Tea for Two [Mass Market Paperback]

While Carlyle (A Woman of Virtue) delivers a fast-moving, vibrant romance in Hunting Season, the second of two Regency-era novellas in this volume, Maxwell's (The Wedding Wager) trite offering, In a Moonlit Garden, lacks inspiration and originality. In the latter, Colonel Michael Sanson, naive about the woman he thinks he loves, allows himself to be pressured by her father into retrieving a scientific formula that has ostensibly been stolen from him. However, immediately upon meeting the supposed thief's niece, Jocelyn, Michael's affections shift, and he agrees to be a part of her plan to make her former beau jealous. Maxwell's protagonists are engaging in a familiar way, but her formulaic plot and transparent secondary characters make this a difficult draught to swallow. In contrast, readers will drink their fill of Carlyle's aptly titled Hunting Season, which is a play on the time of year as well as the Marquis of Grayston's pursuit of Lady Elise Middleton. Grayston is determined to destroy Denys Roth, the fortune-hunter who ruined his sister and led her to commit suicide, but Roth's new quarry, the beautiful Elise, may tempt Grayston to choose love over vengeance. Although both entries nicely convey the flavor of the period, it is Carlyle's heady and highly sensual romance that will slake the reader's thirst.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Although, linked by the taste of tea, heroes with ulterior motives, and Regency settings, this pair of novellas by two of the genre's more popular writers are diverse enough to treat readers to two quite different, but equally enjoyable, experiences. In Maxwell's "In a Moonlit Garden," the lighter and more sensual of the two stories, a young man agrees to pose as a tea peddler and retrieve a stolen formula in order to win the woman he thinks he loves but instead falls in love with another. A tale of suicide and vengence, Carlyle's engrossing "Hunting Season," is a darker, more sexually graphic, but no less romantically satisfying read. Running a bit on the long side, these novellas read more like short historicals and may appeal to those readers who generally avoid anthologies.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

One of the hottest romance writers today, Cathy Maxwell joins forces with rising star Liz Carlyle to serve up an irresistible treat -- two deliciously sensual Regency novellas.

IN A MOONLIT GARDEN
CATHY MAXWELL

Posing as a tea merchant, Colonel Michael Sanson inÞltrates an eccentric chemist's household in search of a stolen formula. But as soon as he lays eyes on the thief's niece, Lady Jocelyn, he is sidetracked into doing the fair lady's bidding. Little does Michael know that assisting in Jocelyn's scheme to make her former suitor jealous will send him into a tailspin of love and white-hot passion.

HUNTING SEASON
LIZ CARLYLE

Christian Villiers, the Marquis of Grayston, returns to England determined to ruin the man responsible for his beloved sister's suicide. Seducing the cad's intended, Lady Elise Middleton, would be a bonus. But during an elaborate house party, Christian realizes he has met his match in the Þery and passionate Elise...and soon he must decide whether a moment of vengeance is worth risking a lifetime of love.

Cathy Maxwell is a New York Times bestselling author who lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.

During her frequent travels through England, Liz Carlyle always packs her pearls, her dancing slippers, and her whalebone corset, confident in the belief that eventually she will receive an invitation to a ball or a rout. Alas, none has been forthcoming. While waiting, however, she has managed to learn where all the damp, dark alleys and low public houses can be found.

Liz hopes she has brought just a little of the nineteenth century alive for the reader in her popular novels, which include the trilogy of One Little Sin, Two Little Lies, and Three Little Secrets, as well as The Devil You Know, A Deal With the Devil, and The Devil to Pay. Please visit her at www.lizcarlyle.com, especially if you're giving a ball.