cover image Love Songs

Love Songs

Katherine Stone. Zebra, $4.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8217-3362-2

Stone ( Bel Air ) sets her facile new high-life tale in Long Island's Southampton, where everything is superlative and everyone ``stunningly'' handsome or successful pp 8,11 , but also confused, letting lies and secrets get in the way of their otherwise perfect loves. Julia was a virginal 16 when she met Jeffrey and became pregnant with Merry; but Jeffrey, now a national TV news anchorman, had been long infertile from a childhood illness, and his belief that Julia had a lover rocks their marriage. As for Diana, inventor of an artificial heart p. 31 , she is facing divorce because she won't tell her husband Chase that her refusal to have children stems from the fact that she once lost a daughter. And if only the rising young attorney Casey had listened more closely to her lover Patrick's clues about his secret life, she could have saved herself some time investigating his past. Stone packs her story with beautiful women, mistaken situations and bitter rivalries, but realism is not a prime factor, as indicated by Casey's decision to wear her hair loose when trying a rape case, because, she thinks, ``the case was really about freedom, wasn't it?'' 800,000WHAT?/yes sirree/pk first printing. (Apr.)