Novels & Stories

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Depraved Heart: A Novel

by Kathleen Valentine

(Novel: 135k words) Romantic suspense - Growing up in Salem, Massachusetts, art curator Tempest Hobbs was surrounded by metaphysical practitioners but considers her own empathic powers a curse. The feelings that assault her became so terrible that she was confined to a psychiatric hospital. Upon her return home, badly shaken and weak, she discovers a letter from Hathor, the mysterious mansion of the Ravenscroft family.

Located on the island of Hephzibah Regrets just off the coast, Hathor is said to be filled with fabulous art and "fairy retreats" where lavish parties are held. But sixteen years ago, during one of those parties, the distinguished dancer and Ravenscroft heir, Raven Silver was shot and killed. His sister Rachel's husband Syd Jupiter, a powerful NFL fullback, was convicted of the depraved heart murder of his brother-in-law and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. 

The letter is from Syd Jupiter, now paroled and living at Hathor. Wyatt Ravenscroft is dead and has left his entire estate to Anjelica, Syd and Rachel's fifteen-year-old daughter. Syd offers Tempest the opportunity to live at Hathor for the summer while cataloging the vast art collection. She welcomes the chance to be away from the constant pressures of life in society.

Tempest is dazzled by the art she finds but is soon aware that there are secrets and lies all around her. Hathor's housekeeper, Audrey, hates Syd and was once, Tempest discovers, Raven's lover. Miles Wainwright, a local fisherman and the only witness to the murder, is hiding something, and Anjelica lives in fear that Syd will be sent back to prison. And then there is Syd's mother, Marie-Isobel, the owner of a Santeria shop in New Orleans' French Quarter, who joins them for the summer with her candles and cleansing rituals.

In the fishing village on Hephzibah Regrets the locals gather every night in the Riptide where men drink and talk fishing, women spin and knit, and everyone relishes the rumors about Hathor. They tell stories of Will Silver, the father Raven and Rachel never knew, and of wild Rosalind, their beautiful mother who died in an insane asylum. As the heat of summer intensifies Tempest discovers more about the secrets, deceptions, love affairs, madness, and mysterious deaths of Hathor's residents. And about Syd Jupiter who is as enigmatic as he is alluring.

What people are saying about Depraved Heart:
5 out of 5 Stars: 

Now that I have finished reading Depraved Heart, I don't know what to do with myself; what a great read for the beach or for the armchair! From the very first page I was hooked. The characters are so colorful and deep. Each character has a back-story which gives them a richness that adds to the unfolding events. Tempest Hobbs, the "sensitive" is so believable as an art curator and fragile, wounded soul. Her "escape" to the Island sets her off on an unexpected life-changing adventure. Syd Jupiter is every women's fantasy man; the son of a New Orleans "voodo" mother, he is handsome, strong, romantic,honest, and yet he's hiding some big secrets.

Setting the book in Salem and on an Island called "Hephzibah Regrets" was brilliant. (I actually looked up this Island in Google to see if it really exists!) There are twists and turns with plot and characters in each chapter - taking you to the last few pages where you learn the "secret" that Syd has been keeping from Tempest. - Amazon Reviewer

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Each Angel Burns
A Novel of Faith & Passion
by Kathleen Valentine

In the latter part of the 19th century the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel was built on a cliff overlooking the ocean on a peninsula in Maine. From its earliest days there were rumors of strange activity there --- tunnels through the cliff were reported to give access for smugglers, a miracle-working nun was said to live there, and a group of drunken lumberjacks who stormed the convent to kidnap wives claimed to have been vanquished by a giant angel with a flaming sword. One hundred years later, when the last of the old cloistered nuns was removed to a retirement home, the decision was made to close and sell the convent. That's when it was discovered that he convent's treasure, a marble statue of the Archangel Gabriel by Italian sculptor Giovanni Dupré, was missing.

In Ripley Mills, Massachusetts the self-titled “wild bunch”, who played football together back in high school, gather every Thursday for dinner and beer. More than thirty years have passed and the group isn't what it used to be. Charlie's new female boss is young, pretty, and intimidating. Whitey's wife has cancer, Bull's wife just found out about his affair with an exotic dancer, and Vinnie can't get women to go out with him. Gabe's three daughters have grown up and his wife is making life miserable. Peter doesn't have those problems, he's a Jesuit priest. But they still get together every week to drink, eat, and listen to one another's problems. Then Father Peter makes a startling revelation, he had once been in love with a girl he met in Paris. He planned to leave the seminary to marry her but she rejected him to marry an older, wealthy man. Pete is happy as a priest teaching at Boston College but now Maggie has returned. She is leaving her husband and has purchased an old, abandoned convent in Maine that she plans to convert to a sculpture studio.

