Romance

REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

Putting on the glitz
Readers who share debut author Tilly Bagshawe's hunger for the gargantuan, glamour reads of the '80s will find a decadent and delicious feast in Adored. Beautiful Siena McMahon, granddaughter of legendary actor Duke McMahon, was born ready to take on the world. She needs that strength of spirit to withstand the challenges of building a stellar acting career to match her grandfather's larger-than-life legacy. Duke and his wife, Minnie, sustain the shards of their marriage even when he moves his mistress, Caroline, into the family home. Banished to English boarding school by her jealous father after her doting grandfather's death, Siena eventually rebels against her father's plans for her and plunges headstrong into making her own future. As she climbs to the heights in the glam worlds of high-fashion modeling and acting, Siena is reunited with childhood nemesis Max De Seville, a struggling director, and sparks fly. Adored is gloriously grand, spicy and addictive. You'll be seeing a lot of this book on the beach this summer.


Unraveling a close-knit family
Within the fabric that unites the Quintrell and Castillo families are taut threads with the power to affect the presidential campaign of Governor Josh Quintrell by revealing dark secrets meant to be buried with his father, New Mexico Senator Andrew Jackson Quintrell III. Winifred Castillo, sister-in-law of the senator, is determined that those secrets be exposed. Winifred hires family historian Carly May, who joins Dan Duran, a loner uncertain of his own heritage, to search through the generations of Quintrells and Castillos for answers to Winifred's allegations. While using the latest DNA technology and fragile papers documenting land grants and marriages that span centuries, Carly and Dan risk their lives against a sniper determined to keep old secrets buried. Elizabeth Lowell's edgy romantic thriller, Always Time to Die, sets an intricate pattern of twisted relationships set to snare both Carly and Dan or leave them dead. An altogether compelling story.


Channeling Grace
Reading Barbara Delinsky's Looking for Peyton Place is a bit like looking into an infinite stretch of mirrors as the author explores the character of Annie Barnes, who is convinced that she is communicating with the persona that was Grace Metalious, the infamous author of Peyton Place. Annie left Middle River, New Hampshire, as soon as she could, but she never escaped the denizens' awareness that they were the inspiration for the characters in that landmark novel. When Annie comes home to search for the cause of her sister's illness and her mother's death, she is caught up in small-town secrets far more dangerous than those of her muse, Metalious. Mercury waste from the town's major industry, the Meade family's paper mill, may be causing more than pollution. Handsome James Meade gives Annie a focus for re-evaluating all her reasons for leaving Middle River. Delinsky delivers a thought-provoking take on environmental concerns in this nostalgic and evocative reminder that yes, you can go home again.


Supernatural sparks fly
When you're all too human and a little bit more, life takes on new challenges. Wren Valere has Talent—she is part of a group of people who can use electricity to perform magic—and that makes her a valuable searcher for lost or stolen artifacts, but it also sets off alarms in airports. These days, Wren is setting off new alarms, of the relationship kind, as she and her business partner Sergei Didier connect with the kind of sparks that make for shivery, dishy reading in Laura Anne Gilman's second Retrievers novel, Curse the Dark. A purloined paper guarded for centuries in an Italian monastery must be found before it unleashes dire consequences upon the world. A representative of a secret order called the Silence commissions Wren and Sergei's hunt, but the Silence also seems to be behind efforts to break up their partnership. Gilman's romantic fantasy artfully blends ancient magic into the 21st century for fascinating reading.


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