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McGee, JamesRatcatcherHunting down highwaymen was not theusual preserve of a Bow Street Runner.From the squalor of St Giles Rookery, tothe palatial homes of the aristocracy,Hawkwood relentlessly pursues hisquarry. With no way of knowing who canbe trusted, Hawkwood must engage ina desperate race against time to preventthe successful execution of the Emperor’splot.MacLeod, Alison Fifteen Modern Tales of AttractionMcMahon,KatherineThese are indeed fifteen modern talesof attraction in which MacLeod relatesstories of love, electricity, hearts, anddeath. Here is an author unafraid to pushat the shape of what a story can be, whatit can say. Some of the stories are surrealand startling, the characters revealingunusual desires. It is because of theauthor’s skill that we accept the strangeurges: Nineteen-year-old Naomi wantsto have sex with a dead man in Sacredheart, and she is utterly believable. Gloriacraves both electric shock therapy and thedoctor who administers it in Live Wire.The Rose of SebastopolRussia, 1854, the Crimean War grindson, and as the bitter winter draws near,the battlefield hospitals fill with dyingmen. Rosa Barr, young, headstrongand beautiful, travels to Balaklava,determined to save as many of thewounded as she can. Mariella, Rosa’scousin, follows her fiancé Henry to Italy55