On Pete's recommendation Gabe takes a job helping Maggie to restore the convent. But, as winter closes in, the mysteries begin again. Stories are circulating about bodies of young women washing up on the shore. Maggie's husband refuses to answer her calls. Gabe's cantankerous father, Mick, tells him the truth about his mother. Ethan Darling, the local sheriff, is snooping around. Zeke, Gabe's dog, discovers a secret passage in the crypt under the chapel. And Father Peter realizes that Maggie is falling in love with Gabe, his oldest friend.

Each Angel Burns is the story of three people at crossroads in their lives. It is a story of enduring friendship, of faith, of great evil and greater love --- and of how they culminate in a miracle.

Amazon.com (Kindle or paperback) or Barnes & Noble.com

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Also available in many e-formats from 

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What people are saying about Each Angel Burns:

from Jane Ward at Food & Fiction:

EACH ANGEL BURNS by Kathleen Valentine

The classic Gothic novel feeds readers on equal parts thrilling terror and sublime chivalric style romance, sometimes with a smidge of repressed sexuality thrown in for good measure.  Often set in dark, unexplored castles or forbidding abbeys, these stories feature people who suffer at the hand of evil or the supernatural, while heroes try to triumph and divine punishment looms over both man and society.

I cut my teeth on the novels of Charlotte and Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley, perhaps the widest read period Gothic writers.  Think of the dark and brooding Heathcliff, the “secret” kept hidden in Rochester’s attic, Shelley’s misunderstood monster: each novel promised mystery and menace and endings that might offer resolution, but of an older, more jaded kind than the happily ever after of fairy tale.

In the 20^th century, the Gothic torch was re-lit and carried most proudly by Daphne du Maurier.  As she picked up writing in this classic genre, she also modernized the tradition, replacing dank castles and abbeys with partially inhabited manor homes, and a madwoman in the attic with a portrait of a dead wife intended to chasten the ingénue bride.

With her 2009 novel, Each Angel Burns, indie author Kathleen Valentine picks up where du Maurier left off, herself reviving and recreating the genre by incorporating some classic mood elements (a labyrinthine abbey, a hero, an absolute evil villain, and a range of inexplicable disappearances) along with modern twists intended to keep the story current and accessible – a dingily ordinary mill town bar, an assortment of struggling middle-aged Everymen, and their modern and sometimes angst-ridden relationships with women and God.

Gabriel (Gabe) assumes a central role in the bunch, all of whom have been friends since high school.  Husband to an unhappy wife, father to three daughters, Gabe is a woodworker who was meant to go to art school.  He has accepted his lot without much looking back because of his sense of duty, but struggles with feelings of inadequacy because he can’t seem to make his wife happy no matter how diligently he keeps his nose to the grindstone.  His long time best friend, Pete, is a former heartthrob turned priest, forever at arms’ length from the women he once collected with ease, but all the while uncertain if leaving his one true love, Magdalene (Maggie) to marry another man, was a good decision.

Maggie, knowing she stood between Pete and his commitment to the church, made Pete’s departure easy by taking up with Sinclair and announcing to Pete that she had made up her mind to marry him instead.  The marriage that resulted has been a poor one, with Maggie left a prisoner of Sinclair’s money and his cruel proclivities.  When Sinclair offers to buy her an abandoned abbey on Maine’s coast as a retreat and place for her to do the sculpting she loves, Maggie seizes the opportunity to begin her break from him.

As Maggie reconnects with Pete in the wake of the dismantling of her marriage, she also meets Gabe who, upon Pete’s recommendation, becomes the craftsman in charge of the abbey’s renovation.  Love between the two lonely artistic individuals begins to grow.  If this were your standard romance novel, right at this moment a bodice would rip, someone’s rippling chest muscles would peek out from an unbuttoned shirt, and body parts would be heaving with desire.  The lovers would end up together, riding off into a beautiful sunset.

