Thief of Hearts

Reclusive, mysterious novelist Jesse Falconer becomes the titular thief of hearts who wins the love of heart surgeon Caitlin Taylor in this heart-tugging contemporary romance. When Caitlin learns that her friend and mentor, trauma surgeon Patrick Falconer, urgently needs a bone marrow transplant, she sets out to find Patrick's estranged fraternal twin, Jesse, the most likely donor candidate. Caitlin locates Jesse at his estate on Maui and convinces him to come to L.A. and save his brother's life. Jesse is a tormented man, having been wrongly accused of attempted murder, and having served a prison term for a rape he did not commit. Yet Caitlin sees in him a lonely soul like her own. Meanwhile, psychiatrist Amanda Prentice, a victim of every imaginable trauma (rape, incest, her mother's murder), becomes Patrick's great love. Stone's plot depends heavily on coincidence: Caitlin saves the life of a billionaire's grandson who just happens to be connected to Jesse; later, she finds herself having to operate on the six-year-old girl whom Jesse has treated as his own daughter. Stone (Bed of Roses) has mastered most of the genre's conventions, handling its familiar metaphors (snow, lions, hearts) deftly; even better, she knows how to render sexual passion convincingly without anatomical details-- though she knows anatomy well enough: she's a physician as well as an author, and her medical knowledge spruces up the surgical scenes. And when Caitlin and Amanda grieve together for their dead mothers, few romance fans will remain unmoved. (Feb.)