Be Mine: A Romantic Quartet of Special Valentines to Capture Your Heart

Romance fans with a sense of humor may find just what they are looking for in this quartet of light-hearted love stories by four popular authors. Throughout, spunky, offbeat characters give well-worn plots new life. Cupid's arrow is often as off-target as Dokey's narrator's ""Incredibly Embarrassing Flying Object"" (a tampon that lands in the middle of hunky John Mulholland's history book), but resulting confusion always leads to predictably happy conclusions. Wyeth's twosome, the mismatched stars of a high school production of Romeo and Juliet, end up as enamored as the characters they play. After traveling halfway across the country (and spending his entire life's savings), Jensen's protagonist is jilted by his girlfriend, then gets a second chance for love at the Baltimore bus depot when he meets a singer en route like him to Chicago. In Thesman's entry, a Danish boy named Kai mistakes Laurie's passionate, anonymous epistles for cryptic messages from the paper girl, but ties loose threads into a love knot in time for the holiday mixer. The selections are accompanied by writers' memories of red-letter Valentine's Days, including some semi-humiliating experiences of their own. An easy-to-digest Valentine confection. Ages 12-up. (Feb.)