But Valentine’s tradition is the Gothic romance, and she is respectful of the more complex threads of story that deserve to be told against the backdrop of the unknown portions of the abbey and Maggie’s cipher of a husband.  She writes with delicate grace, allowing personal stories to unfold, deftly adding secondary story lines (the miraculous recovery of a lost statue of the abbey’s angel Gabriel, a sinister string of missing and dead girls turning up along the coast of Maine, and a touching depiction of redemption after a tragic and crippling accident) to enrich the whole.

The main story and its offshoots come together because of Valentine’s use of the Catholic religion – its traditions, teachings, and symbolism – as unifying image and theme. Marriages break up, new love takes its time, all kinds of commitment are questioned and tested; in the end evil is uncovered and vanquished, but not without some soul searching and sadness.  All of this unfurls to the reader within the larger context of faith and its redemptive, healing properties.  A born storyteller, Valentine gives the stories of all her characters their due time to develop until they resonate.  Each Angel Burns is a book that has burned itself into memory.

from Maureen Gill at Windy City Author:

Each Angel Burns is a masterpiece!

Kathleen Valentine is a gifted author in possession of a variety of talents. She knits gorgeous shawls by the seashore, shawls that are soft and sensual; she also loves to cook old fashioned comfort foods that nurture and heal. Valentine writes non-fiction books about knitting and cooking, and uses her talent for fiction to effortlessly cook up and then knit together remarkable stories about the passions of the flesh as well as the spirit. Each Angel Burns is Valentine’s second full length work of fiction and it is even more sophisticated and cleverly woven than her first, An Old Mermaid’s Tale, which was a story I thought would be impossible to beat. I was wrong. Each Angel Burns is a masterpiece.

Each Angel Burns begins with a wonderfully written introduction to a small group of middle-aged men struggling with the disappointing realities of their ordinary lives. These guys have been meeting at the local watering hole for thirty years since their graduation from high school and Valentine is adroit at writing dialogue that’s true to their blue-collar roots, masculinity, and New England mill town locality; so true, in fact, that it’s easy to imagine yourself sitting on a bar stool nearby, munching Beer Nuts and drinking a brew. Such is the sense of familiarity and comfort that Valentine quickly establishes; these guys are real and it would be a rare reader who wouldn’t know them.

Two of the men in this close knit group of friends quickly develop as central characters in the book: Gabe is a talented craftsman with an artist’s eye and heart, and Pete, the most handsome and gifted man the old mill town ever produced is a Jesuit priest teaching at nearby Boston College. Gabe is the settled-down guy who never wandered far from home; long married with three adult daughters who’ve flown the nest, Gabe struggles to understand how his marriage turned into a meat locker. Valentine’s ability to sketch out a marriage turned as cold as dry ice and just as caustic is astonishing. Gabe’s wife is a woman seething with slowly fermented husband-hate, a hate whose seeds were planted long ago when she married Gabe, knowing full well she didn’t love him. Gabe is excruciatingly unaware that the defect in his marriage is not anything he can correct.

Father Pete is married too but his spouse, Holy Mother Church, is a more demanding lover than any earthly wife. Pete has been a good priest – a faithful and loving spouse – but when the only woman he ever loved, Maggie, reappears in his life he, like Gabe, is suddenly faced with his own middle-aged marital crisis.

Maggie, named after The Magdalene, is married to a man of great wealth and even greater malevolence and after years of abuse Maggie has finally found a way to break free. Her husband, Sinclair, has given her the strange gift of a deconsecrated convent built on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Maggie is determined to return the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel to its old glory and as she works to regenerate the mysterious convent it begins to regenerate her. Maggie’s hunt for the famous and long-lost statue of Gabriel the Archangel that was said to miraculously guard the convent door leads her to an expert on the subject at Boston College… and back into the life of Fr. Peter Black, the man she loved but walked out on many years before.

The Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel becomes ground zero in a Manichean battle for the hearts and souls – and lives – of all three of heaven’s namesakes: Gabe, named after St. Gabriel, the patron saint of priests; Peter, the rock upon whom Christ built His church; and the Magdalene, one of the most misunderstood and maligned women in Scripture, the woman of sin with the purest of hearts. Maggie’s malevolent husband is the Devil’s own handiwork; he is a creature of unimaginable evil able to destroy all three as surely as he has destroyed many others. Gabriel the Archangel, however, is determined to deny the Devil his victory.

