Blackmail Earth

Jenna Withers, a weatherperson for a Manhattan morning TV show, takes center stage in WABC-TV weatherman Evans’s so-so fourth weather thriller (after 2011’s Dry Ice, with Marianna Jameson). Global warming has hit hard, and drought conditions exist in much of the world. In addition, al-Qaeda terrorists threaten global freezing, and North Korea has plans for a similar attack. Meanwhile, Jenna falls for a hunky dairy farmer she interviews in upstate New York, Dafoe Tillian, who has his own troubles centered on a group of pagans who hold nude gatherings in the nearby woods. The brutal murder of the pagan leader, GreenSpirit, on Tillian’s land ups the ante. The multiple plot lines play out independently, leaving Jenna, who turns out to be good with a gun when terrorists attack her morning news show, as the primary focus. The geo-engineering meteorological information will interest series fans, but readers should be prepared for some typical romance fiction prose. Agent: Coleen O’Shea, the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency. (June)