Janice Sims’ latest novel, This Time Forever, combines an interesting murder mystery and great characters, and a well-drawn small-town setting in a very believable way. However, the lack of any substantial obstacle to true love’s supposedly rough course made me feel as if these characters were being cheated out of the truly well-built relationship obviously…
Desert Rain is an “Indian Romance,” but it’s quite different from a run of the mill Indian Romance. For one thing, the author is Native American, for another, he is male. The hero and heroine of the book are both Indians and the romance takes a backseat to an exploration of the lives of the…
Surrender had a very pleasant hero and heroine. If it had stuck with their story, I would have enjoyed it very much, but too many secondary characters and a couple of really silly scenes made it a bit of a chore to get through. Netherland Brooms owns a successful restaurant and has many friends. She…
My local bookstore owner recommended that I try Beverly Jenkins, so when I got the chance to review her latest book, Before the Dawn, I took it. And while I did the find the historical and ethnic angles in this book to be interesting, I also thought it had some problems that kept it from…
I’d never read an Arabesque book before but I wasn’t disappointed. Angela Winters tells a pretty riveting story in Know by Heart, and while I couldn’t relate exactly to the discriminatory problems faced by the lead characters, I did find them to be interesting and involving. Both the hero and heroine of this story are…
She’s The One presents an interesting storyline – a successful, single, black thirty-something librarian suddenly finds herself named guardian of an old friend’s biracial daughter. But the characters fail to draw sympathy, and the story falls on the flat side, despite a lively (if uneven) plot. Deanna Lindsay is comfortable in her upscale Manhattan life,…
A good summer book has to have certain qualities. Good characters, brisk pacing, an engaging plot – but not so engaging that you have to strain your brain on those 90 degree days. Followin A Dream fits all these criteria. Vanessa Bradley is a thirtyish woman whose life has revolved around work, her family and…
Barbara Hambly’s first mystery set in antebellum New Orleans, A Free Man of Color, has a prominent place on my keeper shelf. Though I haven’t read the intervening several books in the series I was eager to review the latest installment, Die Upon a Kiss. Benjamin January is an accomplished physician and a virtuoso musician….
The Turning Point is a heartwarming story of two people from completely different backgrounds who meet at just the right time, under the only circumstances that will bring them together. Lilly Crawford is trapped in an abusive marriage. Concern for her mother-in-law is the only thing keeping Lilly in Little Elm, but then Mother Crawford…
Irishman Braden Flynn, a constable in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is in love with his best friend’s wife (Colin and Maggie from The First Time). Too honorable to say or do anything, Braden asks for a transfer to Fort Walsh on the U.S./Canadian border. There, he encounters Sitting Bull’s Sioux, on the run north…