cover image Ladies' Choice

Ladies' Choice

Karen Lockwood. Jove Books, $5.99 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-515-11959-6

In this confusing, uneven addition to the Homespun line, Lockwood (Lilac Circle) focuses on the blue ""bachelor buttons"" worn by the unmarried mill workers in Bunyan, Mich., a town with more annoying rules than fleas on a dog. Morna Patterson has fled Ireland with her dowry and settled in Bunyan, where she hopes to open a lace factory. The town's owner, Quinn Montgomery, who is agonizing over his wife's deceit/desertion/death (none of which is ever fully explained), refuses to allow an independent unmarried woman to take up residence in Bunyan. Morna puts Quinn in a spin when she purchases the home he shared with his wife and turns it into a boardinghouse. To force her out, he offers her a wager; her virtue against the house. Morna loses the bet and wins Quinn, but by that time, the reader has ceased to care. (Nov.)