Hello, and welcome back! I hope you're all getting in a little reading time between spring cleaning chores. I'm sneaking in some reading time amid plans for the Central PA Romance Writers workshop set for this coming Saturday (4/13/02) and the Lady Barrow/RT tour of the Scottish Highlands which is set to leave next Friday, and all the normal things that crop up each week. I'm also trying to get some reading done so that you'll still have at least one new article while I'm gone.

In the meantime, I've got two new romances for you this week, including newish author Sue-Ellen Welfonder's second Scottish romance,
Knight in My Bed (Warner). In a daring plot to save her people, Lady Isolde, chieftain of the clan MacInnes, takes her enemy, Donall the Bold and laird of the MacLeans, as prisoner. To insure peace between their clans and to avoid marrying a man she doesn't want, she hopes to seduce him until she's with child. Isolde has some helpers, including an old witchy woman called Devorgilla, whose potion is either a love potion or an anti-attractiveness potion. Donall is none too pleased to be chained in his cell after being attacked by her clan, but, despite his own plans to escape and return home, her plan is definitely intriguing. With their counter-plans, and an opponent neither knows about, their way to true love fails to run smoothly. Ms. Welfonder is a very talented newcomer, and as much as I liked her first book, I like this one equally well. I'm giving it four and a half of Cupid's five arrows. Can't wait for the next one later this year!

The other book I have to share with you this week is
Duchess' Lover by Julie Beard (Jove Historical). Released at last from her long, miserable marriage, Olivia, Duchess of Brandhurst, has one wild, reckless night of passion, something she's never experienced. It's much later that she realizes her one-time lover is Will Barnes, an artist who'd been hired to design her husband's grave. Now he's back, redesigning the Duchess's garden. And rekindling the heat they shared only once. The situation is impossible, of course, with the huge class difference between the two, but hearts don't often worry about silly things like that. Trouble stalks Olivia, though--her husband was murdered, and no one knows who did it, each of the involved parties assuming it was the other and willing to protect them. Nicely done portrayal of what it certainly would have been like for two so different to fall in love. You'll be cheering for them to get their happy ending. This one's earned four arrows.

Until next week, happy reading!