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The private life of a private eye
REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY
By Julie Kenner Pocket, $6.99 400 pages, ISBN 0743446046 Looking for temp love
By Pamela Bauer Harlequin Superromance, $5.25 300 pages, ISBN 0373711069 An affair to remember
By Julie Ortolon St. Martin's, $6.50 352 pages, ISBN 0312983484 Hot chocolate
By Marissa Monteilh Avon, $13.95 352 pages, ISBN 0060011483 Sandy Huseby writes and reviews from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and lakeside in northern Minnesota.
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David Anderson was just an ordinary hard-at-work hero, struggling to
make a living as a hardboiled detective writer, when romance author
Julie Kenner reached into the cosmic miasma of characters to pair him up
with a desperate client searching for the other half of her lost
weekend. Jacey Wilder believes finding her mystery man is vital to
getting her life together before she turns 30, but David, the writer
making ends meet as a detective, keeps getting in her way. As does a
thug named Reggie and a decidedly unpleasant search for a cache of
missing diamonds. In Kenner's Nobody But You, Jacey struggles to
organize her career, as well as her love life, despite all the
distractions to her plan. Meanwhile, her best friend Tasha and David's
Aunt Millie have plenty of suggestions for speeding up the romance.
Kenner dishes up a delicious romp into madcap mayhem in this rollicking
romantic mystery. Nobody But You is San Diego sunshine at its
best—glowing, warm, impossible to say good-bye to before the last
delightful page.
The absolute last thing Dena Bailey wants in her well-orchestrated life is a serious romance in Pamela Bauer's
The Man Upstairs. Pro hockey player Quinn Sterling isn't
looking for permanence either, so when he moves in upstairs at 14 Valentine Place, the pair makes time in their hectic
lives for a little light romancing. When Quinn becomes temporary guardian to his best friend's orphaned children, he
and Dena are forced to re-evaluate their attitudes toward their part-time romance and their long-term ambitions. Dena
can no longer bury her emotions about her mother's abandonment in long hours of work at Delaney Design and her own
freelancing. When they first met, the attraction was swift, compelling, simultaneous. Quinn faces-off with his greatest
challenge off the ice when he decides to build his own team with the woman—and children—he's grown to love.
But Dena needs special persuading and patience. Bauer's enduring popularity as a series writer is reinforced by this
heartwarming story of two singles who discover love is a better team sport than either could have imagined.
Suspense novelist Scott Lawrence returns to his coastal Texas roots seeking a cure for his writer's block and the
drought in his personal life in Julie Ortolon's Lead Me On. Pearl
Island Inn proprietor Allison St. Claire would be the perfect diversion, if she weren't so darned nice, so
milk-and-cookies sweet. Scott is game for fun, of course. The "c" word—commitment— is not in his extensive
vocabulary. But beneath Alli's good-girl exterior is a heart as passionate as her lavender and black lace. Whether
the best-selling author can stand the emotions Alli unleashes makes for a romance that shimmers with pure magic as
lustrous as the force that haunts the book's island locale. A mesmerizing treat. From the author of the popular
Falling for You (St Martin's 2002).
Mia has invested three years of her life in Miles, but marriage does not appear to be on the horizon.
It's a subject he avoids as if it were poison. Then it's cruise time in Marissa Monteilh's
The Chocolate Ship. Away from home and convention, Mia
and her girlfriends are ready to cut loose, and the cruise ship delivers. Relationships are tested
and turbulent, while the passion flows as hot as Caribbean nights and as spicy as the food banquet
the exotic cruise ship has to offer. As Mia surrenders to the promises of those nights, she discovers
that Miles is the one port of call she wants to dock with forever. But look out, there may be storms
ahead. A sassy, spicy feast for the spirit . . . when that spirit is heat-seeking and ready for any adventure.