“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men”

The metaphorical valentines lay in tatters for Quinn, perhaps in her late thirties, who describes herself as “six-foot-tall in bare feet” with “dark, wavy red hair that tumbles down my back and refuses to be tamed.” 

Her fiancé had ditched her two days before the nuptials. Later, “I divorced after stupidly marrying a different man out of friendship, not love. I had married Chris because he was safe, not because I couldn’t fathom a life without him.”

Outwardly Quinn is a successful sommelier at Persimmon, an upscale restaurant in DC. “I love the magic that happens when a great glass of wine pairs perfectly with a dish. It’s lusty and romantic, the only goal sheer and immediate pleasure. It’s akin to the ideal relationship, fleeting but swoon-worthy, each bringing out the very best in the other. … and, if you get a lucky match, the combination will make you moan. I swear it will.”

That fairly well describes what she’s looking for in men. “I don’t date single men anymore. I have affairs with married men instead. But I never, ever play with men in happy marriages. … I like my flings. Nothing but freedom and great sex. Love just gets in the way.” 

But when Marcus, Hollywood hunk material married to a woman who has grown distant, enters Quinn’s life, readers might guess that though she wants a fling, she will have to make a life-defining choice of whether to fling him away.

“Infidelity Rules—A Menu For Disaster: The Perils Of Loving Food, Wine, And Married Men” ($17.95 in paperback from Black Rose Writing; also for Amazon Kindle) is by Joelle Babula (Joelle Butler), Chico State grad, former captain of the Chico State women’s basketball team and Orion managing editor.

“I know I wanted a married man,” Quinn tells us, “and I’m trying to squash that nagging feeling in my gut that I’m getting too involved. That my lust is evolving into something more. Something I may not be able to easily shimmy out of.” All the shimmying makes for an upbeat romp—paired with a great glass of wine.

"Free Bird"

It’s just after midnight, January 1st, 1990. Molly Kristen Sparrow, 33, is about to leave San Diego, and her husband, forever. Isaac is not home; clueless and unfaithful, he’s the scion of a wealthy family and Molly will be giving up much—including her son Grant, not yet 18, because the family will pay for his education. She hopes Grant will understand—someday. Six months later she will find herself in Mendocino, a medical assistant to Dr. Potter at a small clinic.

There’s a bar in Mendocino called The Floppy Fish; every summer owner Lyle takes off while his friend Tom, fresh from teaching archeology and grant writing at a prestige university in Connecticut, takes over as barkeep and fixit guy. Tom is Thomas James Hemingway (“no relation”), 38, and one day his woodworking skills fail him at the bar and a huge splinter impales itself in his rear end. So off to Dr. Potter.

As Molly helps Tom get undressed—Tom is in a very vulnerable position—he is stunned by Molly’s beauty, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. In his life. Molly thinks he’s cute, but soon, when they begin seeing each other, her stomach does flip flops in his presence.

Readers know this because Molly and Tom alternate chapters in “Free Bird” ($14.99 in paperback from Boyer Publishing; also available for Amazon Kindle) by Chicoan Pamela Dean. It turns out to be a spicy romance, tastefully explicit, from phone sex to passionate love play (but is it … love?). Even the kisses summon eros. “When Tom kissed me,” Molly writes, “the earth seemed to move under my feet. The way his big hands cradled my face so gently, reverently almost, was more sensual than anything I have ever experienced.”

There’s a special charm to this novel because Chico State, Madison Bear Garden and even the Oy Vey Bagel Company (remember, it’s the 90s, folks) play key roles. 

But is all of this just a summer fling? Will Molly become her own person after being in thrall to Isaac’s family? If she falls for Tom, is love a trap as well? Lovers of spice will find the meal cooked to perfection.

“Dear Dotty: A Novel”

Who was Dotty Polk? For Rosie Benson, about to turn 25, her great-aunt “Dotty was the only one who could make me feel calm in the midst of my family’s chaos. She made being a misfit look easy. Fun, even. But now she was gone. Right when I needed her the most. The shoddy patchwork that was my life had ripped at the seams and I had no clue how to stitch it all back together. I needed Dotty to tell me where I’d gone wrong. She was never shy about that sort of thing.”

