All Through the Night

Intricately plotted, with highly inventive lead characters, Brockway's latest is an intense and complicated romance that makes good use of its historical setting, England in 1817. This spy-catches-thief story weaves together dark secondary characters, some shocking sexual frankness (a masturbation scene and some non-euphemistic language), and truly tormented lead characters who, in contrast to the dukes and ladies in most romances, are not to the manor born. Everything works in this cat-and-mouse tale-there is excitement, chemistry, obsession, and, best of all, a tortured romance that has an ending befitting its unusual story line. Readers new to Brockway will want to check out her earlier A Dangerous Man and As You Desire after reading this. (Oct.)