Setting: Blue Bayou, Louisiana

Sensuality: 8

Beautiful Danielle Dupree returns to Blue Bayou with her young son to rebuild her life after a bad marriage ends. With her estranged father soon to be released from prison and her new apartment damaged by fire, she has more than enough problems to deal with. But fate throws Danielle another curve when she learns that her first and only love, Jack Callahan, has also returned to the small Louisiana town. Once known as Bad Jack, Callahan is a wildly successful author and the owner of Beau Soleil, the antebellum mansion that was Danielle's beloved childhood home. A single meeting is enough to convince both of them that the heat that once blazed between them still smolders. But both have personal histories rife with pain and secrets that may tear them apart before they have a second chance at love. And Jack has an old score to settle that threatens to endanger Danielle and her son before exonerating her father.

Filled with a host of terrific secondary characters, Blue Bayou is the first in a trilogy of novels by Ross featuring the Callahan brothers. The Louisiana bayou setting drips with Cajun atmosphere and the heroine is a quintessential southern princess paired with a sexy bad-boy hero. The two generate enough sensual heat between them to make the pages sizzle--don't miss this one. --Lois Faye Dyer