If He's Daring

August 25, 2014
Fans will enjoy the latest paranormal Regency featuring the Wherlockes and Vaughns, but it’s the weakest installment in an otherwise fantastic family saga. Catryn Gryffin de Warrenne’s brother-in-law, Morris, kidnaps her son, Alwyn, for his inheritance. Catryn is soon hot on their trail with the assistance of Sir Orion Wherlocke and his irrepressible son, Giles. She quickly learns to appreciate the gifts of the Wherlockes and their Vaughn cousins. As she and Orion hunt the ambitious Morris, they uncover dark secrets, including the fact that Alwyn has unexpected talents of his own. Catryn may be a widow and a mother, but she knows very little about how men and women interact. Orion has been enjoying a carefree bachelor lifestyle, but Catryn gets him wondering about the prospect of a happy married life—with the right woman. The quest is long and meandering, which gives Orion and Catryn time to explore where their love will go, but meanwhile the plot gathers dust. Agent: Evan Marshall, Evan Marshall Agency.

October 1, 2014
A 5-year-old boy becomes a pawn in an adults' game when he's kidnapped by his uncle as his mother gives chase in late-18th-century England.In the latest installment of Howell's Wherlockes series, Lady Catryn Gryffin de Warrenne is a lovely widow with a painfully ordinary personality. When her dead husband's brother, Sir Morris de Warrenne, kidnaps her son, Alwyn, Catryn hies off after him, injuring her horse within the first half hour. Fortunately for her, the carriage she steals to continue her pursuit belongs to Sir Orion Wherlocke, just the man to help her find her son: "His family and his colleagues in the government did not call him The Bloodhound as a jest." Even better, Orion's newly discovered 8-year-old son, a former street urchin named Giles, is inside the carriage when Catryn steals it. The Wherlocke clan is known for their supernatural abilities, and as Orion joins Catryn in pursuing Morris across the countryside, it becomes clear that Catryn and Alwyn also have some unusual talents and physical traits that indicate they may have ties to the Wherlocke family. Alwyn's abilities appear, at first, to be a child's game, a habit of talking to made-up people. But it soon becomes clear that he's really able to talk to ghosts. Giles appoints himself Alwyn's protector, even when the newly rescued child is deposited at a Wherlocke family estate while his mother and her champion continue to hunt for Morris. While Orion struggles with his commitment to bachelorhood, Catryn struggles to understand her new insights about the hellish first marriage that produced her son.The Wherlockes' supernatural gifts complement each other and strengthen the story, making for believable and interesting plot twists in spite of the heroine's insipid personality.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.