Scottish Magic: Four Spellbinding Tales of Magic and Timeless Love by Hannah Howell, Mandalyn Kaye, Elizabeth A. Michaels, Kensington Publishing Corporation Staff

From the Publisher

A handsome laird meets his match in Stobie Piel's Lily. Although she is responsible for the curse that has haunted Duncan MacLachlan since birth, Lily has always watched over him...and loves him with all her heart. But she has never allowed him to see her...until one fateful day. Unaware of who Lily really is, Duncan loses his own heart to the fey beauty. Sworn to make her his, his passion will be put to the ultimate test when Lily becomes a pawn in a battle between good and evil that can only be won by love itself. Hannah Howell's Isbel introduces an ethereal beauty who possesses the gift of sight, a legacy that flows through the MacLachlan blood. Her sensual dream of a tall, black-haired warrior turns passionately real when he steps off the battlefield and into her life. She knows it is her destiny to heal him and to desire him. But first he must learn to trust this bewitchingly beautiful woman who offers him nothing but the magical passion of her love. Destiny and desire become one in Faerie Princess, Elizabeth Ann Michaels's tale of the cerulean-eyed Krista, who possesses a special gift passed down from the very first MacLachlan bride. When she meets the enigmatic Prince Alexi, he makes her burn with unaccustomed fire. But Alexi is a rogue, a seducer...and a man about to discover love with a woman whose capricious charm holds a magic all its own. Two lovers discover a passion that journeys beyond time in Mandalyn Kaye's Beneath the Midnight Sky. Every one hundred years, Stuart MacLachlan awakens from his enchanted slumber to end the curse placed on his cherished love, Laren Campbell. But now he has only five days to solve the legendary faerie riddle...or surrender to the darkness forever.

Publishers Weekly

These four sequential fairy tales, connected by setting, family and theme and written by four popular romance writers, are interesting as a study in interconnection and stylistic contrast. Piel's talethe first and most pivotalis the best of the lot. Set in A.D. 850, it concerns the faerie Lily, one of the "unseelies"the dark sisters of Titania's "light" bandwho finds herself in love with Duncan MacLachlan, the son of the Scottish laird of Loch Fyne. Lily's striking voice makes this story a charmer. Duncan's brother, Struan, in a to-be-continued twist, meets a strange fate in the feud waged against Titania by the unseelie queen Nathara and must risk his soul every 100 years to save his beloved. Continuing with Lily and Duncan's descendants, Howell's installment is more earthy, with an oddly modern sensibility, and scores with atmospherically effective Scots dialogue. Isbel of the MacLachians finds her faerie-fated mate in 1362 and struggles to capture his heart before he's overwhelmed by her powers. The fate-and-psychic gifts motif continues in Michael's cloying and simplistic entry, as another of Lily's beneficiaries, the silver-blue-eyed Krista, finds her war-traumatized man in a firestorm of undeniable spiritual and physical desire in 1818. The story cycle is rounded out in 1850 in Kaye's contribution, in which Struan gets his last chance to rescue the soul of his love, Laren Campbell. The weakest of the four is this last, which leaves much unresolved. (Sept.)

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