Charade » (Reprint)

Already a successful romance novelist in the 1980s, Sandra Brown struck gold when she pushed past the category s boundaries to take chances with more intricate plotting, richer characters, and surprising plot twists. Her string of bestsellers feature strong, capable career women in extreme circumstances.

A medical miracle gave TV personality Cat Delaney more than a new heart. It gave her a second chance at life. After leaving Hollywood to host a San Antonio TV show spotlighting children with special needs, Cat fights to gain respect as a newscaster. She meets Alex Pierce, an ex-cop turned crime writer, who regards her as a woman, not as a heart patient. When fatal "accidents" begin killing the other heart recipients, Alex may -- or may not -- be her most important ally.

With her new world turning sinister and a mysterious stalker shadowing her every move, Cat is caught in a dark maze of betrayal and secrets...and perhaps sees too late the mask hiding a killer's face.

Publishers Weekly

Soap opera star Cat Delaney gets a new heart--literally and figuratively speaking--in bestseller Brown's ( French Silk ; Where There's Smoke ) latest contemporary romance. The heart transplant that beautiful, arrogant Cat endures in the first chapter transforms her soul along with her cardiovascular system. If Brown had first established Cat's personality with some depth and credibility, that might have been the basis of an emotionally involving story. But since Cat is little more than a vessel for the concept, before we can blink, she is a good-hearted citizen who abandons stardom and Hollywood for San Antonio, Tex., where she hosts a local TV program featuring children up for adoption. Cat hardly has a chance to enjoy her change of heart and her new heartthrob, bad-boy crime novelist Alex Pierce, because a stalker is after her. Whatever suspense might have been activated by this scenario is immediately stymied as Brown rushes through events whereby three potential heart donors are knocked down like dominoes: obviously the stalker is a bereaved nut determined to kill all the transplant recipients who might have received his lover's heart. But Brown fails to develop even a modicum of tension, since the rushed pacing then slows to a crawl where nothing much happens except Cat's cliche-ridden romance with Alex. Too late in the novel, we finally get a more full and sympathetic characterization of Cat. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; major ad/promo; author tour. (May)