Jenna Ryan’s The Arms of the Law has a bland title and a boring cover, neither of which give a hint to the wonderfully dark suspense novel lurking inside. Kind of like Christie by way of Hitchcock, it has the spooky, menacing feel of a good scary movie. If the love story becomes secondary to…
Terri Harrington’s Flashback may not be the best-written time travel romance I’ve ever read or the deepest, but it is my favorite. It’s a simple story, one which takes a different approach to the material than many others. It’s not concerned with the mechanics and complications of time travel. It doesn’t spend time showing how…
Wow. There’s really nothing more I can say that would convey my reaction to Kathleen Korbel’s Some Men’s Dreams better than that. It’s simply phenomenal, a book that manages to deliver more deep emotions, intense scenes, remarkable characters and beautiful writing than books twice its length. What Korbel accomplishes within its pages is truly incredible….
Calling Compromising Positions a great series romance really isn’t fair to it or most series romances. For one thing, there’s its length. This book has some of the smallest typeface I’ve ever seen in a Silhouette release (reset at the size of the average Avon release, the book would likely come in at 400 pages),…
I picked up Saving Dr. Ryan because several of my colleagues have had great things to say about Templeton’s books. Well, either I chose the worst possible book to start with, or this is a case of serious taste differences. I kept thinking of my reading experience in terms of a personality clash; I just…
The Wedding Journey is a rather whimsical title for a book that so clearly juxtaposes humanity’s potential for both great good and terrible evil. A more accurate, if less appealing, title would be Retreat Into Hell. That would better convey what these characters have to confront and overcome. Elinore “Nell” Mason is the daughter of…
Remember all those Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movies? Charismatic characters speaking intelligent, witty, funny lines? Of if you can’t remember that far back and haven’t seen the videos, maybe you’ve caught a recent episode of West Wing. In both cases just about every conversation sparkles and the writers treat the viewers like they’re smart enough to…
Author Linda Jones has written a series of books based on well-known fables, the latest of which is DeButy & the Beast. Now, you’d think that DeButy would be the heroine and The Beast, her eventual true love. But the author has put a fresh and funny twist on this theme, for Dr. Julian DeButy…
“On April 5, 1768, Johann Friedrich Struensee was appointed Royal Physician to King Christian VII of Denmark, and four years later was executed.” I found myself fascinated by the above quote at the beginning of The Royal Physician’s Visit – struggles for power can make for delicious reading. Booklist magazine, a veritable librarian’s bible, recently…
Reissues of old titles usually produce grumbling from the AAR staff, as we see precious bookstore shelf space going to the umpteen-billionth reprint of titles by the usual select group of superstar authors. Not this time, though. For us, the news that Signet is bringing back Carla Kelly’s delightful – and surprising – Libby’s London…