I’ve become a huge fan of Rachel Grant’s particular blend of complex, steamy and intricately plotted romantic suspense novels over the past year or so, and have been eagerly awaiting the release of Catalyst, the second book in her Flashpoint series. Like the previous book, Tinderbox, Catalyst is set in a real-life flashpoint, this time…
Tinderbox, the first novel in Rachel Grant’s steamy and action-heavy Flashpoint series, starts with a bang—literally. Dr. Morgan Adler, a paleoanthropologist working in the Djibouti desert, has discovered a set of bones as old as Lucy. Unfortunately this attracts attention of the wrong kind, from an Ethiopian warlord called Etefu Desta. Morgan drives with some…
A North Africa-set sheikh romance with a heroine who is also Arab? Sign me up! Alim El-Kanar, sheikh of Abbas Al-Din, has spent the years since his older brother’s tragic death driving medical supplies through a war-torn region of the Sahel desert in northern Africa. Hana al-Sud, from Alim’s country but raised in Australia, is…
As a longtime fan of Ms. Willig’s Pink Carnation series, I had mixed feelings when I heard about this stand-alone novel. The historical portion set in post-WWI Nairobi sounded fascinating, but how would this stack up? And when I learned that there was a different narrator, I was even more nervous. No Pink Carnation? No…
Historical romances set in Africa are quite rare, and if they are written by such a skilled writer as Deanna Raybourn, who has won great acclaim with her Lady Julia mysteries, expectations are high. So I was very excited about reading A Spear of Summer Grass. When I closed it, I was still very pleased,…
The diamond trade. A business seemingly corrupt from day one. Murder. Oppression. Bigotry. How can something so beautiful be born of things so ugly? Ms. Lofty takes us right into the heart of that question, straight to South Africa for a look at an enterprise that is far from a gentleman’s trade. Flawless is the…
I expected to like A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge more than I did. It has an edgy heroine (purple streaks in her hair) with a mysterious past, and a really cool setting; if you’re sick of the same old, same old, you can hardly beat Botswana for exotic. Unfortunately, I never really warmed to…
With a name like Monica Burns, I expected some pretty intense love scenes in Kismet. My expectations held true, but despite early fears it would be a physical-based relationship, the book ended with a relatively satisfying love story. Unfortunately, much of the rest was lacking. Allegra Synnford is a well-known courtesan in England who is…
Holy golly Moses. I’ve never put a publishing company on my auto buy list, but if this is what Medallion is putting out, considering the other recent stellar reviews here at AAR, I might just have to change my mind. Because this was, hands down, the best romantic suspense I’ve read since Angels Fall. And…
In real life, it’s not usually all that funny when someone’s intellectual prowess is seriously lacking. Say, for example, you find yourself explaining to someone that Montana is not part of Wyoming (as previously believed) but is in fact a separate state. Yes, this happened to me, and the details are more depressing than amusing….