And so begins “Dear Dotty: A Novel” ($11 in paperback from Avon; also available in ebook format) by Chico State grad Jaclyn (Raggio) Westlake. Chosen as a summer must-read by the Gloss Book Club and First for Women magazine, “Dear Dotty” is Rosie’s personal narration, a story of loss and rediscovery. 

Rosie’s job at a tech startup is ill-fated; she’s fired by her boss, Raj, who “stood over my shoulder, watching as I boxed up the personal items in my desk—a strand of lights; a framed picture of Marcia and me from last Halloween…; a mug that read SMASH THE PATRIARCHY in big, bold letters (a gift from Dotty, of course).”

Marcia, her best friend and roommate, is little help on the consolation front (and much later when Rosie finds out Marcia has been sleeping with Raj, things turn frosty). Rosie finds out from Dotty that her parents are divorcing. And then Dotty dies.

Though Rosie had dreamed of working with animals, she lands a recruiting-agency job, and things seem to be looking up. She goes to a party with Marcia, a publicist at a big San Francisco PR firm, honoring “a young, rich, and terribly handsome entrepreneur named Donovan Ng.” Rosie falls hard. But is Donovan the Right One?

Rosie yearns for Dotty’s guidance, and as she helps prepare Dotty’s old home for sale she finds pictures and email addresses of Dotty’s friends she knows nothing about. Dotty loved martinis, other women, and nudism, and through these friends Rosie comes to know her great-aunt more deeply than before—and learns a lesson that changes her life. 

“Box One Of Two”

Chico, 1984. Gorgeous Heather Fields, 22, works at Serenity Falls, “apartments for seniors who just want a community and an easier life.” One of those she cares for is the aging and quirky Violet Merryweather, who in the 1930s and beyond appeared as an extra in dozens of well-known films, like “Casablanca.” Only don’t call her “Violet.” The V is silent; she is “Iolet.” See? Quirky.

When Iolet dies, Heather, who has not been much out of Chico and has never seen the ocean, will find herself caught up in a bonkers murder mystery in Hollywood and will meet an incredibly handsome young man there, Vince DeLuca, 24, who works Hugh’s Auto Body, named after his now ailing father. Vince mowed Iolet’s lawn back when he was a teenager.

An attorney contacts Vince to say that Iolet has willed him a mysterious, taped-up box, labeled “Box Two of Two.” Guess who’s been willed the other one? “Box One Of Two” ($14.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) is by Chicoan Pamela Dean, set in the same universe as her first novel, “And I Love Her Still,” but otherwise unrelated.

Heather and Vince tell the story in alternating chapters, with plenty of  good-natured f-bombs, and it’s clear from the start, when Heather flies to Southern California with Box One and first meets Vince, that hot sex will eventually break out. Dean keeps things smoldering throughout the novel’s first half. 

As the duo finds out more about Iolet’s time in New York and Hollywood, it’s clear that she’s convinced a certain someone murdered her beau, Albert, decades ago. The stuff inside the two boxes leads them to movie props, a cold-case agent, Frank Sinatra, a chicken foot’s meaning, a 1940 Buick, family revelations by both Heather and Vince--and to love.

Vince despairs that his dream of playing baseball for the majors is gone forever, the wound made worse by his pal Gio who went to Chico State and “got picked up by the Dodgers.” Heather realizes “there really isn’t anything for me in Chico” with her dysfunctional family.

But readers can be consoled that that is not the end of the story.

“And I Love Her Still”

Chicoan Pamela Dean “was a wildland firefighter in the early 90s and worked on engine 4 out of Adin,” a small town (fewer than three hundred residents) in Modoc County. Though an injury ended her career, “she was proud to be a part of the group of women who forged the way.”

Adin in 1988 is the scene of what is billed as a “heartwarming romantic comedy,” but what Dean delivers is so much more. It’s a literary tour de force that propels the reader to the very end and takes no prisoners along the way.

“And I Love Her Still” ($19.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle) introduces two combustible characters in Kenny, a beautiful badass woman firefighter and EMT (who handles a chainsaw with finesse), and 32-year-old Patrick, a handsome but disillusioned Seattle mystery writer who inherits a ranch near Adin. Sparks, as they say, will fly. 

