Love, Exciting and New

REVIEWS BY SANDY HUSEBY

Swann in Love in the Garden

A beloved childhood story inspired E.L. Swann to write her adult homage to The Secret Garden. Night Gardening is a lushly drawn love story as luminous as white flowers under moonlight.

The emotional lives of both landscape gardener Tristan Mallory and Maggie Flaherty Welles have lain fallow for decades. Tristan is building a pretentious garden for clients when he discovers Maggie through a breech in its brick wall. As Tristan helps Maggie restore her neglected gardens, Maggie draws upon her inner resources to overcome the ravages of a stroke. The intertwined restoration of Maggie's gardens and the growing love between these two late bloomers is at the heart of this alternately wrenching and witty love story.

E.L. Swann is the adult pseudonym of children's book author Kathryn Lasky, who, in a recent conversation with BookPage, observed wryly that she actually finds children's books more difficult to write. "This," she says of Night Gardening, "felt quite roomy to me. The ones that just kill me are picture books," where she notes each of 400 words must be precise. Swann says her own favorite garden is her shade garden in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where nodding onions, remind her of "miniature swans swimming along with the breezes."

In telling her story of the renewing power of love, Swann is drawn to "Maggie's unbelievable wellspring of resources, her humor, the ability to walk around the whole family, see their flaws and yet never get dragged down."

Night Gardening lives up to Swann's ambition: a unique, sensual landscape of human emotion that once glimpsed will entwine its way into your heart, not to be forgotten.


Out of the closet

Hiding in a closet to avoid a scoundrel leads Emma Grayson into even more trouble when she lands in the arms of Edison Stokes in the delectable Regency I Thee Wed by Amanda Quick.

Quick, the pseudonymous Jayne Ann Krentz, brings along her signature contemporary suspense skills to this tale of a lady's companion who finds she requires a gentleman in her life. But when the scoundrel turns up dead in her bedroom, Emma finds that she also needs an alibi for murder -- which Stokes readily provides. But Edison Stokes hides secrets of his own . . .

Emma and Stokes combine sharp wits and skillful ripostes with snappy charm that will keep you eagerly turning the page.


Fiesty bride

The arrangement of convenience proves a beloved romance tradition in the hands of such masters as Amanda Quick and Anne Avery. In Avery's Bartered Bride, the wealthy merchant Robert Wardwell seeks an aristocratic bride. Lady Alyce Fitzmartin, however, will not be content as a symbolic bridge between 13th-century rebels and her husband, allied with tyrannical King Henry. Wardwell finds he's gained a bride who intends to occupy his business as well as his bed -- a most inconvenient arrangement for a man determined not to let a woman work her way into his heart.


Trust us, you'll love it

Sometimes knowing who to trust is the greatest test, as Air Force Captain and junior JAG lawyer Tracy Keener learns in Duplicity by Vicki Hinze.

Tracy's trust is repeatedly challenged when she is assigned to defend Captain Adam Burke against charges that he killed and abandoned his men during a training exercise. Tracy's investigation reveals a deadly scheme to develop a chemical weapon -- retrosarin. When Burke himself dies mysteriously in a prison fire, Tracy must decide between closing the case or continuing to seek the truth about Adam's guilt.

Even though it may destroy her career, her sense of honor and duty compel Tracy to continue the investigation. When the deadly conspiracy points to the highest command at Laurel Air Force Base, Tracy must carefully choose her allies. Through Adam Burke, she learns to trust her own inner resources.

Duplicity is riveting suspense that resonates with the agonies of learning to trust again and the rewards of responding to love.


Giddyup!

Step into the mind and heart of Sara Davidson as she shares her love story in Cowboy: A Love Story. At the start, you may be unsure whether you're reading novel as memoir or memoir as novel. But as you read on, you'll simply be drawn into the joyful spirit of Sara as she explores a love affair that sounds more unlikely than any fiction.

They meet in Elko, Nevada -- a savvy, sophisticated California screenwriter and a hard-bitten, harness-braiding cowboy used to hardscrabble living. Their intermittent weekend reunions could never be the stuff of a lasting relationship, yet the love story continues. Davidson, head writer of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, draws on her own life story in creating this fictive version, and you're never quite sure where the truth leaves off and fantasy begins. But isn't that the best part of the cowboy fantasy anyway?


Sandy Huseby writes from her homes in Fargo, North Dakota, and Nevis, Minnesota. She is online at shuseby@aol.com.

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