Each Angel Burns washes over the reader, first slowly like gentle waves on a quiet day at the shore and then as fiercely as a killer squall. Valentine is a writer who is as talented with narrative as she is with prose. Her dialogue is earthy, clever and utterly believable while her narrative is breathtakingly beautiful, at times sumptuous. Valentine blends literary fiction with its opposite in a remarkable story that satisfies all of the senses. Gabe, Pete and Maggie are indisputably the story’s central characters but Valentine presents a compelling cast of actors who support her main cast brilliantly. Julie, Gabe’s brittle angry wife, sucks the air out of every scene she enters and Gabe’s father Mick is a crusty old guy smarting from the pain inflicted on him by his dead wife, a woman whom he robbed of her dreams by his all-too-human love. Gabe’s brother Mike and his wife Daisy are people who have refused to let personal tragedy destroy them and their strength and love for one another plays out like a beautiful but sad symphony. Zeke, Gabe’s dog, is an animal without shame; a brazen whore for affection, Zeke is willing to give as good as he gets and returns love with the generosity of a free spirit as only a dog can do.

Each Angel Burns is sexy and sophisticated and Valentine delivers a few shockaroos that are completely unpredictable. The ending is suspenseful, original, and satisfying and a testament to the many miracles that happen among us – those few that loom large and dramatic and the many that heal and sustain our broken spirits.

Kathleen Valentine has secured for herself a respected place in contemporary American literature and I eagerly await her third novel, Depraved Heart.

Of Angels, Love, and Miracles

June 16, 2010

By	Barry Yelton

Kathleen Valentine is an author with a vivid eye for detail and a knack for telling a good story. This one is exceptionally well told. It is the story of a tormented priest and an abused wife, along with a cast of believable and capitivating characters. Throw in a mysterious old abbey with a storied past, a string of murders, and a globe-trotting villain and you have an engaging and entertaining read. 

Ms. Valentine has a gift for description and her often lyrical prose brings the story depth and texture. Describing the view of the ocean from the crumbling abbey she writes, "Silver light from a full Snow Moon rising out of the Atlantic just beyond Owls Head sweeps across the frigid black waters like a trail of angel's wings and shimmers through the frozen night." She paints such vivid pictures that the reader can easily visualize the scenes and the characters in them. 

The story pulls you along with surprising twists and turns, and an unexpected ending. 

This is one of the best independent novels I have read. Highly recommended.

Lasting Values

January 30, 2010

By	Frank O' (Roanoke, Virginia)

I enjoyed this book over the course of two snowy days in Virginia. I had just visited Maine and Massachusetts where this novel is set, so I was ripe for the accents of these characters. 

The book revealed a lot to me about Catholic spirituality. It is the first book I've read with a specifically Catholic ethos. Issues of faith, enacting one's values, the meaning of virginity, sacrificial love, friendship, loyalty are all given scope here. When these characters move from their inner commitments, their manifestation is love rather than deprivation. I lived along with each character (and there are many), and gradually understood their actions. Tender love making is a joy to experience and to read. That too is part of this novel. Ms. Valentine's atmospheric novel raises many ideas and I think they will keep perking inside me for a good while. - Ann Martyn

Love and mystery- my favorite combination! 

January 27, 2010

By	Cozy Bookworm

I savored this novel and did not want it to end. I felt close to the characters yet was continually surprised by what happened. Maggie is an enviable heroine and Gabe is a dream come true handyman, complete with Zeke the dog. Refurbishing the old monastery, given to Maggie from her demonic husband, Sinclair, provides an intriguing backdrop for the story. Gorgeous Father Pete has loved Maggie but loves his vocation more. The young artists assisting Maggie with her sculptures add some gastronomical bits to the story which made me wish for some lobster in my neighborhood! There were many more interesting characters--the guys from the Arm Pit bar and their interesting "club" and Josef the Amish man. There were times when I was unsure where the story was going but it was very satisfying indeed.

_______from Good Reads_____ 

Jen rated it 

I won this through Goodreads First Reads. I didn't know what to expect when I started reading and was pleasantly surprised. The story is told through a few main characters, and I found each one sympathetic. Their histories are revealed through various flashbacks. The flashbacks are numerous but executed rather well, so that they add a dream-like quality to the atmosphere. The descriptions are rich - I could smell the cookies in the oven or hear the waves crashing near the abbey. There's an element of mystery that is hinted at in the beginning and middle, suddenly taking over near the end. Overall, it was an enjoyable read

Cindy rated it 

I loved this book. It was a "cozy read" meaning I snuggled up in a chair with a blanket and got involved in their lives, I loved the diversity of the people and the description of each . the convent was so interesting and I felt I was there.
Looking forward to the next.