Kenny and Patrick narrate alternate chapters throughout the book, always in the present tense, and the reader listens in. They are no strangers to barnyard epithets or explicit descriptions.

“Her features,” Patrick muses to himself, “are a contradiction, sweet and innocent with a touch of sin. … She has dark-brown eyes and a bunch of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She is tanned … and damn is she fit.” “He is actually kind of adorable,” Kenny thinks. “Bumbling professor kind of cute. I mean looks-wise he is a hot professor type. Dark hair and brilliant blue eyes.”

As self-deprecating Patrick gets to know the ranch that belonged to his late great-uncle Mitchell, and read his cowboy poetry (and eventually write some of his own), he finds he’s entangled in something of a family mystery. Kenny is plagued by Ryan, a young crewmember on the prowl for women, and the love lives of both Kenny and Patrick are pretty much on the skids. Until they meet.

I couldn’t put it down.

The author will be having a book signing party November 13 at the Blue Agave Room at Tres Hombres from 6:00-8:00 pm. The cover painting is by local artist Virginia Wright who will be offering hand-painted bookmarks at the signing.

“Ember”

Early on in Chicoan Douglas Keister’s new novella (his forty-seventh book), a beautiful, 37-year-old woman asks her coffeeshop companion a question: “So, Jeremiah Quincy Jensen the Third, how did you become interested in cemeteries?”

Jerry, as he likes to be called, is a taphophile, “a cemetery lover,” giving lectures on cemetery symbolism and publishing books on it as well. As the 54-year-old academic shares a bit of his story, it’s clear for both of them something else is going on. 

“They were seeking common ground not so much to find a shared interest,” Keister writes, “but to find a way to explore the palpable chemical connection they both had felt the second they met. Love at first sight seemed trite and hackneyed, but that’s exactly what it was.”

The woman, with her “vibrant red hair,” is named “Ember” ($10.99 in paperback, independently published; also for Amazon Kindle). “The word ‘ember,’” she explains, “means a small spark or flame, a symbol of a fire that burns deep within. It can also signify the fading remains of a past emotion.”

Jerry understands; while Ember Owens is good at “finding and losing boyfriends,” Jerry lost the love of his life some two decades earlier. Amber (so like Ember) had married Jerry after her first marriage--to moneyed charmer Jason Lewis who turned “jealous, possessive and violent,”--disintegrated. Jerry and Amber were celebrating Amber’s thirty-third birthday when Jason intervened. Amber did not survive.

As the relationship between Jerry and Ember deepens, with the sex extraordinary and fiery, both suspect their own motives. Jerry wonders whether showing Ember his late wife’s grave at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York makes Ember a kind of substitute. Ember wonders if this is just another encounter, destined to fizzle, never enabling her to come to terms with her rape as a teenager and giving up the resulting child in a closed adoption.

Their love will be tested as a sinister plot comes to fruition while they are visiting Sleepy Hollow. Jerry, ever the professor, explains some of the symbols on the gravestones that signify membership in secret societies. And then their lives change forever.

It’s a romantic thriller with, ahem, a great plot.

"Bull's Labyrinth"

Oregon writer Eric Witchey (ericwitchey.com), a presenter at the Butte College WordSpring writing conference, has a penchant for the offbeat. In "Bull's Labyrinth" ($17.95 in paperback from IFD Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), he has fashioned a modern day romantic suspense fantasy out of the quest for missing glyphs of the ancient Minoan script called Linear-A. He pulls it off with aplomb, interweaving the story of the brilliant and stunningly beautiful Dr. Nikkis Aristos, 25 years old, with an ancient curse 3500 years old.

The Minoan civilization developed on the island of Crete; there, Nikkis is invited by a detective named Andros to aid in the search for artifact forgers. Andros is "the unfortunate son of Turkish and German parents" and is held in contempt by the locals because, he says, "they believe my ancestors murdered their ancestors. Which, to be candid, is true."

