Captivating and engaging, Jude Deveraux's latest offering, HEARTWISHES, grants this booklover's wish for a story based on rich, believable characters and a satisfying romance.

When history buff Gemma Radford wins the position of family historian for one of Edilean's founding families, she expects to lead a perfectly suitable life of cataloging documents and hopes to find dissertation fodder that will set her apart from the crowd. While sorting through the maze of centuries old documents, she stumbles upon references to an elusive Heartwishes Stone, an enchanted talisman that grants the deepest desires of the members of the Frazier family.

Initially writing it off as family myth and passed on tall tale, Gemma dismisses the story, but the closer she gets to the Frazier family, the deeper she falls for the Frazier eldest, the sexy, town sheriff Colin, the more she sees that the myth may be more reality than fiction. Something is granting the family's wishes, and one by one they start to come true, but as they do the danger in the peaceful Edilean begins to escalate. Gemma and Colin must find a way to save themselves and the stone before anymore danger befalls the town.

In trademark Deveraux style, HEARTWISHES delivers a heroine and hero with ignitable chemistry in a tightly-paced tale of romance and suspense, artfully woven with a hint of magic that carries smoothly to a satisfying ending. Her magic pen flows freely and provides glimpses into characters that are real, believable, flawed and captivating; like sitting back at the family table, listening to a master storyteller, I found myself turning the pages one after another into the wee-hours of the morning. While a stand-alone, the experience of this novel is enhanced by knowledge of the other Edilean novels -- as such I look forward to the meeting the rest of the Frazier family soon.