Seduction on a Snowy Night

Kidnapping is the theme of this fun trilogy of holiday Regency romances. In Hunter’s “A Christmas Abduction,” Caroline Dunham kidnaps Adam Prescott, Baron Thornhill, planning to force him to marry her sister, whom she believes he seduced and impregnated. But when he saves her life, vows not to try to escape, and gains the respect of her employees, she falls for him herself. In Jeffries’s “A Perfect Match,” Col. Lord Heywood Wolfe abducts Cassandra Isles and her cousin Katherine “Kitty” Nickman in order to protect Kitty from a fortune hunter. Heywood thinks he’s in love with Kitty, thanks to the witty letters her brother shared with him, but he soon learns that Cassandra was the author of the words that touched his heart. Putney’s “Wicked Winter Night” features an unusual victim. When Anthony Raines is finally reunited with Lady Diana Lawrence, who broke his heart years earlier, he demands to know why she fled after he proposed; when she refuses to tell him, he kidnaps her cat. Desperate to regain her beloved feline companion, Diana yields to Anthony’s demands, and the two reignite their romantic fire. Christmas touches appear throughout, and the passion is hot enough to melt a snowbank. This fanciful Regency anthology will keep readers warm all winter. (Oct.)