Andros lusts for Nikkis, who constantly fends off his demeaning advances. He takes her to the ruins of Knossos, where King Minos, called the "Bull Among Men," reigned more than three millennia ago. The Master Carver who built his palace is named Daedalus. Nikkis knows the name; Daedalus was "the father of crafts and tools. He built the bull that let the queen of the Minoans be mounted by the white bull, the gift of Poseidon, and hence gave birth to the Minotaur."

Alternating chapters return to Daedalus and the "real story," of how he and his son Ikarus tried to escape the island kingdom by flying away, and how Daedalus, returning when his son plummets to his death after flying too close to the sun, eventually marries a mysterious woman, a goat tender named--Nikkis. The King, jealous of Daedalus' craft, curses him to fall in love with Nikkis and then lose her in life after life; but the Queen, craving the erotic dimension of existence, makes it possible for the curse to be broken, for love to be consummated.

The worlds of archaic Daedalus and present-day Nikkis are drawn with compelling detail, and the action pulls the reader along as, Witchey notes, "the battle between ancient male and female energies" plays out on the page to its breathless conclusion.

"Love & Other Theories"

Aubrey ("Brey") Housing, the narrator of a deeply perceptive novel by Chicoan Alexis Bass (alexisbassbooks.com), will soon be saying goodbye to Lincoln High. She'll be going to a prestigious university but now the voice of her BFF, the achingly beautiful Shelby Chesterfield, is ringing in her head: "Now that you’ve been accepted into Barron, you need to join the rest of us and get a real life. It’s your senior year, Brey, time for you to party it up."

It's also a time navigating the emotional uprisings brought on by the ever-fluid hookups with boys at the school, to sort out who is friend and who is foe among the girls, and to decide how important any of this is. "Love & Other Theories" ($9.99 in paperback from HarperTeen, recommended for ages 14 and up; also for Amazon Kindle) traces the breakdown of all that Aubrey thinks is secure within her heart.

Aubrey and her friends have part-time jobs "that produce at least enough money to pay for stuff our parents wouldn't approve of. Booze. Cigarettes. Birth control. Brazilian bikini waxes." Brey, Shelby, and Danica and Melissa, have got each other's back.

Then strangely attractive Nathan Diggs transfers to Lincoln and sits near her. "In all honesty, I'm uncomfortable. I stay perfectly still, though, because it's against everything I believe in to show how physically altered I feel just because of a boy."

Enter "the theories." Since "the only thing we needed to know about high school boys and love (was) how you couldn't have both, we could have anyone we wanted. If you want more, you have to give less. This logic seemed backward compared to the you-get-what-you-give crap we'd always heard, but it worked."

                                                        

Sex? Momentary fun, that's all (Aubrey had lost her virginity to Trip Chapman; but no commitment.) In fact, "it's only a matter of weeks (two weeks is the average dating cycle at Lincoln High) before he'll get distracted by someone else."

All theories need testing and Aubrey finds she may not be as "evolved" as she thinks. Yet the last words of this emotionally sensitive novel inspire confidence that she finally understands the real meaning of "goodbye."

"New Beginnings"

When the late Jamison Howard built the strange stone mansion in a "small town tucked away in the mountains of northern California," the locals wondered why construction workers kept adding rooms. Word was that "the matriarch Marguerite Howard was kept prisoner here by her three grown sons since her husband's death years ago."

Readers are ushered into this "Devil's Domain" when young divorcee Holland Wallace, 28, in town to care for her aunt, visits the strange abode and is mistaken for a newly-hired nanny by Jamison's stepson, Gage Langdon, 36.

So begins a romantic suspense novel of intrigue and revenge. "New Beginnings" ($16.00 in paperback from Fireside Publications, firesidepubs.com; also for Amazon Kindle), by Olivia Claire High, unfolds the story of a dysfunctional family and the power of love to set things right. The author, an Oroville resident and prolific novelist, puts a baby at the center of a mystery.

The child is the son of Gage's younger brother, James Howard, and his wife Kim. Little Jamie seems to be sickly. Holland's heart melts for him (and it doesn't hurt that there is something about the strong-willed Gage that's mightily attractive), and it's clear that the household needs a new caregiver.

