Chasing Fire

From Barnes & Noble

Some people find the meaning of their life on the beach; others in the office. For second-generation Missoula smoke jumper Rowan Tripp, fire is her element. Not even the death of her partner last year could change that, but this year, there are other complications. One arrives in the well-toned body of rookie firefighter Gulliver Curry. Rowan finds herself deeply drawn, yet puzzled by Gull's enigmatic ways. Her unforeseen passion unnerves her, but there is a closer threat at hand: An arsonist intent on hiding other crimes is loose in the wilderness. Every blaze rustling in the wind brings someone closer to death?. Nora Roberts at her best.

Publishers Weekly

This searing stand-alone from bestseller Roberts (The Search) celebrates the smoke jumpers of Missoula, Mont., who routinely risk life and limb to beat down raging forest fires. As close knit as any military combat unit, the "Zulies" include veteran Rowan Tripp, haunted by the loss of Jim Brayner, her onetime jump partner who was killed the previous season in a fall, and rookie Gulliver Curry, who soon earns the nickname "Fast Feet" for his speed and prowess. Threatening trouble is cook Dolly Brakeman, Jim's girlfriend, who blames Rowan for his death—and whose new baby may well be Jim's. Rowan and Gull grow closer as the team battles fires from Montana and Idaho to California and Alaska. Meanwhile, the Zulies are plagued by vandalism and sabotage as well as a killer with arson among his crimes. Roberts fans can expect another bestseller. (Apr.)

Rowan Tripp, like her legendary firefighter father, is a veteran Missoula, MT, smoke jumper, and she knows nothing can match the thrill of leaping into the heart of a forest blaze and beating it into submission. Even the lingering grief over the death of her jump partner can't keep her from feeling the rush. But from the moment she connects with rookie hotshot firefighter Gulliver Curry, she knows this season will be different—she just never expects it to take a dark, murderous turn. But someone is out to make trouble, and people will be dead before the fire season is over. VERDICT In her inimitable style, Roberts pens an incendiary tale of murder, mayhem, and life on the rugged Western fire lines. The abundance of firefighting and smoke jumping detail lightened with a pair of delightful love stories will keep readers entranced. With a nod to Blue Smoke and Montana Sky, Roberts combines the scenic grandeur of the West with the high-stakes allure of taming a raging "dragon" and has created another enthralling romantic thriller. Roberts (Happy Ever After) lives in Keedysville, MD.

A smoke jumper who puts her life on the line every fire season has more to fear this year than fire.

A member of the Missoula smoke jumpers since she was 18, Rowan Tripp is tough and gorgeous, proud to be a member of a close-knit team that fights fires all over the West. But last year her partner was killed in a bad jump, and now his girlfriend Dolly is blaming his death on Ro. When Dolly sprays Ro's room with pig's blood, she's fired from her cooking job on the base, stepping up their enmity. Although Ro takes comfort from her new relationship with rookie Gulliver Curry, an erudite Californian with a penchant for firefighting, she's shocked to find Dolly's charred body at a fire scene. Dolly's latest lover is the next body found. Just to make matters more personal, someone (Dolly's father?) takes a shot at Ro and Gull. The fiercely independent Ro is surprised at the trouble she's having in adjusting to a relationship that is about more than sex and dealing with the fact that her legendary father has suddenly fallen for a smart, sexy grandmother. When they realize that someone's putting the team in jeopardy by sabotaging equipment, Ro and Gull resolve to catch the killer.

Popular, prolific Roberts (The Search, 2010, etc.) delivers hair-raising smoke-jumping sequences along with the obligatory thrills, sex and a mystery even the greenest armchair sleuths will be able to solve.

The Barnes & Noble Review

From Eloisa James's "READING ROMANCE" column on The Barnes & Noble Review

I write about dukes. If one of my heroes was around today, he'd be wearing a Rolex, using imported dental floss, and instructing his driver to drop by Tiffany's. In short, I'm a hopeless snob, at least when it comes to fantasy. According to recent news stories, I'm not alone; apparently American girls are stalking British bars hoping to snag Prince Harry. It could be said that as a country, we have a fascination with the wealthy titled class. However, four terrific romances just convinced me that every author doesn't think a coronet is the equivalent of a halo. In these novels, characters do not draw their appeal from their other-worldliness, their dissimilarity from you and me, but from their down-to-earth normality.

