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FRANCES HOUSDEN |
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Heartbreak Hero |
Silhouette Intimate Moments
1241 |
Unlike my last two books, I'd
class Heartbreak Hero as a romantic adventure with paranormal
elements. I had a great time researching this book by touring the South
Island with my husband, Keith. While we were in Queenstown, I experienced
my first earthquake. I was sitting reading the morning newspaper when
suddenly the chair began rocking and rolling under me. Of course by the
time I thought about standing in a doorway, it was all over, but this is
where serendipity took a hand. In that newspaper was an advertisement for
a display of greenstone (New Zealand jade), ancient and modern, in an art
gallery in Greymouth on the West Coast. And it just so happened we were
heading in that direction. The display of greenstone was awesome, and
although we'd missed the Maori ceremony conducted at the opening, the
atmosphere in the gallery still rang with the mystery and legends
contained in those pieces of New Zealand jade.
It just so happened I was writing about a piece of greenstone taken far away from New Zealand to America in the nineteen-forties and in the gallery I found a small book that added so much to my knowledge on the subject. It was as if I'd been sent there. The name of the greenstone mere in my book is Te Ruahiki and of all the secondary characters he's the one I liked writing the most.
From the Land of myth and legend comes the first story of four in the Jellic Brothers that leads on from LOVE UNDER FIRE. It's the story of Kelman Jellic, the Heartbreak Hero, and Ngaire (NYREE) Two Feathers McKay, a woman with the blood of three nations running in her veins - Maori, Native American and Scottish - and a past that led her to become a Hapkido master. She is on a quest to the land her grandfather called paradise, to return Te Ruahiki to his home at Akaroa New Zealand and hopefully save her life in the process. Ngaire Two Feathers McKay travels from San Francisco through the South Pacific on a journey to take Te Ruahiki back home and break the tapu, the curse, that killed both her mother and grandmother. Will Global Drug Enforcement agent Kel Jellic help or hinder her quest, as he seeks to prove Ngaire is carrying the formula for the new lethal designer drug kiss-and-tell? |
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