Kim lives in the house, but suffers from postpartum depression and cannot care for her child. Marguerite is there, too, but though kindly she is agoraphobic and can't bear to leave the residence (so her world gets bigger by adding more rooms). James is flaky and his twin brother, Jonathan, is something of a mystery. Money seems to be no object; Gage, James and Jonathan are the "propertied brothers," and there's a connection south of the border that complicates the family dynamic.

Holland has a past of her own ("My dad's a geography buff," she tells Gage early on; "My sister's name is France and my brother's is Scotland"), but she is determined to protect Jamie when she discovers that the previous nannies had been driven from the house by drugged nightmares, and that someone is messing with the baby's food. But why?

The novel probes the recesses of the human heart but always holds out hope that there can indeed be "new beginnings."

Romantic suspense from an Oroville novelist

Pippa Scott’s start in life was not auspicious, she tells Shade Avalon. “A cook found me right after I was born in the dumpster behind the restaurant where he worked.” Police and Child Protective services came; the cook “told them when he found me I was covered in garbage, including strips of green pepper. The social worker took pepper and turned it into Pippa.”

Raised in foster care, Pippa grew up “never feeling like I belonged. But I grabbed every fleeting moment of happiness I could. I also used my imagination to keep me company. …”

Most of Shade’s family perished in the crash of a private plane but now the handsome 33-year-old is running the family business. Pippa, a beautiful, naive, but scrappy 23, has taken a job with Shade’s grandmother, wealthy Lila Avalon, to help her write a series of children’s stories about animals. When Pippa meets Shade at Wolfhaven, the family estate deep in the Northern California woods, things do not go well. Shade is aloof and mysterious, and Pippa is sure her sarcastic barbs will get her fired.

“Fired up” is more what happens in Olivia Claire High’s new novel, “The Wolf Deception” ($13.95 in paperback from Fireside Publications; also for Amazon Kindle). Pippa is certain that she has seen a wolf on the property, and hears piercing wolf-sounds at night, but the residents of the house dismiss the reports. Pippa’s fears are stoked when Shade, on his late-night walks, seems altogether too wolf-like.

There’s indeed a family secret; also a female rival; Pippa’s abduction by some ne’er-do-wells; hints that Shade is something more than he claims to be; and a growing, passionate connection between them.

Pippa finds it hard to trust Shade (why won’t he answer her questions about the wolf sightings?) and, as she tells a friend, “My malady is being born poor. I’ll never fit in with someone like Shade Avalon.” But the reader knows, in this fun and fast-paced suspense story, that this is not the last word.

Ever feel that someone is watching you?

Olivia Claire High's new romantic suspense novel introduces Samantha (Sam) Farris, a young school teacher soon to be married to Dr. Ryan Wade. All is bliss for the Southern California lovers until--the visions.

"I've been having strange vibes that I'm being watched," she tells her friend Catherine, "and I get this vision inside my head of a person. I think it's a person because all I can make out is a vague form, but I'm convinced a presence of some kind is there." There is indeed a presence--an obsessed woman driven by a voice in her head she claims is Ryan's late wife.

There will be a book launch signing for the Oroville author tomorrow from 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at Curves, 2190 Myers Street in Oroville.

The story of obsession leads the couple to Hawaii and the far reaches of Northern California. Lives are at stake in "A Stranger's Eyes" ($13.95 in paperback from Fireside Publications; also available in Amazon Kindle e-book format), a sequel of sorts to "Dreams--Shadows of the Night" which featured Sam's friend Catherine Ashley. She was now married to Josh Dallas after his kidnaping in the Amazon. As Catherine listens to Sam, she tell her that "I've had prophetic nightmares. You believe you're being watched by unseen eyes. Both are occurrences not easily explained. They bring out intense emotions that cause feelings of helplessness and fear."

Samantha fears not only for Ryan's life, but that of his daughter, and makes the fateful decision to do as her accuser demands--leave them. She finds solace in a small California mountain town whose residents' lives become intertwined with her own. One might expect Ryan to come to the rescue, and festivities to break out, but there are surprises in store. Even as obsession is dealt with there is another sinister visitation. "An unrecognizable figure," Sam tells Ryan, "came inside my head watching like before."

