Pirates

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller writes the kind of high-spirited, totally absorbing novels that captivate us right to the last line.

Known for her fast-paced stories and delightful Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy blend of wit and sexual tension, she creates characters who walk right off the pages and into your heart (Rendezvous).

Now Linda Lael Miller sweeps readers away — and through time itself — when a thoroughly modern woman encounters a dangerous, dashing eighteenth-century buccaneer. The result is a sensuous, joyous, utterly heartwarming tale of love....

Phoebe Turlow needs to get out of Seattle and forget about the man she just divorced, her dwindling finances, and the lonely nights that stretch ahead of her. But she can't foresee what awaits her on Paradise Island....

Duncan Rourke is known to historians as the pirate patriot. He's been dead for two centuries — or at least he's supposed to be, until Phoebe Turlow steps out of a van, into a run-down island hotel, and into his world.

Neither Phoebe nor her pirate can envision the glorious adventure that is about to unfold. They understand only that they have found each other, and a grand passion, across the chasm of time...and they fear only the moment when it may vanish. Passionate, emotional, and completely entrancing, Pirates will steal your heart.

Publishers Weekly

Marking the author's transition to hardcover, Miller's 20th novel is a time-travel romance set in the Caribbean in the present and in the 1800s. Depressed about her divorce and the loss of her job as a researcher for a professor of American history, Phoebe Turlow, 35, accepts a free promotional trip to Paradise Island. There, at a costume party, she enters an elevator and finds herself in 1780, facing Duncan Rourke, pirate and patriot of the American Revolution. Hunted by the British and rival pirate Jacques Mornault, Duncan and his men hide on the island when not raiding ships for arms for the revolutionary forces. Though befriended by an island seer and Duncan's ex-mistress, Phoebe leaves for Queen's Town where she endures wretched conditions working in a tavern until she is rescued by Duncan, who becomes her lover. Soon pregnant, Phoebe, along with Duncan, faces many perils-including a return to the present-before the story reaches its unsurprising ending. The characters wobble between clich and absurdity (historical researcher Phoebe, when asked when photography was invented, says, ``sometime in the 19th century, I think''); the principals accept time-travel with scarcely a shake of their heads; coincidences abound; and Miller writes in a breathless gush (Duncan's piano playing ``filled the room, the house, the universe with its pulsating chords''). Still, with lively bodice-rippings, a dashing hero and lots of period lore, this may satisfy the more undemanding of romance readers. Major ad/promo; author tour. (July)