The Saint-Tiffany Reisz

The Saint
Tiffany Reisz
Mira, Jun 24 2014, $14.95
ISBN 9780778316145

When Manhattan’s renowned dominatrix Nora Sutherlin was teenager Eleanor Schreiber, her life was radically different. Her single mom worked two jobs to feed and shelter them, but also was deeply religious and demanded her daughter obey the Lord. On the other side of the spectrum, her felonious dad ran a car theft ring and chop shop. Elle preferred her father’s flamboyant lifestyle over her mom’s pious poverty.

When the cops catch Elle breaking the law while helping her dad pay back a large sum of money he owes, the judge chooses probation leniency rather than juvenile detention. Thus she must perform community service under the direction of Father Marcus “Søren” Stearns. The motorcycle-riding Jesuit priest promises young Elle much more than just working off her sentencing.

The first Original Sinners: White Years tells the enjoyable back story of how Elle became Nora under the mentoring of Father Søren. Well-written, series fans will enjoy the teen years though no revelations are added to what we know about The Big Apple’s top dominatrix and her well-endowed priest-teacher from Original Sinners: The Red Years dark BDSM erotica (see The Mistress, The Angel, The Prince and The Siren)

Harriet Klausner

No River Too Wide-Emilie Richards

No River Too Wide
Emilie Richards
Mira, Jun 24 2014, $14.95
ISBN 9780778316343

In Topeka, Kansas, Janine Stoddard flees from her long-time abusive husband Rex while their house burns. Although it breaks her heart, Janine knows she must not visit her daughter Harmony or her grandchild Lottie for fear of Rex pursuing her and harming them. Still the need to see her child once more and her nine-month old granddaughter for the first time grips Janine who ignores her brain telling her not to go to Asheville, North Carolina.

Advocacy group member Taylor Martin helps Janine settle safely while also praying that the three generations of females connect as she understands their estrangement caused by a battering man. Also new in town is Alex, who has opened up a fitness salon. He provides self-defense training for women, which is where he meets Taylor and Janine. However, Alex accepts that once his secret becomes known, his growing relationship with Taylor will abruptly die; while Rex and the law threaten Janine’s renaissance.

This Goddesses Anonymous broken family drama (see One Mountain Away) is an engaging contemporary due to a strong cast (especially the three lead females) who enables the audience to look deeply at the extended impact of domestic abuse. Character driven, fans will appreciate this warm second chance at family.

Harriet Klausner

The Tea Shop On Lavender-Lane Sheila Roberts

The Tea Shop On Lavender Lane
Sheila Roberts
Mira, Jun 24 2014, $7.99
ISBN: 9780778316183

In West Hollywood, Bailey Sterling caters actress Samba Barrett’s party. Everything goes perfect until Samba falls to the floor and her actor boyfriend Rory Rourke says to call 911. Samba insists they call the Star Reporter as she claims she ate something bad. Her dream of being caterer to the stars is nuked by this phony food poisoning claim in which the Star Reporter claims Bailey tried to kill her rival for Rory’s love.

In shellshock, Bailey heeds the advice of her older sister Cecily’s insistence she leave Los Angeles to return home to Icicle Falls, Washington where the townsfolk started a legal fund collection. Cecily likes marrying-kind single father Luke Goodman and sleeping with-kind tavern owner Todd Black. However, when Todd and Bailey meet, they are attracted to each other. Sibling rivalry seems ready to boil over before Bailey and Todd announce plans for The Tea Shop On Lavender Lane.

The latest Life in Icicle Falls contemporary (see The Cottage On Juniper Ridge, Better Than Chocolate, What She Wants and Merry Ex-Mas) is an engaging lighthearted Sterling family drama. Series fans will enjoy the antics of the fully-developed cast as love proves complicated in the Pacific Northwest.

Harriet Klausner

Little Mercies-Heather Gudenkauf

Little Mercies
Heather Gudenkauf
Mira, Jun 24 2014, $15.95
ISBN 9780778316336

In Cedar City, Iowa, Ellen Moore struggles to be a superwoman as she and her husband Adam the teacher raise their three young kids; while as a social worker she deals with harrowing cases involving children. On a hot summer morning, Adam says goodbye while a distracted Ellen handles a nasty case. Several hours later, the police visit her at a restaurant when she realizes Adam told her he left their infant daughter Avery inside their van for Ellen to take the child to daycare. Rushed to the hospital Avery is placed in ICU suffering from deadly heatstroke. Instead of being the investigator, Ellen is charged with child endangerment. Freed on bail, but banned from seeing her baby, Ellen hides at her widowed mother Maudene’s house.

