Ablaze by Kit Tunstall High school teacher, Miriam "Miri" Zorga feels an instant attraction to Nick Martin, the handsome firefighter who saves her life, and she thinks that the feeling is mutual. However, after one date and night together Miri thinks she may have made a mistake and resolves never to see Nick again. But Nick is a charmer who won't take "no" for an answer and pursues Miri with vigor. Miri resists but doesn't realize how she feels about Nick until she almost looses him.

Fantasy Bar by Trista Ann Michaels When Kiranda "Kira" Vordak shoots and then escapes from the sadist who tortured and held her captive, she retreats to the planet Klindor where she lies low to heal physically and emotionally. She's unaware that Jerrod Scollin, her ex-captive's best friend and lead detective in the shooting case, has tracked her to the planet. Unaware of each other's identity, they are mutually attracted and fall for each other until Jerrod discovers that Kira is the woman who killed his friend and she discovers that he's the man who was sent to arrest her.

Ride a Cowboy by Delilah Devlin To recover from a bad marriage and divorce, librarian Katelyn Carter relocates from Atlanta to a small Texas town. She buys a country house in need of rehabbing. Her first day in town she meets sexy, but younger, deputy Daniel Bodine but gives him the brush-off. The next day when she calls for help to remove a rattlesnake from her home, Daniel comes to her rescue and offers his professional services to fix the house and her broken heart.

Love relationships, like love stories, need time to develop. That's why it can be a challenge to create a good romance anthology in a small volume. Most of the stories in this public hero collection read as if their development was rushed. The characters are flat (i.e., one character is simply referred to as the "wife beater") with no real sense of purpose for their stories. They're simply uninteresting and hard to care about. The plots are predictable without development twists, uniqueness, or sparks of imagination -- at least none that make sense within context. If you're new to these authors, be aware that they are multi-published and have previous works of better quality you may wish to consider. Although the exception to the collection is the final story by Delilah Devlin. In "Ride a Cowboy" the reader never forgets who the characters are and where they're from. The regional southern dialect and character actions give the characters dimension. And the plot, like the Texas accents, is leisurely and authentic.

Also, if you enjoy romance sub-genres you'll be glad to know that in additional to traditional romance, this collection includes both a science fiction and a paranormal shapeshifter story.

Book Summary