The Promise

"I saw the only woman I ever loved almost destroyed by my secrets. But it was the telling of them, in the end, that brought her to ruin."From the journals of Matise Devoncroix

Hannah Braselton North has abandoned civilization to spend her life in the Alaskan wilderness. And now she holds in her hands the supposed "memoirs" of one Matise Devoncroix. It is a story of strange desires and forbidden love—the tale of a magnificent hidden race and a tortured, doomed relationship. And it is somehow connected to the critically injured male wolf Hannah pulled from the same airplane wreckage in which she discovered the diary.

But the deeper she delves into Devoncroix's story—and the stronger her recovering "patient" becomes—the more the sad, reclusive scientist realizes that what she is reading is no mere fiction. The world's true rulers have been revealed to her: fierce, strong, beautiful, and sensual creatures who have long dominated civilization in secret. The burned and bloody wolf she has taken into her small cabin is one of them: a living relation of the tragic Matise, Nicholas Devoncroix. And as his broken body mends, his awesome powers of attraction strengthen as well—as do his memories and his rage...and his lust for vengeance.

"Mesmerizing...refreshing and compelling...In the tradition of Anne Rice, Boyd transforms the monsters of myth and legend into erotic and charismatic beings."

-Library Journal

"Provides a strong erotic punch. Readers will crave another novel set in this magical realm."

-Publishers Weekly

"A maelstrom of suspense, love, and terror...a gripping, intense fantasy with riveting characters."

-Rendezvous

"If Anne Rice wrote about werewolves, the novel would be similar to this brilliantly erotic tale."

-Midwest Book Review

"Quickly satisfying...a horror/love story offering some of the density of background found in the best vampire fiction...This talented newcomer...knows how to keep a tale moving...First installment of a series, and a promising one, in which animal instincts are plumbed and superfine senses evoked with great originality."

-Kirkus Reviews

Donna Boyd lives in the mountains of North Georgia.

Publishers Weekly

The full moon glows as Boyd follows The Passion with a second chronicle about the Devoncroix pack, chieftains of a hidden race of werewolves secretly responsible for nearly every advancement in human civilization. Bereaved Hannah North has come to the remote Alaskan wilderness to mourn the death of her husband when she rescues a mortally injured male wolf from a helicopter crash. A hardbound book that she finds in the wreckage, which turn out to be the memoirs of Matise Devoncroix, reveals to Hannah that the stunning creature she has saved is Nicholas, heir to the recently assassinated Alexander Devoncroix, leader of all the werewolves. Nicholas, however, bitterly opposes Alexander's dream of peaceable werewolf-human coexistence. Hannah's efforts to save Nicholas, presently trapped in wolf form, counterpoint Matise's eerily hypnotic account of his own loving and vengeful relationship with Brianna, a powerful young female werewolf unable to change from human to lupine form. Matise's book also includes his reflections on the mingled history of werewolves and the humans they originally kept as beasts of burden, a symbiosis marred by the human proclivity for violence and treachery. Boyd's elegant, aristocratic werewolves are more convincing than her brutish humans, and her constant shifts between Hannah's narrative and Matise's memoirs can be creaky, but she makes the esoteric werewolf culture consistently and appealingly exotic, witty and sexy. Redolent with heightened olfactory imagery, this heady exploration of interspecies contact and uneasy accommodation should open the door to a whole litter of sequels. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Donna Boyd lives in the mountains of North Georgia.