Book #4 was Night Fire, the first book in Catherine Coulter’s Night Trilogy.  The back of the book reads:

Dear Reader:

Night Fire, the first of the Night Trilogy, was first published in early 1989. I haven’t rewritten it, just cleaned it up a bit and Avon books has given it a wonderful new cover.

Arielle Leslie is a sixteen-year-old girl forced to wed Paisley Cochrane, a sadistic old man who abuses her. When he dies, she believes herself free. But she’s not.

Burke Drummond, Earl of Ravensworth — a young man she’d worshipped three years before — is home from the wars, and he wants her. When he catches her, he’s in for an appalling surprise.

I hope Burke and Arielle are two people who will touch you as deeply as they touched me. They face problems and obstacles never spoken of in Regency times.

If you haven’t yet read Night Fire, do give it a try.

– Catherine Coulter

I have mixed feelings about this.  Arielle is horribly abused by her first husband, but frankly, Burke wasn’t much better for much of the book.  He decided that he wanted to have Arielle as his wife, and who cares what she thinks about it.  Surely, if she’s forced to spend all her time with him, she’ll come around eventually!  Burke may have never physically hurt her, but the beginning of their relationship was no less abusive.  That being said, I did like Arielle and Burke and I liked them together, in the end.  There’s some interesting conflict here, and a recurring theme of how husbands and wives relate to each other.  Her groom, Geordie, was also an interesting character — I wish he’d been used more in the story. I’ll read the rest of this trilogy, but I hope the subject matter isn’t so difficult in the others.

Page count: 400 | Word count: 99,867

2009: Kopek the Destroyer (Phil Owens)
2008: The Ice Queen (Alice Hoffman)
2007: Agnes of God (Leonore Fleisher)
2006: Postmortem (Patricia Cornwell)
2005: The Bad Beginning (Lemony Snicket)

Used in these Challenges: 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; Reading From My Shelves Project; 1st in a Series Challenge; Pages Read Challenge Season 2; Year of the Historical;

 Book #123 was The Wyndham Legacy by Catherine Coulter.  The back of the book reads:

At the age of nine, Josephina Cochrane is mockingly dubbed the “Duchess” by her half-cousin, Marcus Wyndham. Little does Marcus suspect that the Duchess will one day reign sovereign over his own future. For the Earl of Chase, the Duchess’s father and Marcus’s uncle, leaves a double-edged inheritance, a legacy that will bind their fates.

When the Earl of Chase dies without a son, Marcus stands to inherit his fortune and title. But the old earl, bitter that Marcus escaped the tragedy that claimed the lives of his two sons, has laced his legacy with vengeful stipulations.

But there is another Wyndham legacy, one beyond the Earl of Chase’s rank and holdings; a treasure from long ago that’s shrouded in legend. Before the rival legacies can be settled, the Duchess and Marcus must solve two mysteries – one from the past and one that shadows the present.

I’ve never read Catherine Coulter and don’t read a lot of historical romance, but I enjoyed this. Most of the book was banter between the Duchess and Marcus, and you found yourself cheering them to succeed. And Aunt Wilhelmina was just about the best “evil relative” I’ve ever read — more comic relief than anything else. The “Wyndham Legacy” was mostly just a diversion from the love story, but the ending was a surprise.

Page count: 384 | Word count: 122,678