Give All to Love

The Sanguinet saga (Sanguinet's Crown, The Noblest Frailty rolls on with attention this time to devastatingly handsome Alain Devenish and his ward, Josie Storm. It takes a welter of stratagems, entrapments and collusion from a variegated household staff of eccentric retainers and overly domesticated animals before a predictable finale is reached. Familiars, good and evil, from the earlier volumes are on the scene, but it is pert Josie, the waif stolen by gypsies whom Devenish adopted four years earlier, and who now lays siege to his heart, who stirs the action. Josie has a coming-out party at which obese George IV makes an unscheduled stop and just narrowly misses imbibing some poisoned champagne. As Josie plays a teasing, flirting game to arouse Devenish, he contends with old political enemies. Josie's discovery of her rootsshe's a French heiressclears their path to the altar. Veryan reprises some of the dark Sanguinet history, but readers who enjoyed the earlier novels will most easily follow the latest romantic adventures. (August 17)