While Ellen prays for her child’s recovery, ten year old Jenny Briard runs away from her Nebraska home following the arrest of her alcoholic father. Maudene finds her in Cedar City and brings the tweener to her home. Ellen soon realizes that her case files contain information on the runaway.

This is an entertaining tense family drama in which Heather Gudenkauf once again looks at the vulnerability of children (see One Breath Away). Ironically the social worker finds herself under the microscope that she used disdainfully so many times at neglectful and abusive parents and guardians. Both subplots are well written, but Ellen’s plight much deeper though each ends unsatisfyingly abrupt.

Harriet Klausner

First Comes Love-Karen Wiesner

First Comes Love
Karen Wiesner
Lulu, Jul 1 2014
http://www.lulu.com
ISBN: 9781304898197

In Peaceful, Wisconsin, young teens Chad Feldmann and Winnie McBride have sex. She becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. To avoid the errors that most kids having kids do, Chad insists they remain celibate until they graduate and marry. Three years later, after the couple completes high school, they wed and raise their child Kally.

Winnie feels resentment towards her husband and daughter as she sacrificed much for them to become a family. As she works two jobs and takes care of little Kally, her disappointment is further fueled when Chad uses his college fund that his family banked for him to pursue his dreams. Chad knows he made foolish mistakes out of love and his constant fear his soulmate would leave him; but his recent actions to insure he can care for his two beloved females instead may fulfill his nightmarish prophecy.

The fourth fabulous Friendship Heirlooms series (see Forever And All That Jazz) star two wonderful protagonists as Chad and Winnie have love, a baby and marriage in that order, but apparently also a dying relationship. With a strong support cast (a trademark of Ms. Weisner as for instance this lead couple were in the Family Heirlooms Series drama Glass Angels), fans will relish the return to Peaceful although what appears to be the end of a marriage.

Harriet Klausner

Never Surrender-Lindsay McKenna

Never Surrender
Lindsay McKenna
Harlequin HQN, Jun 24 2014, $7.99
ISBN: 9780373778829

Navy SEAL Team 3 Chief Gabe Griffin is proud of his fiancée Navy Petty Officer First Class Baylee-Ann Thorn as she was one of the first female Shadow Warriors and became the first military female 18 Medic. They have missed each other, but immediately make up for lost time now that she returned to California after serving in Afghanistan providing medical support.

Bay has six months left in the service but is assigned to Special Forces instead of the SEALs. Deployed in Afghanistan again, the Taliban capture her. Gabe goes crazy as he risks his life to save his beloved. When Bay is rescued, she is not the same having suffered a brain injury, rape and unrelenting torture. He refuses to walk away from his Bay even if she is not his same confident lover.

The sequel to Breaking Point is a terrific military romantic thriller starring two wonderful protagonists. Readers will marvel at Gabe’s impatience when it comes to finding his woman and patience when it comes to being there for her. However, Bay makes the storyline military strong as her struggles with PTSD grips the audience with harrowing realism.

Harriet Klausner

The Beekeeper’s Ball-Susan Wiggs

The Beekeeper’s Ball
Susan Wiggs
Mira, Jun 24 2014, $24.95
ISBN 9780778314486

Thirtyish orphan Isabel Johansen returned home to Bella Vista, California to open up a cooking school at the family estate in Sonoma using honey from local beehives including her own as a key ingredient. As she helps plan for her recently met half-sister Tess’ wedding (see The Apple Orchard) Isabel also hopes by coming to her hometown she can move past her history especially with an abusive former lover who has made her wary of men.

Cormac O’Neill comes to Bella Vista to write a biography of Isabel’s apple orchard owning grandfather Magnus Johansen. The author too hopes his work in this town will help him move past his recent history. As Cormac and his subject’s family become aware of courageous Magnus risking his life to protect Jews including his wife from the Nazis in Denmark, the biographer and the cooking teacher fall in love; but her recent relationship leaves her doubting a relationship.

