Get a front-row seat to classic striptease during the heyday of burlesque.
Welcome to one of the many stops on the book blitz for The Burly-Que Girls by Linda Hughes with XPresso Book Tours. Look for others participating in this blitz across social media and your favourite bookish blogs May 27-31, and don’t forget to enter the giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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About the Book
The Burly-Que Girls: The 6
by Linda Hughes
Publishing 26 December 2022
Genre: Historical Romance
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Get a front-row seat to classic striptease during the heyday of burlesque.
When former burlesque dancers Dolly O’Dare and her friends discover that their manager, Ballard “Balls” Benedict, has skipped town with their retirement funds, there’s no stopping the irate troupe from converging on Las Vegas to track down the scoundrel. But to rack up enough dough to hire a private dick, the six dames must sell their life stories in a steamy, hilarious, and – yes – sweet tell-all book.
They’ll do whatever it takes to find Balls and get their money back. After all, at this point in their lives, they’ve got nothing to lose. But along the way they discover that the real treasures are in zany old friendships, quirky new acquaintances, and maybe even a second-chance romance or two.
Join the fun and fall in love with these wildly wonderful women in this first book in the Burly-Q Girls series. You may end up doing a little hoochie-coochie dance to become a Burly-Q Girl yourself.
This work of fiction was inspired by real-life stories told to the author by her burly-que friends.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK
Excerpt
Dolly O’Dare hardly dare look at the travesty on stage. But like inexplicably being drawn to the slasher scene in a horror film, she looked.
The stripper slithered her lithe body down the pole like a snake, head down and long legs twitching up in the air like a rattler’s luring tail. She wore a scaly G-string, her breasts were bare, and her entire body was slathered in shiny blue goop, no doubt meant to add to her reptilian impersonation. Flailing her tongue in and out, she homed in on the seasoned females sitting in the back of the room and hissed.
Dolly and her two friends flinched and scowled in perfect unison. An Olympics synchronized swimming judge would have given them a 10.
Spilling out onto the floor, the performer – of sorts – morphed into a panther, stalking on all fours to assault the lecherous prey seated around the perimeter of the stage. Ten- and twenty-dollar bills rained down on her in slovenly appreciation, quenching her thirst for profit. She scooped up the moolah, slipped on her stilettos as she stood up, clumsily caught her balance, and counted her take while trouncing off stage.
“That was supposed to be sexy?” Dolly’s incredulity radiated from her entire seventy-year-old frame, her normally dulcet voice mocking, her ordinarily erect posture slouched, her usually bright eyes in slits. “What in hell is wrong with those men that they would pay for that?” She shifted her voluptuous body on the small, cheap chair, as if preparing for her own performance. “That’s not sexy. What we did was sexy.” She straightened her back, lifted her chin, remolded her facial expression, thrust out her arms, and gently jiggled her bosom to emphasize her point. She looked as much like a former prima ballerina as the famous exotic dancer she’d been.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Ginger Snapper grinned at the memory, nodding vigorously, which caused her curly fire-engine-red-dyed hair to boing about her head.
“I think those poor guys have just never had really good sex. That’s the problem. They need a good lay from a nice partner.” Sister Merry’s feathery voice belied her sympathetic nature.
“Merry, Merry, Merry,” Ginger teased in a tone women could only get away with when they’d been friends for a long time, so long they had to stay friends because they knew too much. “You wanna fix the problem and make everybody feel better, like usual.”
“That’s true,” Merry admitted.
“Maybe you shoulda stayed a nun so you could help the needy,” Ginger suggested.
“Well, yeah, that’s true, too.” Merry readily agreed.
Dolly slurped up the remains of her margarita, smacked her lips, and let loose with a big “Ahhhh, that was good,” then got back to the peer review. “We do have to admit that dancer has impressive upper body strength to work the pole like that, but I bet she can’t do the splits while leaping over a guitar player while he’s playing amazing blues and doing the splits himself.” That had been one of Dolly’s favorite routines, honed to perfection with blues great T-Bone Walker when they played the same venues. “His jump-blues routine was electric!”
“That was the best.” Merry had always marveled at that one.
“Oh, oh. Here’s another one,” Ginger warned as her gaze veered back to the stage, her eyes widening behind her green-framed glasses. “Holy shit. Get a gander at those bazooms. It looks like the doc stuck beachballs in there. What woman in her right mind would do that to herself? You’d think guys would be afraid to touch them for fear they’d pop.”
“I bet she wouldn’t ever drown, though.” Merry cocked her head to study the object of discussion. “Those babies would pop right up to the surface.”
“It’s such a shame,” Dolly said, shaking her head, “that those girls don’t have enough self-confidence to know they can tell any man who doesn’t like their God-given boobies to go jump off a cliff.”
Three pairs of practiced eyes glommed onto the stripper, watching the woman’s body gyrate to ear-splitting hip-hop music while her breasts stayed glued in place. When the performer turned around, bent a-a-all the way down – at least as far as her beachballed chest would allow – and snapped off her G-string, baring her gee-gee, Dolly squished one eye shut and peeked with the other.
“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Merry gasped.
“Shee-it,” Ginger wheezed.
“That’s just plain vulgar. These dancers today don’t get it. It isn’t ‘look at what I’ve got that you can have.’ It’s ‘look at what I’ve got that you can’t have.’” Dolly’s disgust reached a fevered pitch. “Teasing is what brings them back night after night. Hello-o-o. That’s why it’s called striptease.”
Now the dancer, still half bent over, waggled her pallid bare butt in an illusionary version of a come-hither invitation.
Merry cocked her head again. “You know, her buns look like two loaves of homemade bread, side by side. I’m hungry. Let’s go eat.”
About the Author
Happy endings and new beginnings – but not as you expect. Even better. That’s what Linda Hughes’ books are all about, whether historical romantic suspense, mystery, or second chance romance.
When Linda was 12 years old she wrote in her diary that she would be a “writter” when she grew up. With 20 books and a passel of writing awards, her dream has come true. She is a #1 bestselling co-author.
So browse around on her page. Find something that’s just right for you. That 12-year-old with big dreams, who still lives within Linda, is delighted.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Amazon | Goodreads
Giveaway Alert!
Blitz-wide giveaway (US only)
$5 Amazon gift card + swag box (incl red sequin pasties (like the cover of the book), an autographed book, and a Burly-Q Girl temporary tattoo)
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
looks interesting