The Valentine Legacy

Product Description Twenty-year-old Jessie Warfield is branded a disgrace for riding as a jockey on her father's racehorses, wearing men's clothing, exposing her skin to the sun and, in general, not acting like a lady at all. James Wyndham, eligible widower and owner of a nearby horse farm, is Jessie's rival on the race track. Outwardly competitive to the extreme with James, she is secretly in love with him. James, having known her since she was fourteen, sees her only as a little sister and a bratty one at that. Together they are the unlikeliest romantic duo among their native Baltimore riding set. When Jessie sets out to protect James from a marriage entrapment, she ends up compromising her own reputation and is pressured into leaving town. She flees to an unlikely haven: the estate of James's British cousins, the Earl and "Duchess" of Chase. There she is pampered, dressed, and transformed into a lady. Smitten by the new Jessie, James proposes and they marry. Their new, shared passion results in hideous nightmares - nightmares that soon reveal themselves to be recovered memories of a long-ago attempted rape and murder. When connections are made between those events and the pirate Blackbeard's diaries, the hunt is on for his buried treasure. From the Inside Flap The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores. About the Author Catherine Coulter is the author of the New York Times-bestselling FBI thrillers The Cove, The Maze, The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh Hour, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take, TailSpin, KnockOut, and Whiplash. She lives in northern California. From AudioFile A quirky cast of characters adds spice to this rollicking tale of horseracing, lovemaking and adventure set in the early 1800's. The action shifts between Baltimore and Great Britain, providing Eleanor Swinden ample opportunity to introduce many speech patterns of the American colonists, the British landed gentry, their children and servants. As verbal barbs fly, it's easy to differentiate the feisty characters. The pitch and pacing of the children's voices are also captured. Swinden's presentation enhances the enjoyment of the book. C.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine