Route 66 revisited
REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY
Finding herself widowed and pregnant during the economic hardships of the 1930s,
Mary Lee Clawson is in for a pleasant surprise. When she travels down Route 66 to visit her late father's
motor court in the rural New Mexico backcountry, she is pleased to learn that she has inherited the property.
The problems she faces in running the business and starting a new life are tenderly portrayed in Dorothy Garlock's
new novel, Song of the Road. Homecoming means confronting both Mary Lee's
long-strained relationship with her alcoholic mother and the fears that her husband's father means to claim the baby
she carries. Jake Ramero carries his own baggage down dusty Route 66. Just out of prison after being wrongfully accused of cattle rustling, Jake questions his right to help Mary Lee rebuild her motor court and her shattered life. Local ranch kingpin Ocie Clawson wants to make sure her efforts to restore the tumbledown tourist cabins fail. Jake risks his own dreams and survival in order to make life better for Mary Lee. Garlock's writing perfectly captures these plainspoken people overcoming the challenges of their hardscrabble lives.
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Destiny delayed
Sometimes a happy ending is all the more satisfying after years of delay, as Destiny Carlton discovers
in Sherryl Woods' Destiny Unleashed. Destiny gave up her romance with
William Harcourt and an exciting European lifestyle to build a life in America and raise her three orphaned nephews.
Decades later, when all three boys have settled nicely into marriage and corporate careers, Destiny is drawn back to Europe, where she again encounters William. This time, he seems uninterested in romance, and intent on ruining her family's empire. Is he driven by revenge? What would he think about the corporate gamesmanship Destiny planned for him? But William has plans of his own. Now that Destiny's on his turf, he's determined to persuade her that bedroom games are much more satisfactory than boardroom maneuvers. Woods treats readers to a well-seasoned validation that romance is ripe at any age.
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Boise will be Boise
A remote Idaho mountain ranch is the magnet drawing Pepper Prescott from Washington, D.C., after she witnesses a murder.
But the beacon of safety she's homing in on brings her right into the center of a snare to lure terrorist
Annar Schuster to justice. In Christina Dodd's bracing romantic suspense
novel, Almost Like Being in Love, Pepper's search for sanctuary brings her back into contact with a long-ago love. Agent Dan Graham is setting the trap for Schuster, and Pepper's unexpected return to the ranch complicates his plans and his emotions. Dan's instincts tell him that Pepper has returned only to find a safe refuge, but he's afraid to trust her entirely—his training warns him that she may be his greatest threat. Pepper must decide whether she's ready to stop running and face the challenges that haunt her. Dodd's writing has a fresh-as-the-Rockies air that makes this back-to-the-ranch tale a rouser.
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Silvered treasure
In Anne Kelleher's engrossing fantasy, Silver's Edge, the balance of all
worlds rests on a Silver Caul, which keeps winged faeries and goblins in the Otherworld, separate from the mortals of Shadowland. Nessa is not concerned with such grand scale matters, however. All she knows is that her father, Dougal the blacksmith, has disappeared into the forest of the Otherworld, and she may be his only hope of rescue. In that dangerous realm, the goblin king plots his moment of destiny to triumph over the Sidhe as the faerie queen is at her most vulnerable. The fighting in the Shadowlands adds its own dimension to the interlaced strands of time and fate between the two worlds. Kelleher weaves an enticing tale as Nessa braves unknown dangers to find her father and bring him safely home in this beguiling story of courage and adventure.
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