Linda Pagliuco rated it 

Somewhat reminiscent of Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair, Each Angel Burns is a story of relationships and turning points among a group of friends who have reached their fiftieth birthdays. The narrative revolves primarily around Maggie, a sculptor in a loveless marriage to a wealthy playboy, and the de-consecrated Maine monastery which she is converting as an art center. Just before her marriage, Maggie fell hard for Pete while they were studying in Paris, but she could not bring herself to lure him from the seminary where he was training for the priesthood. Pete's best friend, Gabe, also unhappily married, is recruited by Pete to carry out Maggie's building plans. The monastery served as a convent to a community of nuns, and has had a reputation for mystery and miracles. Now, a series of young women have been brutally murdered, and the sheriff suspects that the convent's crypts and tunnels are connected to these crimes. 

What unfolds is a love story, a romance, really, in which even the minor characters must take stock of their lives and decide where to go from here. It proceeds at a leisurely pace, with most of the actions taking place within a small town bar called "The Arm Pit", and within the evocative setting of the monastery on the coast of Maine. Resonant with vivid imagery and inner struggles, Each Angel Burns shows that the journey of self-discovery does not end in adolescence.

Ruth rated it 

Beautiful story with interesting well-developed characters, a strong plot line and vivid descriptions that made me want to visit the places the author describes. I disagree with the people who bought this because they thought it was just a mystery novel. It is, as the description says, a story of three friends facing a turning point in their lives. I especially loved Fr. Black who kept me wondering almost to the end - was a good guy or a very,very clever bad guy. I fell a little bit in love with both Gabe and his dog Zeke. Personally, I thought Zeke was as well-developed a character as any in the book. I also loved Gabe's crusty old father, Mick, who surprised the heck out of me toward the end.

The story develops carefully shifting from three perspectives. Maggie, the artist, was an abused wife who is struggling to break free from her horrible husband when she re-encounters the only man she ever loved but who she left thirty years earlier. Gabe's daughters have left home and he is now coming face to face with a wife he married for the wrong reasons. Fr. Black has lived an honorable life but right from the beginning we know he has a secret - just not one I ever would have guessed.

I also loved a lot of the secondary characters, especially the guys from the bar. Charlie was my favorite and the Amish man, Josef, was a nice touch.

I thought this was a very satisfying read that challenges you to think about a lot of issues. It's not for someone looking for fluff or a formula-mystery but I recommend it for thinking readers who enjoy entering a whole new world.

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The Old Mermaid's Tale 

A Romance of the Great Lakes

by Kathleen Valentine

Before the Edmund Fitzgerald there was the Carl D. Bradley, the Willaim B. Davok, the Betty Hedger, the American Sailor and many more...

In 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to international commerce creating a problem for seaport towns bordering the Great Lakes. Within the first year over a thousand barges and tankers from all over the world arrived at these seaports to unload, re-outfit and reload. While waiting, the crew, that had been at sea for weeks, went ashore looking for fun and companionship. Restaurants, bars, pool halls, rooming houses, tattoo parlors, and rumors of other - less savory - forms of entertainment sprang up in the blocks surrounding the commercial docks. Those parts of town acquired a deservedly terrible reputation.

When Clair Wagner begins college in Port Presque Isle she dreams of meeting a "handsome sailor with the constellations of the Northern Seas in his eyes". Into her life comes Pio, a beautiful Italian fisherman, who dreams of life on the big lakes under the aurora borealis. She meets Gary, the dashing son of a wealthy shipping magnate, who introduces her to Canal Street where she encounters The Old Mermaid Inn, a tavern that, as Gary tells her, "deserves its reputation".

But The Old Mermaid Inn, with its giant painting of a seductive mermaid, is home to some fascinating people including Tessie, the owner and original mermaid, and the intriguing Baptiste, a Breton mariner injured in a shipwreck, who earns his living as a musician.

With Pio, Clair discovers passion, with Gary she gains entry into the world of the commercial waterfront, and with Baptiste she discovers all-consuming love. But as her relationship with Baptiste grows she discovers he is far more complex and mysterious than she could imagine. He has secrets and his secrets will alter her life forever.

