Contemporary historicals
Historicals that feel contemporary. I've run into a number of them. (I'm not going to name names.) Kinsale makes me believe I'm elsewhere. So does Dorothy Dunnett. It's not that you can't find some anachronistic writing with Kinsale or Dunnett, it's kind of impossible not to, at some level. (sara_donati pointed out that Lymond is described as neurotic in the days before that word existed.) But, suspension of disbelief occurs and I happily read along.

Of late, I've tried a number of historical romances where there's a glass pane between me and the story because the voice or the characters (not the details, as I'm not that historically aware and obviously the authors had done a fair amount of research) feels contemporary. I can't sink into the story and I set it aside.

It's hard though, to write historical romances--readers do not want to deal with bigots and sexists and powerless women. Somehow, modern sensibility has to be shoehorned into a novel that feels historical. The author has to allow today's readers to like the hero and heroine of 100+ years ago and yet believe they are of their time. Tricky.

Interestingly (at least to me), Ellen B. talks about a faux historical setting.

In the relatively few contemps I've read and enjoyed, I've observed authors using a modern setting that is just as socially stratified/controlled as those in historicals.

I'm much more likely to shrug off a contemporary that doesn't feel contemporary. For example Marsha Moyer's The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch has a heroine whose first marriage sounds (to me, maybe I'm wrong) like it belonged to another decade, if not century.

I'm not sure why I'm more forgiving of contemporaries.

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ogre_san has a good post on rejections. Its somewhat slanted to short story markets, I think, and not to situations where a junior editor loves a book but can't buy it. Worth reading.