The romance is a solid contemporary, but the WII Danish resistance owns the storyline and also serves as the impetus for the heroine to take a chance on love. Readers will appreciate the powerful historical dramatic subplot of brave people defying the Nazis in 1940s Copenhagen (mindful of Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally and the Steven Spielberg film, and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl).

Harriet Klausner

Abandon The Dark-Marta Perry

Abandon The Dark
Marta Perry
Harlequin HQN, Jun 24 2014, $7.99
ISBN: 9780373778843

Two decades ago when she stayed with her great-Aunt Rebecca in Deer Run, Pennsylvania, Lainey Colton spent the most wonderful summer of her life becoming BFFs with Rachel (see Home by Dark) and Meredith (see Search The Dark); that is until Aaron Mast died. When Rebecca becomes very ill, the graphic designer returns to Deer Run to care of her beloved relative.

Lawyer Jake Evans left the rat race to settle in the serene Amish town. He is unhappy with Lainey’s arrival as he fears the outsider will inadvertently misuse her power of attorney re Rachel since this great-niece knows nothing about the Amish. As Lainey and her two BFFs look into deaths past and recent, the attorney and the client’s relative fall in love; but someone wants her and her buddies to end their investigation or else.

The third sensational Watcher in the Dark romantic suspense continues to use family and romance as support to the tense twisting overarching plot; ergo newcomers should begin with the earlier entries. Fast-paced, series readers will enjoy the three brave amigas perilous search for the truth.

Harriet Klausner

Darkness Bound-J.T. Geissinger

Darkness Bound
J.T. Geissinger
Montlake Romance/Amazon Publishing, Jun 24 2014, $12.95
ISBN: 9781477820100

Though she never met an Ikati and based solely on events in Rome, New York Times senior war correspondence Jack Dolan’s column on the “Enemy Among Us” puts fear and anger in the minds of this shapeshifting race. She exposes them as being a deadly threat to mankind. Her muckraking demand for extinction has the shapeshifters going deeper into concealment because they know the humans will stalk them mercilessly. The Ikati also deploy a two-step counterplan to bring a death and destruction offensive to their adversaries who are led by ambitious cold politicians and religious fanatics, and abetted by quislings.

While his species gathers deep inside the Brazilian rainforest, illegitimate outsider Hawk Luna launches step one: the seduction of Jacqueline Dolan in order to blackmail her into writing a friendly retraction article. However he realizes he don’t know Jack when they meet; as she turns out to be a complex flawed individual who touches his heart. Jack feels the same way re Hawk unaware he is one of the dreaded species that her yellow journalism claims needs ethnic cleansing. Soon the pair teams up to prevent a cross species war but betrayals leave both in peril and the world teetering.

The fifth Night Prowler romantic urban (and jungle) fantasy (see Edge of Darkness, Rapture’s Edge, Shadows Edge and Edge of Oblivion) is an exciting action-packed thriller that grips the audience from the onset and never loosens that hold; as danger mounts, and relationships and loyalties change. Series fans will relish this taut drama; while newcomers should start at the beginning as each entry builds up on the previous’ international events.

Harriet Klausner

Until We Touch-Susan Mallery

Until We Touch
Susan Mallery
Harlequin HQN, Jun 24 2014, $8.99
ISBN: 9780373778935

Retired NFL player Jack McGarry co-owns Score public relations firm. He and his partners left Los Angeles to set up shop in Fool’s Gold, California. His assistant Larissa Owens loves her job, which also enables her to work on her passion of rescuing animals. Though attracted to Jack, Larissa has no time or interest in pursuing any relationship with him except work as she accepts her feelings for him are one sided.

Larissa’s mother Nancy arrives in Fool’s Gold to demand Jack fire his assistant so that her daughter can return to L.A. to find a man. However, she also proclaims to Jack that Larissa loves him; but is too stupid to act on it. Finally Nancy also insists Jack must have taken one too many blows to the head as a football player to realize how he feels about Larissa; though he knows otherwise as a tragedy closed his heart from emotional pain. Both Jack and Larissa remain in denial, but their relationship subtly begins to change.

The third Score Fool’s Gold romance (see Before We Kiss and When We Met) is an amusing contemporary as two people sing the refrain from I’m Not In Love (10 Cc). Outrageous Nancy steals the storyline from the protagonists to the delight of fans who will enjoy the latest ex-gridiron performer sacked by love.

Harriet Klausner