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER
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What people are saying The Old Mermaid's Tale:

A beautiful story, beautifully told.
Susan Oleksiew, author of A Murderous Innocence

A timeless lovestory rich in maritime lore.
BookLovers Alert 2007 Rising Star Nominee

I gobbled up this novel. It is enticing in the style of Fielding. The details are fresh and ring true. Lavish and exuberant, it keeps the reader interested from beginning to end. - Ingeborg Lauterstein, author of Vienna Girl and The Water Castle

Bravo! This is good, very good. These characters are people who will always live inside of me. I lingered near the end of the book, not wanting it to end. I love the way the story plays with fantasy and reality. Myth and the real. There is wonder and awe and the all-compellingness of love. Here's to The Old Mermaid's Tale, may it enliven the hearts and minds of many, many reader, for many, many years to come . . . -Lawrence Jordan, Lawrence Jordan Literary Agency

Settings described so well you can see, smell, and taste, characters so real you already know them, every day lives woven into a larger story of a way of life now gone, and so much fun to read you can hardly put it down. The love story around which everything else hangs is moving and makes you wish you could love like that. This book takes you into a world you wish you could visit, just to see the place and meet the characters. --- Ray in Pennsylvania

The Old Mermaid's Tale has just the right ingredients for a great summer read -- situations you can identify with, romance as sweet as the scent of honeysuckle that reminds you of your own tender coming of age (as it was or you wished it had been) and a distinct sense of place that's unfamiliar and fascinating. The story concerns Clair, a blossoming young woman setting off for college equipped with a thirst for adventure and the dream of a consuming love affair. She finds both along the rough, bustling Lake Erie waterfront of the early sixties. The characters are larger than life, the love scenes are luscious and the ending is happy in an unpredictable, real-life way. I read Mermaid's Tale lying in the hot sun at the beach and became so engrossed I kept forgetting to turn over. --- Sunshine (USA)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The historical background information is fascinating and the characters are rich and intriguing. Very hard to put down. I highly recommend this book. --- S. Kimmel (Texas USA)

The Old Mermaid's Tale is an engrossing, captivating, moving story of growth, sorrow, joy, love, loss and second chances. I could not put it down. The descriptions are rich and vivid, from the full busyness of daily life to the quiet yet spellbinding moments when Clair is contemplating nature. Clair's progress from girl to woman is told with nuance, depth and compassion. Baptiste is the most hypnotic, sexy, unforgettable male character I've seen in a long time. His mystery and dark charisma draw you in, and yet up close, you discover his all-too-human, aching vulnerability. All the characters are fully alive and they really held my interest. I cared about all of them and what happened to them. A wonderful read that I strongly recommend.
--- Clare Higgins "higgeroo" (Gloucester, MA)

While reading The Old Mermaid's Tale, I truly left the world I live in and went to Port Presque Isle in the 60's. Kathleen Valentine writes with a sure and loving hand of place; she brings this Great Lakes town to vivid life,as well as the farm town her main character escapes.

Even better than the sense of place is her way with characters. The loving Clair, the charismatic Baptiste, the tragic Pio, the sadder-but-wiser Tessie and many other secondary characters are all fascinating in their flawed humanity. Their lives and fates ring true, even when the results are not what one would expect or even hope for. This book, ultimately, is a most satisfying novel of recent history and of healing love beyond understanding. --- Rockport Mo "maureenmo3" (Rockport, MA USA)

_______from Good Reads_____

Ruth rated it 

I loved this book and found myself in tears in several places. It is a beautiful romance about a young woman who leaves home to go to college hoping to meet the man of her dreams and she does, actually three men of her dreams but all of them come with complications. Pio, Clair's first love, is a fisherman who has big dreams of his own and they take him away from her. Gary, her second love, is every woman's dream come true, but he has personal problems he needs to work out and their relationship ends. Alone and heartbroken Clair meets Baptiste, a musician who plays in a waterfront dive, who is intelligent, romantic but who has secrets. Their love story is one of the most beautiful, heart-breaking, redemptive stories I ever read.

The story is set in a waterfront town on Lake Erie and is full of folklore, sea legends, and ghost stories that just sucked me right in. I loved most of the other characters too, especially Dante, Pio's beautiful but tragic younger brother and Tessie, the salty, rowdy "old mermaid" who tells Clair her "tale" in the final chapters of the book.

The ending is just beautiful. Clair is such an interesting heroine. Sometimes she is so sweet and other times she is the opposite (she actually slugs one of the characters.) If you like a book that makes you laugh and cry, this is it.

_______________________________

Looking for the perfect Valentine?

My Last Romance - the romance that lasts forever...

