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Eight hundred years ago, Zoltan Czakvar, the hero of Kerrelyn Sparks’s How to Seduce a Vampire (Without Really Trying) (Avon; paperback, $7.99), mysteriously survived an attack on his village by a tribe of female warriors. For nearly a millennium, the vampire has searched for his father’s killer, but when he finds the tribe alive in modern times, he becomes their prisoner. The female warriors need him to procreate — they’re desperate to boost their numbers — but Neona, the woman who has been chosen to carry his child, recognizes him as the boy she saved from death centuries ago. Zoltan is no longer a boy, however, and the vampire is ready to do anything to find comfort after surviving for so long with vengeance in his heart. Here, the heroine does the saving — with kindness and a deft touch. “You saved me,” Zoltan whispers at one point, shocked by the connection between them that has lasted so long. She responds by revisiting each of his scars, recounting his healing. In classic Sparks fashion, the scene is sexy and poignant with a twist of humor, and serves as a reminder that heroes who allow themselves to be saved are often the most heroic of them all.
Grayson Tyler, the hero of Bella Andre’s Always On My Mind (Harlequin/MIRA; paperback, $7.99), is as broken as they come, hidden away on a farm in Northern California where he escaped after his wife’s tragic death. He’s sworn off love of everything, including the ancient cat that came with the farmhouse. So when dancer Lori Sullivan escapes a terrible relationship, turns up in his driveway in inappropriate shoes and threatens his peace, he wants nothing to do with her. BUT these two characters are powerfully connected, in part because they so deeply understand each other. Both are wounded, but while Grayson believes that love is a weapon, Lori believes it is a salve. When her belief is tested, she cries in Grayson’s arms, “Love is too hard. . . . I’m too weak for love.” She’s wrong, of course, and he knows it; she’s strong enough for love, and that love saves him. Just as it should.
MacLean is the author of historical romance. Her most recent book is “No Good Duke Goes Unpunished.”
How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days
By Laura Lee Guhrke
Avon. Paperback, $7.99
How to Seduce a Vampire (Without Really Trying)
By Kerrelyn Sparks
Avon. Paperback, $7.99
Always On My Mind
By Bella Andre
Harlequin/MIRA. Paperback, $7.99