Gambler's Daughter

The author of numerous contemporary romances, Owen (Someone to Watch Over Me) makes her historical debut with this engaging Regency. Sabrina Murphy has all the right credentials for a Cinderella: she's orphaned, has a wicked stepmother and stepbrother and faces an unfair murder charge. Her fairy godmother takes the form of a likable scoundrel named Quinn, a former friend of her gambler father. At Quinn's instigation, the desperate Sabrina masquerades as a missing heiress, a relative of the dark-tempered Earl of Trevelyan. Bitter about the desertion of his wife, who subsequently died, the earl is determined to prove this fascinating upstart an impostor. The more Sabrina befriends the rest of his family, the more he rejects her--and, of course, the more he falls in love with her. While Sabrina occasionally seems dense about other people's states of mind, it's a forgivable flaw, given that the sexual tension never lags. A mystery concerning the faithless wife and a series of potentially deadly incidents keep up the pace of Owen's engaging plot. (May)