Her Dear & Loving Husband

Her Dear & Loving Husband, by Meredith Allard, is the first in her Loving Husband trilogy.  After a recent divorce, Sarah Alexander has moved to Salem, Massachusetts.  If she thought the quaint seaside town with all its historic charm would quiet her recurring dreams and night terrors, however, she was very much mistaken - moving to Salem seems to have had the opposite effect, in fact.  

Through a colleague at the library, Sarah meets James Wentworth, a professor at the college, and her resemblance to his late wife causes him to feel drawn to her.  James is hiding a secret which keeps him disconnected from engaging in any kind of a real social life and has kept him from being settled in any one place for very long.  His attachment to Sarah is powerful enough to potentially disrupt the quiet life he's built for himself, but there are questions which need to be answered:  is James attracted to Sarah, or is it her resemblance to his beloved wife which attracts him to her?  And if it IS Sarah he is attracted to, will his secret threaten any romance between them?

With a meddling reporter buzzing around asking questions about James, his secret might come out whether he's ready for Sarah to know it or not - but if exposed to the whole world, James fears a new mass hysteria and hunt will ensue.

Beneath A Rising Moon

Beneath A Rising Moon, by Keri Arthur, is the first book in her Ripple Creek Werewolves series.  In the version of the world Arthur has created, humans and werewolves coexist, albeit maybe not too harmoniously.  Werewolves live in their own towns (reservations), there are certain measures upheld to control the werewolf population (basically, the males get some kind of birth control injection), and laws which apply to humans also apply to werewolves.  The werewolves do, however, have their own branch of law enforcement to deal with their own kind:  the rangers.  And it's a damned good thing, too.

So basic werewolf lore tells us that the full moon is a pretty big deal, and Arthur sticks to this.  The nights leading up to the full moon, everyone is more and more attuned to their wolfiness.  In Ripple Creek, Colorado, the Sinclair mansion outside town becomes the red light district; masked and clad in either nothing or next-to-nothing, they participate all night, every night of the moon phase in what is known as "the moon dance."  It seems to be akin to the idea of some kind of sexy pagan festival honoring the moon goddess.  There are centuries-old rules and rituals associated with it, and basically in this entire book, any time you see the word "dance," they are talking about sex.  Dancing = Sexing It Up.  Reverend Moore would have a heart attack.

Anyway, Neva Grant is part of the golden pack in town; telepathic and a powerful empath, she can use the energy from her own feelings and the feelings of others as a sort of psychic weapon.  Her twin sister, Savannah, is a ranger who has been investigating what appears to be a serial murder case; Savannah's determination and tenacity on the job has landed her a room in the ICU, unconscious, and Neva has made a vow to the moon to catch her sister's attacker.  Her plan for continuing the investigation is crazy and potentially dangerous, both to her physical person and her reputation in the pack.

The main lead in the case is the fact that the murderer is a silver wolf, which means the Sinclair family, the head of their silver pack, is at the top of the suspect list.  In fact, they basically make up the entire suspect list.  Their reputation in town among the more conservative golden pack doesn't help, either.  Word is that Duncan Sinclair, the most lascivious of them all, has returned after a ten year absence, and the easiest way Neva figures to gain access to the mansion is to seduce Duncan at the dance.  Once in, everyone else will be too occupied with copulating to pay attention to her snooping.  

What she didn't figure on, however, was the way she would react to him.  To his touch, his scent, his voice...to every part of him.  He seems to be living up to his reputation, though, so to allow herself to feel something for him, to hope that there could be more to their relationship than just the moon dance, would be crazy.  But it's too late to back out now...her sister is hanging on by a thread, and more women could be killed if this case isn't resolved.

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I received this as an eBook from NetGalley, and it's actually the first eBook I've ever read.  I think I picked a good one!  Ha.  I'm a big fan of romance novels, whether they're good or so-bad-they're-good, and I really enjoyed this one; I read it straight through in one night.  The only other werewolf books I've read were Alisa Sheckley's Abra Barrow duology, and while I thought there was a lot of sexytimes either happening or being referred to in those books, this one has those beat.  If you are one of those people who skims along and skims along in a romance novel, just to get to the juicy bits, you might like Beneath A Rising Moon.  The smut begins early in the first chapter and is pretty constant throughout the entire book.

Austenland

In Austenland, by Shannon Hale, we meet Jane Hayes:  30-something graphic designer living in New York.  Jane's had thirteen boyfriends in her life, and none of them ever quite match up to her idea of what a man should be.  And what's her ideal man like?  Mr. Darcy.  Yes, Jane has more than just a slight Austen obsession.  She's so obsessed with Jane Austen's novels and with Mr. Darcy in particular, that she goes so far as to hide her copy of the BBC Pride & Prejudice mini-series (ladies, you know the one...Colin Firth).  

