Spring 1548, Scotland. "Florie Gilder, respected apprentice of the goldsmith to the Princess Mary herself, with one reckless act of passion, had become a common outlaw!" Running into Ettrick Forest, she is mistaken as game and felled by archer Rane MacAllister, huntsman of Lord Gilbert Fraser, sheriff of Selkirk. The shaft penetrates Florie's thigh, and she will bleed to death if help is not found. But Rane cannot call for assistance; he had been poaching in the very woods he was hired to guard. He must care for Florie himself.
Florie is beyond beautiful. "In the candlelight her skin had an ethereal sheen, almost as if she weren't human, but some fey creature." Rane is smitten. His Viking blood powers the instincts of a seducer, yet he must also become protector. Can he be trusted? His "eyes were the complex shade of chrysolite, as lustrous as a polished gem, rich, intense, compelling . . . "
Glynnis Talken Campbell writes me that "I'm a Chicoan--born, raised, and CSUC'd--currently living in L.A." Among her many talents (see the Wikipedia entry under Glynnis_Talken_Campbell) she is a prolific writer. Her latest is "Captured by Desire" ($6.99 in paperback, Kindle and Barnes & Noble NOOK formats, from Grand Central Publishing), written under the pen name of Kira Morgan (www.glynnis.net/kiramorgan).
The author will be signing copies at the Chico Barnes & Noble store this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Fans of historical romance are most especially invited.
"Captured by Desire" takes it time in building sexual tension. Rane brings Florie to an old abandoned church where she can claim sanctuary from prosecution for forty days. The strong-willed Florie is both repelled by Rane's invasion of her modesty and attracted--intensely attracted--to the muscular man who poaches only in order to "feed the starving crofters," the Scots who eked out a living tilling small farms, plagued by English incursions.
Florie, raised by her besotted foster father, is in search of her real kin. But Lady Mavis, the sheriff's wife, stands in her way. She accuses Florie of stealing a gold pomander that was Florie's in the first place, and will stop at nothing to destroy it--and her.
Readers will not be disappointed. The archer hits his mark.
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