There is a madman on the loose, and this time the target is Ryan himself. He finds a crushed rose under his windshield wiper, a box of broken cookies, and Sam sees the spray painted words: "You're next, Mrs. Wade." The couple must make a fateful choice and the action never slows until the end.

Butte Valley novelist romances reincarnation

Aris Whittier writes about her first name on her website (awhittier.blogspot.com). "I was born in the seventies to a pair of hippies, real hippies. Having said that, I think I got off lucky with the name Aris. It could have been much worse, Fruit Stand or something like that. So, Aris it is." The Butte Valley resident is also a prolific romance writer ("Secrets," "Fatal Embrace," "Foolish Notions") as well as a chronicler of her own life ("The Truth About Being a Bass Fisherman's Wife").

With "Across Eternity" ($3.99 in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook e-book formats), Whittier explores reincarnation. When handsome, self-made businessman Logan Richards, 37, sees Amber Lewis, a young waitress at his five-star restaurant in Dana Point, a deep sense of knowing washes over him. "She drew you in with so much more," he reflects. "Her vibrant blue eyes, with unusually dark rims and thick lashes, reflected kindness and deep emotion. ... Her warm, casual disposition made you feel appreciated and accepted. She was magnetic in the most earnest way. ... Merely watching her took him back to the earlier childhood times when he had initially begun to see her."

Back then, when Logan was just three, she had come to him in his sandbox, an invisible and inseparable friend, a spirit that one day had to depart. He had dreamed of her for many years, and now here she was, in the flesh, a twenty-seven-year-old raven-haired beauty. Something clicks in Amber as well when she first waits on Logan, but it is something just beyond memory.

Logan wants Amber to remember on her own, so though he is honest with her in many things, the conversations they have--on the beach, at his home, memorable places around the world as the two again become inseparable--leave something unspoken. She meets Logan's family, his mother and sister and his sister's young son, and they embrace Amber with open arms. Logan is gentle, kind, and thoughtful, and a passionate kisser. All would seem perfect. But as sexual tension increases the consummation Amber craves, the lovemaking she yearns for, eludes her. Why? What secret is Logan harboring?

The story is an engaging exploration of the boundaries of love in a world of life and death.

Romantic thriller from an Oroville novelist

Geologist Josh Dallas is in the hospital after driving his truck into a lamppost to miss hitting a child. He awakes to see his nurse, twenty-seven-year-old Catherine Ashley, "skin the color of fine porcelain, hair like pale sunlight, and unbelievable sapphire eyes." She "possessed a sensuality simmering beneath her playful façade." Within five minutes Josh is asking her out to dinner.

Soon they're an item. "He liked fiery women and was quite happy to let her ignite his pilot light." And light it she does. But soon Josh is preparing to leave for the Amazon on a three-month research project and Catherine is troubled. "I saw you in my dream. You were lying unconscious surrounded by dense foliage. It was raining. You were covered in mud. It was a warning sign. I feel it." And something more: "I sometimes see things in my dreams--things that come true. I saw you in a dream the night before you came to the hospital."

Josh, of course, is determined to go. What follows is a page-turning, sometimes brutal account of the expedition and its aftermath. The two lovers face many challenges. There's a long separation, horrible deaths, family cruelty, a sinister plot--and those prophetic dreams. Oroville novelist Olivia Claire High keeps the suspense running high in "Dreams: Shadows Of The Night" ($13.95 in paperback from Fireside Publications, www.firesidepubs.com; also in Amazon Kindle e-book format).

The author will sign copies of her book at Artists of River Town Gallery and Gifts, 1435 Myers Street in Oroville, on Friday, October 26 from 4:00 - 6:00 PM. The public is invited to this free event.

The lovers are passionate, driven. Reunited, "the time for waiting was over. It was all about wanting and need. But when she saw the scars on his chest, the horror of what he must have had to suffer made her hesitate." But there's no hesitation in Josh. "Touch me, Catherine. I want your hands on me." Then: "Wild kisses that branded ownership and promised to fulfill every need had them both gasping, as the hot rush of emotion shot through them like acid etching into glass."

But there is another, deadly, acid, eating at their relationship, and "Dreams" sustains the thrill ride until the very end.

Former Chicoan delivers steamy history, returns for book signing

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.