Hello, and welcome back! Summer's definitely here, just in time for the long holiday weekend. We'll get to see fireworks twice this weekend, which the boys will love. Plus I'll still have plenty of reading time. A good weekend plan, if I do say so myself. And still calmer than last weekend's birthday one day, party the next, and then a ballgame plus Celtic Fling the next. Although I won't complain about the last day--I met some online friends for the first time in person, and we got to hear some lovely Celtic music and enjoy other entertainments and shopping, and then I watched my son pitch three hitless, runless innings in his all-star game. Not a bad Sunday at all.

First up, I want to tell you all about a giveaway I'm doing later this week in the forum. I have a couple books and some Romance Novels goodies to give away. Complete rules will be posted in the forum later today (7/1/03). Participation in the forum is easy--sign-up is painless and free--plus you can join in on some of the great discussions going on there with other fans.

Secondly, I want to remind you all about the book club discussion for this month, which starts today. For more information on this, go here.

Now, on to the book that gave us this week's title.
Lover Beware includes stories from Christine Feehan, Katherine Sutcliffe, Fiona Brand, and Eileen Wilks (Berkley). "Magic in the Wind" is Ms. Feehan's contribution and the lead-off story, with Damon Wilder hiding out from the people who killed his assistant to get at his defense program, and hiding out from life in general. Sarah Drake's return stirs great interest in the small town he's chosen, and in him as well, though he can't pinpoint why. The sudden arrival of thugs at his house and the return of Sarah's sisters cause even more of a stir in Damon's life. I have to say, I enjoyed this far more than anything else I've read from Ms. Feehan, and I wish the remaining sisters' stories were available.

Katherine Sutcliffe's "Hot August Moon" is next up, with FBI special agent Anna Travelli heading into New Orleans to find a serial killer--and to deal with the one man she ever loved, Jerry Costos. This one felt incomplete to me, not only because of the ending, but because of the interplay between Anna and Jerry. This isn't a romance, with the happy ending all romance readers expect. It feels more like a prelude to a suspense novel, or maybe, if the outcome is different, a romantic suspense. I didn't like this one for both those reasons.

Fiona Brand's "After Midnight" is next, with widow Jane O'Reilly living alone on the spread she and her late husband shared in Australia, and a murderer on the loose--oh, yeah, and a sexy neighbor she's avoiding. Michael Rider has been waiting for Jane for years, and his patience has run out. Much of this story is with the pair apart, and I would have liked to see more interaction between them, rather than being told how long they've wanted this relationship.

Finally is Eileen Wilks's "Only Human," with detective Lily Yu on the trail of a killer who isn't quite human. When she's ordered to work with Rule Turner, son of the Nokolai clan's chief--and a lupus, or werewolf--things get interesting. You all know by now I'm not big on werewolves and vampires, but this one I didn't mind so much. Perhaps because Rule spent most of the story in human form. Plus there's a serious chemical attraction between these two.

I'm giving the anthology as a whole four of Cupid's five arrows, simply because I enjoyed the first and last stories so much.

Until next week, happy reading!