If every day is Valentine's Day
for you and your beloved...

My Last Romance & other passions 

by Kathleen Valentine

Eight stories that celebrate the wonder of finding love...These stories sweep the reader into sensuous worlds where ordinary people discover, or rediscover, love. Foolish love, forbidden love, married love – even murderous love, each story is a seductive jewel populated with characters that seem like someone we could know – or someone we could be.Each of the stories in this collection is an exquisitely rendered portrait of people from a broad range of ages each proving that passion and love are eternal, regardless of life's far-ranging challenges.

Buy from
Amazon.com (Kindle or papaerback) or BarnesandNoble.com

My Last Romance and other passions

Eight Stories by Kathleen Valentine

ISBN: 0-9785940-5-3 • $12.00

• An aging torch-singer, now retired with her musician lover, encounters a lover from her youth who abandoned her without explanation, and finds her passions reignited as never before.

• A sophisticated business woman falls in love all over again when her husband takes her to his home town in a Louisiana Bayou and teaches her to dance.

• A shopkeeper waits for his lover on a fog-shrouded night passing the time discussing desire with his fisherman son. 

• A childless wife finds consolation for her feelings of failure with her husband's older cousin - a hard-living mariner.

What people are saying about My Last Romance & other passions:

My Last Romance is a short story anthology of eight romantic tales that speak of dishonesty, forbidden love and passion. Speaking of lives and emotions that most of us can relate to, this collection will touch your soul for many months to come.
Kathleen Valentine writes with an honesty and flair that is both refreshing and poignant at the same time. The characters face a multitude of emotions and desires that mirrors the intensity of their own personal difficulties in life. But, that is not all. To be loved so deeply is something we all yearn for and this book surely helps you to believe that this is possible for every person to attain no matter how old they happen to be. 

Nothing I've read in the romance genre this year can possibly come close to this anthology for its breathtaking exploratory into the human psyche. 

- Carrie White, Hentracks Review Bulletin

Gorgeous! Very poignant. It is a wonderful thing to be able to immerse a reader in an entire era, a way of life, a culture in miniature – places, forms of music, habits of speech ... I felt transported, and that's something good fiction must do for me.

- Peter Anastas, author of No Fortunes and Broken Trip

Kathleen Valentine's stories are as varied as the women of the world, and their great passions are never simple or uncomplicated. Her understanding of the human heart drives these stories, filled with nuance, pitch-perfect voice, surprise, and heartache. These are stories of women who have lived full lives, taking risks and living out the dictates of their passion. -Susan Oleksiw, author of A Murderous Innocence and Friends and Enemies

Kathleen Valentine just may have invented a whole new genre: sensual romance for the baby-boomer generation. It’s so refreshing (and, may we say, encouraging) to read about characters of a certain age who are still desirable and passionate. -Jane Daniel, publisher of Gigolos

________________________________

love, murder, etc.

Eight Short Stories

by Kathleen Valentine

Available for Kindle only / Coming in paperback

Four love stories, four stories about murder including: "Sailor's Valentine", "The Mermaid Shawl", "Mardi Gras Was Over", "Arthur's Story: A Love Story", "Home-made Pie & Sausage", "Killing Julie Morris", "Just An Old Fashioned Murder", and "A View From the Lighthouse".

What people are saying about love, murder, etc.

Terrific Collection, January 20, 2011

By 

Clare Higgins "higgeroo" (Gloucester, MA)

Kathleen Valentine's stories are like scrimshaw pieces, encompassing a wealth of detail within a small space. We learn everything about her characters in tales whose compact composition never diminishes their vividness, depth and sensitivity. 

From the first few lines of "Sailor's Valentine," the reader is drawn into an intriguing and moving story of two loners, one with a dark secret, and into the world of the fishermen of Port St. Magnus, with all its strong smells, sights and sounds. "The Mermaid Shawl" weaves romance with the realities and hopes of Great Lakes island life, reminding us that knitting is not just a hobby or a job, but an act of love. 

"Arthur's Story" surprises us with a change of scene, to turn of the century New York, in a quietly wonderful story of a lost boy that brought tears to my eyes. "Mardi Gras Was Over" shows how our own maturity can take us by surprise. Darker surprises are in store in the "Murder" section, where the intimacy of first-person narrative reveals the dangerous tensions brewing in seemingly placid places, a small town diner, a needlework club, a lighthouse. 

Overall, this is a superbly written collection of stories and very much worth having.

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