Diary of Osobe: Fables

In this fine, old-fashioned adventure story, Isobelle, an orphaned English woman, is left for dead by the rest of her party following a shipwreck off the coast of North America. A band of Arabs scoops her up as a treasure to be bartered, and indeed, the plucky blond fetches a neat sum from the Berber tribe that buys her for their leader. During a grueling march across desert sands she is befriended by a lame camel boy and a mincing French doctor, goodhearted but dangerously tactless. The sensible and forthright Isobelle is forced by an irritating authorial device to act as though she's unaware that the handsome soldier she confides in is actually the ruthless sheik she fears. Once this silly bit of chicanery is sorted out, she's free to discover the delights of the flesh with her young sheik, and the love that grows between them proves so strong that she mounts a campaign to save her lord and master from certain death at the hands of another warring tribe. Lide's breathless tone is well suited to her subject; whether riding toward battle or defending her oft-besieged honor, Isobelle is very much the Victorian English girl seduced by the pleasures of a hotter clime. (May)