and male meant he brought a different perspective to the romance novels of the 80s He developed an effective and unique formula, a Victorian heroine who is heir to some kind of fortune but orphaned and consigned to an exotic rough life that will help her develop special skills she [...]

One problem with enjoying vintage fiction is running across the occasional imperialism and casual racism This book was loaded with of this than I could overlook What s , the adventure and relationships got a little dull This is the story of a white girl who is raised by an Aborigine tribe in Australia As a teenager, after having grown tired of being such an outsider in her tribe, she comes across an Englishman in trouble in the Outback This ends up leading to her learning a new culture and even [...]

An enjoyable charity shop find.Every plot twist was predictable but great fun all the same.A likeable, capable heroine No rescuing needed here.And no tormenting the protagonist either I hate those old fashioned historical novels where the author takes glee in punishing the heroine for her flirtatious ways.

It s no Moonraker s Bride but still a fun read.

Mitji is an aborigine girl who is considered a freak in her tribe, for she has fair skin, red hair, green eyes, and freckles When she is around 15 years old, she encounters a near dead man in the desert, and saves his life Although they speak different languages, they understand each other, and when Mitji gets herself sick, the man is the one who saves her, taking her to the civilized world.And there is where Mitji s adventure begins First, with the help of the man she saved, Luke, and his kind [...]

I ll have to admit that this book is not my usual genre I usually read paranormal, sci fi Futuristic Hot romance stuff While flipping through suggestions I saw this and it sounded intriguing I really couldn t stop reading, except when I HAD to sleep Loved it Now I m giving it to my daughter to read I laughed, I cried, I got quite frustrated at some of the characters at times And the mysteriesn t get me started, I recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone who likes to read, even girls as young [...]

I went through this in record time, so there was a lot about it that I liked However, it was also overwrought filled with situations and events that would never actually happen, let alone all of them to a single individual I know for some people this makes great reading for me it is exhausting in its unbelievability.The writing was good, the pace was good, the characters especially the protagonist Meg were all very likeable and well drawn And even the unbelievable parts were, at minimum, set up [...]

This is a historical romance about Meg, a British girl who was raised in the outback by the tribe of Australian Aborigines After a chance meeting, a rancher and his wife take her in and educate her An attempt on her life leads to questions about her past, and Meg learns that her outback instincts can be just as valuable in civilization as they were in the desert where she grew up.It s a predictable but entertaining story with a lot of adventure and travel There were some aspects of the romance p [...]

Predictable, yes, as all Brent books are, but I love MB and this book I think this one is one of my favorites of hers his All of the books Peter Odonnell wrote under this name have strong, moral heroines with something that sets them apart from everyone else and helps them bring something to the table no one else could ever do Love this book in particular because of Meg, the heroine She s down to earth for someone raised by aborigines till she was 15 then thrown into a world of murder, greed, an [...]

This is the first of the Madeleine Brent books I ever read Mitji is the white orphan child taken in by a tribe of Aborigines in the Austrailian outback, but after a falling out with one of her closest friends in the tribe, Mitji decides to leave the tribe in search of her own kind, the white people She becomes Meg, the young English lady who wins the heart of a kindly couple in Perth and finds out that she in the heiress to a grand fortune There s no sense in spilling a drop of the complex, rich [...]