Former Days of Our Lives actress Purl imbues her soap opera finesse into the fictional setting of Milford-Haven, a sleepy California coastal town where a cast of characters balance matters of the head and heart.
It’s the mid-1990s, and nature artist Miranda Jones has left the urban hustle of San Francisco for the quaint allure of Milford-Haven, a town that seduces passersby with its homey aromas wafting from Sally’s Restaurant, and where lighthouses and seashells afford its denizens a quiet serenity. Miranda’s inspiration is her paintbrush, and the town’s seascape is her muse. Sally O’Mally is an Arkansas transplant with a nose in everyone’s business, especially Samantha Hugo’s, the ex-wife of her boyfriend, Jack Sawyer. News reporter Christine Christian goes missing after a secret source leads her to a mansion under construction, and her oil mogul boyfriend, Joseph Calvin, the senior partner of Calvin Oil, is worried. In nearby Santa Barbara, Miranda’s opportunistic manager, Zelda McIntyre, also sets her sights on the eldest Calvin, while Joseph’s son, Zackery, is smitten with the mysterious Miranda. The plethora of lives that interweave in Milford-Haven is dizzying at first, but in true serial form, they slowly collide, enticing the onlooker. Simmering just below the gossip that pervades the resident’s lives are heavy-hitting issues, including Samantha’s deeply held familial secret, as well as her professional commitment to protect the environment from new construction stemming from Jack’s building company. This may be Apple Pie, USA, but hearts are on the line, professions are at stake and a possible murder has tainted the landscape. Ending each plot line in a cliffhanger, Purl closes the saga with a peek at the next installment in the Milford-Haven series. A whirlwind of juicy drama with dangling-carrot closure.
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1936878017
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Bellekeep
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Coulter's sizable following (The Heiress Bride, etc. etc.): a blast-off for a new Regency trilogy involving romance and a trace of mystery. Josephina, dubbed "Duchess" at an early age because of her cool aloofness—the result of learning, at the age of nine, that she's a bastard—is the by-blow of the Earl of Chase and a lovely mother ensconced in a nearby cottage. Duchess is raised in Chase Park and, after the deaths of her mother and the Earl, spirits herself off with a huge servant named Badger to the cottage, where she supports herself in a mysterious fashion. Meanwhile, the new Earl, Marcus Wyndham, learns—to his horror—that Duchess's father, who married her mother at last, has left all to his daughter, who now has the problem of restoring the inheritance and pride to handsome Marcus. The answer, of course, is to trick him into marriage—and bed. While this venerable and favorite feature of the romantic novel—spouse-seduction—is oozing on, a group of cousins troop in from the Colonies, including vigorous widower Trevor, who, like others in the family, is intrigued by rumors of a buried treasure on the premises. Before that's discovered, though, there'll be some near-fatal attempts on the Duchess's life and an escape from a murderer—who's bound to resurface in future volumes. Coulter seems to have hit a popular vein between the more elegant Regency romances (with period diction) of, say, Patricia Veryan, and the squashiest of the paperback palpitators. A quick circulator.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-399-13878-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
A pleasant read with no major surprises, the novel profits from the author’s skill at illuminating the most profound (and...
An unexpected patrimony leads a young woman to love and family in this first installment of a new series by the beloved Regency romance author.
An orphanage in Bath has been Anna Snow's home since she was left there as a toddler by a shadowy figure. She is largely content with living and working there as a schoolteacher now, partly supported by an unknown benefactor’s stipend. Like her fellow orphans, though, she has always weaved stories of her origins, and the best one—wealth and status—suddenly comes true when she finds out that she is the daughter of the recently deceased Earl of Riverdale, born during a secret early marriage. Yet Anna, who learns that her name is Anastasia Westcott, longs most for familial affection, which seems impossible to gain from her newly discovered half siblings, who have been suddenly disinherited. Balogh (Unforgiven, 2016, etc.) specializes in romance novels that both accept the essential solitude of the human condition and offer love as a stalwart companion; here, Anna has Avery Archer, the Duke of Netherby, to help her in this balancing act. Netherby is an unusual romance hero in that he is a man of beauty with a physical stature that evokes Asian martial artists rather than the anachronistically muscled men often found in the subgenre. Anna is initially wary of his aura of refined nonchalance but finds him to be a true friend as she struggles to learn her aristocratic duties and searches for allies in her new role. Netherby is taken aback by his own attraction to the woman he had pegged as a rube but whose simplicity and dignity slowly amplify her loveliness in his eyes.
A pleasant read with no major surprises, the novel profits from the author’s skill at illuminating the most profound (and burdensome) of human desires—to love and be loved.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-47779-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Signet
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
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