Eileen Dreyer's Never a Gentleman looks squarely at the problem I lay out above. If we Americans think that high birth is sexy, what do we think of the middle class? Are regular people sexy? What if -- as in the premise of Dreyer's book -- a gentleman is forced to marry a plain soldier's daughter with callused hands and no knowledge of the ton? And what if his physical beauty matches his birth and wealth? Diccan Hilliard is appalled when he ends up married to an awkward, aging virgin. But Grace Fairchild is an utterly fascinating heroine: honest, strong, forthright, and deeply loving. Even when Diccan breaks her heart (in one of the most wrenching scenes of betrayal I've ever read), she doesn't run away. Grace astonished me, and she constantly did the same for Diccan. You'll find yourself rooting for Diccan to escape his "prison of perfection," as he labels it, and become Grace's lover, rather than just her husband.

Jodi Thomas's Texas Blue is also a historical, set in 1875, but being a western, it has no truck with titles. Even so, the novel circles around notions of class and hierarchy. Lewton Paterson is a gambling man whose lifelong dream is to marry "up," which in this case means finds his way into middle-class respectability. So he scrams a ride to Texas, and sets out to seduce his way into the McMurray ranching family. Lewton is the ultimate anti-hero: "in twenty-eight years he'd seen nothing worth risking his life for, nothing he loved worth dying to protect…life was a game and the man leaving the table with the most chips won." As it turns out, his targeted bride, Emily McMurray, is determined never to marry, so when Lewton arrives on his courting mission, he actually meets her friend Tamela disguised as Emily. Lewton hires the real Emily (for $5/hour) to teach him about ranching, and finds himself falling for a girl who cannot give him the respectable life he wants so badly -- or so he thinks. Texas Blue is a story of a very dear, big-hearted if bumbling, gambler and an exasperated woman who reluctantly teaches him all about ranching and falls in love at the same time. You'll finish this book with a big sigh. Lewton is brave, handsome, hairy (to Emily's mind) -- anything but a gentleman, but as he says in the end, he's also the "luckiest man alive."

As a romance writer, it's a bit hard to write about Nora Roberts. How can someone as prolific as Nora (as with royalty, a single name suffices) write one of the best novels I read all month? It doesn't seem fair! Chasing Fire is a terrific romance, one of her very best, in my opinion. Nora's heroine, Rowan Tripp, is the kind of firefighter who leaps out of a plane to put out forest wildfires. When she's not chasing fires, she trains the rookies -- one of whom is Gulliver Curry. This novel takes the question of class and compounds it: Rowan is, practically speaking, Gulliver's boss. And as she tells him, she doesn't hook up with "rookies, snookies or other smoke jumpers." Nora doesn't always choose to write heart-pounding books about gritty, brave characters (her bridal books feature charming, rich characters). But there is no one who does rough-and-tumble suspense better than she does. Rowan is the kind of woman who can hold her own with high-testosterone firefighters: she can knock a man on his ass, knock back six shots of tequila, and turn down the sexiest man on the team because, as she says, "once you mix sex into it, even smart people can get stupid." Gull is a match for her, though: persistent, charming, and downright heroic once it becomes clear that a murderer lurks in the ranks of the smoke jumpers. I challenge you not to stay up late reading Chasing Fire: it kept me turning pages until 3 AM.

Jill Sorenson's The Edge of Night takes class and compounds it with race. April Ortiz is a Hispanic single mom who works at a strip joint and lives in Chula Vista, a city near San Diego that is exploding with heat and poverty. Noah Young is a white officer assigned to a patrol car in Chula Vista. He's not an undercover FBI agent, demon hunter or werewolf; she isn't an heiress in disguise. They are exactly what they appear to be: hard-working, struggling, regular people. The Edge of Night is an absolutely riveting depiction of life in Chula Vista. I loved this novel -- the heat of the city, the pure decency of Noah and April, the slow way they came together and fell in love in the face of their differences. There is nothing ducal about Noah. But Sorenson taught me to love a man who mutters "screw it," and then gets up his courage to fall on his knees and pull a black velvet box from his pocket. There aren't any Rolexes or limousines in this novel -- unless they belong to drug dealers -- but there's a flash-fire kind of love and passion that is pure romance.

Of course, there's a place for fantasy in the romance genre -- whether the fantastic element involves vampire teeth or a gilded carriage. But we should always keep a corner of our bookcase for novels like these: ones that reaffirm that romance isn't confined to the landed gentry, and that money doesn't make people happy -- love does. When Rowan and Gull are running through a fire and she thinks about his eyes -- "Eyes that didn't lie…Eyes she could trust" -- it strips glittering decoration from the genre and speaks to its heart. In the end, we all want someone to love, someone to trust. These novels speak to the joy of finding it, no matter what your race, gender, or class may be.