Perilous Pleasures

A courtesan’s unattractive daughter meets a passionate Pisces sworn to chastity in the third of the Lords of the Seventh House series of astrological Regency romances from Brown (after Lord Lightning). Adam Selkirk, Lord Ramsay, is sent by the feared Laird of Iskeny to capture Zoe Gervais, the daughter of the flighty Isabelle, a courtesan Adam holds responsible for the death of his sister during the Reign of Terror. Adam and Zoe’s growing mutual attraction risks both her virtue and the ritual purity that would allow Adam to claim the ancient powers of the Old Ones upon his master’s death. Though the astrological element does not overwhelm the plot, Brown’s tale is an uneasy mix of Regency romance, a heavy gothic streak, and an increasingly baroque occult soap opera (“You are such a Pisces, with all the Piscean hunger for self-destruction”) burdened with layers of too convenient revelations. Agent: Judith Ehrlich, Judith Ehrlich Literary Management. (Apr.)