LAKE NEWS

Worldwide bestseller Delinsky, with over 60 romances to her credit (Coast Road, 1998, etc., etc.), dreams up a plot with echoes of scandal. Lily Blake’s name, pure as driven snow, is soiled seemingly forever by the Boston Post’s Terrence Sullivan when he fabricates a tale about Lily and newly ordained Cardinal Rossetti having been lovers—plus maybe some hanky-panky with the governor of New York as well. Actually, Lily at 34 is a cabaret pianist/singer at Boston’s posh Essex Club, as well as a part-time music-appreciation teacher at the Winchester School on Beacon Hill. Yes, sh-sh-sh-she (Lily stutters) and the cardinal did play the piano together at the Essex Club, which is owned by the cardinal’s nephew, but an affair? The smeared woman, now an embarrassment to the Church and swamped by paparazzi, loses her teaching post, gives up her cabaret job, and goes back to her small hometown, Lake Henry in New Hampshire, where she joins up with John Kipling, editor of the Lake News, in an effort to regain her good name. Kipling himself has fled the big city papers he once worked for and now helps prepare a blade to run through Terry Sullivan. Delinsky’s legion of fans, as ever, will be happy. (Literary Guild—Super Release/Doubleday main selection)