Notorious

Eden Rossiter is the owner of Spur Ranch, located thirty miles north of the small town of Friendly, Nevada. She is as strong and cautious as she is beautiful, struggling in a world of cattle runs and prairie dust where a spirited woman is not generally welcome. Eden is notorious in Friendly for having eluded a first-degree murder charge some years before, and she is also widely admired for not selling off the family ranch after her grandfather's death. But now Eden is in real troubleDuke Depard, owner of the neighboring two-and-a-half-million-acre Diamond D Ranch, is ruthlessly determined to drive her out of business. Depard is too powerful an enemy for anyone to stand up to alone, and Eden's only family is a ne'er-do-well brother, Vince, whose gambling habits make him unpredictable - and dangerous.
Then a stranger drifts into Friendly. Kincade is a soft-spoken, ruggedly handsome man who takes up Eden's cause and becomes her ally against Depard and his band of crooked ranchers. Their union is strictly business, and Eden, who deeply distrusts affairs of the heart, is determined to keep it that way. But Kincade has never felt for another woman the way he feels for Eden. As they struggle together through danger and adversity, Eden realizes the depths of Kincade's devotion, and her reserve gives way to the untapped passions of her heart.

Some formulas never go out of style, and the prolific Dailey (Legacies, 1995) always mixes the ingredients well. As she has done some 90 times previously, first in Harlequin romances and later in hardcover (here for the first time for HarperCollins), Dailey arranges for a tough-minded heroine to meet a strong alpha male. A broken-down pickup truck strands Kincade (a nod to the hero of The Bridges of Madison County?) Harris, a washed-up rodeo rider, in the small town of Friendly, Nev. Almost immediately, he rescues pretty Eden Rossiter, owner of the Spur Ranch, from a stampeding herd of cattle. Sparks fly, and she hires Kincade as a ranch hand. But Eden is skittish when it comes to men: about 10 years ago, she was acquitted of killing Jeff DePard during an attempted rape. Now Jeff's brother is determined to drive Spur Ranch out of business; he's abetted by Eden's own brother, whose gambling addiction makes him DePard's pawn. Steering clear of vapid introspection and dialogue, the novel succeeds on the strength of Dailey's well-paced plot and emotion-packed ending. $250,000 ad/promo; Doubleday Book Club main selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Books selection; author tour; U.K., translation, dramatic rights: Richard Curtis.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fans of Dailey's easygoing romances (all 90 of them) can drop the reins on this one and just amble through familiar horse-opera territory with a classic cast: a Boss Lady (with a vulnerable lil' gal within) working hard to keep the family ranch out of the clutches of the local law and a neighboring heavy who owns a rich spread. Enter an ex-rodeo rider, unattached, with a score to settle, and love and plots bloom like the sage. The Stranger, Kincade (with a ``sleepy-eyed look that almost concealed the cold, hard blue of his eyes''), first spots the proud, unbendable Eden Rossiter (her hair ``the dark, rich shade of expensive Swiss chocolate'') when he wanders into the little (and misnamed) town of Friendly, Nevada. Yummy Eden is being harassed regularly by DePard, a rancher ``wide and heavy in the saddle.'' DePard not only wants Eden's Spur Ranch, but he's bent on revenge: He believes Eden murdered his brother Jeff. (Flashbacks uncover Eden's nightmare ``date'' with Jeff.) Prodding Eden to sell the ranch is her gambler brother Vince, whose only virtue seems to be his love for his sister. Kincade joins the crew at Spur and closes in on brother Vince--was he the cause of the death of Kincade's sister? Vince has been hog-tying Eden's plans to market her cattle by clueing in DePard, whose snipers warn off would-be haulers. Meanwhile, Kincade and Eden are lasso-ed in love and spend a passionate interlude in Reno while hunting down Vince, who's by now rabbitted off. It all ends with a marathon round-up and drive--and a showdown. Old stuff at an easy narrative canter by a pro, and it's all here--from the chuckwagon's lethal coffee to ``the pound of hooves, the clink of spurs, the snap of sagebrush.'' (Doubleday Book Club main selection; $250,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The latest novel by the prolific and wildly popular Dailey is a contemporary western romance. Set in Nevada, with a plot that's sort of a latter-day Big Valley, the tale boasts scenery as important as any of its characters: "Here was the West of legend, subtle in its grandeur and awesome in its vastness, a land of broad, undulating valleys clumped with sage brush, riven with dry arroyos, and walled by jagged, saw-toothed mountains." Eden Rossiter owns Spur Ranch, but her hold on her holdings is threatened by her mean neighbor, the figurative guy in the black hat. One day a tall stranger rides in--he, of course, in the figurative white hat. With dialogue so cliched it's brittle, the novel nonetheless spins and cascades with exciting action as the tall stranger helps Eden with her ranch troubles and her hard heart. Brad Hooper