During a visit from her mother and wealthy great-aunt Carolyn, the old woman notices the DVDs and knows immediately what is going through Jane's head.  Great-aunt Carolyn surprises Jane by booking a vacation for her at Pembrook Park, a sort of Regency reenactment resort in the English countryside, where guests and a staff of actors remain in period dress and manner for three weeks.  The clientele consists of Austen-obsessed women, who pay the exorbitant fee to be fake-courted by gentlemen like Austen's male characters.  

Jane isn't sure what to make of her great-aunt's strange gift, but the tickets and reservation are nonrefundable, and the prospect of being in the company of handsome men in breeches has piqued her interest.  Once she checks in, however, and the fantasy begins, the total immersion is a little more than she thinks she can really handle.  Will it help her kick her Darcy fixation, or will she just get even more sucked in than before?  

Sophie and the Rising Sun

Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh is a short, sweet, and simple romantic novel taking place during World War II.  Part of the story is being told by Miss Anne, a kind and quietly unconventional woman; she doesn't know all the details, however, so the rest is filled in for us.  The story is of Sophie, a woman raised by her strict mother and aunts, and whose only real indiscretion being her love for a young man who never returned from the Great War.  Then there is Mr Oto, a first-generation American who was sent from California to New York with funds to bring back a relative who had come over from Japan.  He loses the money, but too ashamed to face his family, he makes his way south, where he ends up in the small town of Salty Creek, Georgia.  Mr Oto is a soft-spoken and respectful gentleman, and soon becomes friends with Miss Anne, who has hired him as her gardener.  Every day as he works in the flowerbeds, he sees Sophie walk by the house, and it is not long before he is completely infatuated with her.  The two grow very close over time, as they meet every Sunday in the same spot by the river to paint.  

Things change very quickly, though, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.  Everyone in town except Miss Anne and Sophie have been under the assumption that he is Chinese, but they know it likely won't be long before the growing anger toward the Japanese causes them to react anyway.  He is already not the most well-liked individual, what with being colored in the pre-Civil Rights South, and Miss Anne fears for his safety.  She makes a plan to hide him, and makes up a story that he's gone to Canada to be with his family.  The lies weigh heavily on her, and Mr Oto wonders whether he will see Sophie again.

Come In and Cover Me

I received my ARC of Come In and Cover Me by Gin Phillips through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.  The book is set to be released on 12 January, so keep an eye out!  Because my copy is an uncorrected proof, things may have been changed for the finished version (though I hope not too much, because I really enjoyed this book!)

Come In and Cover Me follows Ren, an archaeologist who specializes in pottery.  When Ren is in the field, the sites speak to her, but it isn't just the passion for the work - she can see ghosts of people who once inhabited the site, and they sometimes point her in the right direction for somewhere to dig, or can give her clues as to the interpretation of a find.  Her colleagues believe she has incredible intuition, that she just gets a feeling about a place, and leave it at that.  She's never told anyone what she sees, though she's an extremely private person in general anyway - she's closed herself off since the death of her brother in a car accident when she was twelve years old.

It's because of one of these ghosts that she has made such a big name for herself, when she was led to the location of some intact Mimbres bowls, all seemingly made by the same person.  When items turn up at a different site that also appear to have been made by Ren's artist, she is invited to come take a look.  Working in the canyon is Ed, a colleague and former mentor; Paul, the landowner's son, who is interested in possibly becoming an archaeologist himself someday; and another archaeologist, Silas Cooper, who has a knack for identifying bones.  Ren and Silas are drawn to each other, but while Silas is ready with a story or an anecdote whenever the opportunity presents itself, Ren is extremely guarded.  She's also preoccupied with the ghost of her Mimbres artist coming to her again in the canyon; at this site, though, she's joined with another ghost - the Parrot Woman.

Ren tries to piece together the story of these women, but Silas wants some pieces of Ren's story; can she let go of her ghosts and allow herself to be close to someone tangible?

The Better To Hold You

The Better To Hold You by Alisa Sheckley is the first of Sheckley's books about Abra Barrow.  Abra is a veterinarian living in Manhattan, studying at the Animal Medical Institute, a teaching hospital.  Her husband just got back from spending the summer in Romania, researching the myth of Unwolves for an article he's writing, but Abra notices Hunter has changed since she last saw him.  He didn't write to her much while he was away, and he isn't very forthcoming about what happened to him there, but she understands enough to realize their marriage may be in trouble.  He wants to move into his family's old home in the small town of Northside, and Abra decides to make the move with him, to try and save their marriage.  But she soon finds out that life in this small town is going to be anything but quiet or simple, and when their closest neighbor turns out to be an intriguing stranger who showed up at the Institute one day, she discovers that her situation with her husband is much more complicated than what she ever could have imagined.