Beauty meets Beast REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

Who is the beauty and who the beast? In her enchanting take on the classic romance tradition, Teresa Medeiros's The Bride and the Beast poses that question and answers it on many levels.

Gwendolyn Wilder harbors an old secret that she believes her unworthy of her childhood love, Bernard MacCullough, the future laird of Ballybliss. And she's resigned that her voluptuous curves are no match for her worldly sisters' willowy attractions.

Likewise, MacCullough's torment over a deadly betrayal which killed his father and destroyed the life he'd known have made him into the legendary Dragon, denizen of darkness and shadows.

The dark demands of the Dragon terrify the villagers of Brigadoon-like Ballybliss. Unable to meet the Dragon's demand for gold, they offer up Gwendolyn as a virgin sacrifice. Within the walls of the ruined Castle Weyrcraig, Gwendolyn and Bernard must each confront the challenges of haunting pasts. Drawn to each other despite their fears, each sees in the other the purest love, born in childhood, and yet the greatest dread, that their scars are beyond redeeming.

Furthering the motif, the Dragon and his ally, Tupper, torment the villagers with hauntings designed to expose the Judas among them. The often darkly comic acts lead Tupper to his own deception.

As in every good romance fable, Gwendolyn must risk losing Bernard to save him from himself. And MacCullough must choose between avenging his past or building his future with his bonny bride.

Medeiros's bewitching tale flows like meadow mists, mysterious and brooding, before melting into the clear glowing sunlight of love and happily ever after.


Family ties that blind

FBI profiler Victoria Thomas's idea of a getaway vacation is attending a London symposium for devotees of Sherlock Holmes. Instead of studying that master of detection, however, she finds herself chasing down a modern-day Jack the Ripper.

As New Scotland Yard Inspector Jonathan Blake joins her in the investigation, he realizes that catching the contemporary Ripper may lead to the true identity of the original. That revelation has the potential to devastate the current royal family.

Victoria's compulsive search for the current Ripper is born out of her frustration about the unsolved murder of her sister Meghan. The deeper the pair digs, the more they realize that Victoria is the ultimate target of the current killer.

Jones deftly entangles two modern-day crime fighters in the compelling snares of love while they are trying to solve one of history's most provocative crime sprees. Bloodline is an exquisite yin-yang mix of historical mystery and the mysteries of the heart.


Water, water everywhere

The saga of the fiery Foscari family, first introduced in last year's The Stargazer, continues with Michele Jaffe's The Water Nymph.

Crispin Foscari is a worthy English representative of the Venetian family and deserving of his reputation as the Earl of Scandal. Sophie Champion first meets him while breaching every rule of conduct in proper London. Seeking answers to her godfather's death, she's implicated in the murder of the one man who could have answered her questions.

Foscari has his own agenda to pursue to preserve his standing with the Queen. Helping the strong-willed Sophie tests both his patience and his passions.

Jaffe's vivid writing and expertise in Renaissance Literature (a Ph.D. from Harvard) serve her well in this worthy new adventure of the audacious Foscari.


Sandy's Short Takes

Recovering from injury, contemporary adventurer Tom Paoletti spots a man he believes is an international terrorist. But his Navy colleagues think he's imagining the sighting in Suzanne Brockmann's The Unsung Hero.

Tom turns to the neighbors of his youth to begin building a team to capture the terrorist. Dr. Kelly Ashton, her father and Tom's Uncle Joe, join Tom in his mission. Kelly was the girl next door he'd always longed for. Now, as the pair work together against the terrorist, they give the two aging veterans a reason for living.


They give themselves the potential for the truest teamwork of all -- loving partnership between one man and one woman.

When you come to the fork in the road, says Yogi Berra, take it. Jackie Clarke does precisely that in the robust romantic comedy A Moment in Time by Deb Stover. Abandoned on a mountaintop by con artist Blade Smith, Jackie hotfoots it down the road to a choice that sets her on an adventure beyond time. Cole Morrison has heard all kinds of tall tales, but she's got one that's about to fascinate him beyond this lifetime.


Julie Beard manages to combine elements of comedy and the supernatural in her latest romantic adventure, My Fair Lord. In this retelling of My Fair Lady, Caroline Wainwright, a young heiress in Georgian England, learns that she must marry or lose her inheritance. A thief is snatched from prison to play the part of the groom, and Caroline surprises even herself by falling in love with her new husband. Beard leads us on a lively jaunt as Caroline attempts to determine if her groom has been possessed by the 200-year-old ghost who haunts her estate.


Sandy Huseby writes from her homes in North Dakota and Minnesota. She is online at SHuseby@aol.com.

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