Night Fires

October 15, 2003
Simone de la Fer paid a high price for youthful indiscretion. Forced into a vampire's world of darkness, she uses the powers of her curse to help victims of the French Revolution. British spy Michael Corday lives a dark life of his own, though one forged from childhood scars. The two join forces to complete their respective missions, never dreaming each would be the other's salvation. This story would be noteworthy enough for its female vampire, a rarity in the romance world, but Harbaugh paints a poignant portrait of all forms of faith lost and reclaimed, and of redemption, against a richly detailed canvas of the chaos of turn-of-the-nineteenth-century France. The only disappointment is that there is no evidence that Harbaugh plans to further elaborate on the concept and culture of vampirism set forth in this book in the near future, although one can always hope.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)