Unchained Lightning - Softcover

Mills, Anita; Potter, Patricia Ann; Vaughan, Vivian

3.58

12 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312959281 ISBN 13: 9780312959289

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1996

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Four stories of summer passion include Anita Mills's "Twister," in which hired gun Ben Haley experiences unexpected complications when he falls in love with the sultry daughter of the man he has been hired to kill, as well as works by Patricia Potter, Vivian Vaughan, and Lynn Michaels. Original.

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Review:

Unchained Lightning is an ingenious anthology of western historicals all written using summer storms as their theme. And with four of the most skilled historical writers, it's easy to get swept right into the heat, passion, and even danger of summer's furious rains even in the dead of winter. Whirlwind by Anita Mills is the story of legendary gunfighter Ben Haley who's searching the plains of western Kansas for the man he's been hired to kill. He's almost to his quarry's ranch when a tornado overtakes him and a young woman who's along defending her spread. -- Although he admires the young woman for her shear determination in handling a sheep ranch on her own, Jessamine Mitchell is the one woman he needs to stay far away from, since he's been hired to kill her father. But Preston Mitchell is already dead, and Ben can't bear to leave a lady like Jess to the mercy of the cattle baron who ordered her father killed. So Ben, a man who has never known love in his life gets a short time to live a fantasy with a woman who has plenty of love to give. Until the storms come again and the real world threatens to expose Ben's secret. Pride's Way (Patricia Potter) tells the story of Pride Gideon, a man on the run for his life from a gang of outlaws. Shot in the shoulder and almost dead, Pride escapes the pack of killers in the mountains of Colorado during a downpour. Minutes after he loses consciousness, Susannah O'Callahan finds him and manages to get the wounded stranger back to her mountain cabin. Susannah has just buried her father, a miner killed by a man who covets his claim. Susannah knows the man will be after her as soon as the storm clears. But finally something is going right. Pride Gideon is the answer to her prayers, a hired gun wanted by the law. When he wakes up, Susannah proposes that Pride work for her to kill the man responsible for her father's murder. Although Pride would do anything to help this brave, fragile woman, he can't and won't kill. So Pride and Susannah wait out the storm, caught between two bands of killers, and Pride caught between his abhorrence of violence and his need for a woman who offers the one thing he's never had in his lonely life. When Storms Never Last by Vivian Vaughan opens, Lindsey Mae Burnett sits in a whorehouse in Indianola, Texas, about to make the biggest mistake of her life. She's desperate for money, desperate to move far away from her family and the insane, ugly blood feud they've been engaged in. Lindsey plans to work at Miss Fancy's House of Fanciful Delights until she can make enough money to move out west, away from any man who uses a gun to solve his problems. -- March Sutton's not entirely sure what he's doing at Miss Fancy's in the company of the strangest working girls he's had the pleasure to meet. Must be the coming storm, he decides, that's making everything seem so surreal. That and the fact that he's at Miss Fancy's to kill time before walking to the courthouse to gun down his first man. A man he's sworn by family honor to murder, even if it means destroying his soul in the process. -- When a full-fledged Gulf hurricane tears apart both Miss Fancy's and the town, March and Lindsey find themselves thrown together in a bid for shear survival. And Lindsey comes to care deeply for the brave, strong man who keeps her safe. Until she learns the awful truth. March Sutton is exactly the kind of cold-blooded killer she's willing to ruin herself to get away from. In Once Struck, by Lynne Michaels, town beauty, Peach MaCauley finds herself scrambling to hold onto the family's wheat farm all on her own after her brother's suicide. After their parents died, Peach's brother gambled away most of their money, leaving her to struggle on alone. And now there's a storm looming on the flat horizon of the Nebraska prairie, a black-clouded wheat-destroying storm. If Peach can't bring the harvest in before the storm hits, she'll lose the farm for sure. -- Despite her worries, her bone-tiredness and her bleeding fingers, Peach can't stop thinking about Kit Taggart. Kit Taggart, the boy who kissed her breathless behind the church and never called again. The boy who came back from the war a quiet, hard-working man who couldn't shake the town folks' opinion that he was just as lazy and mean as his no good father. -- And when Peach has nothing to sell but her body to save the farm, Kit turns out to be the only man willing to help her bring in her harvest. And in doing so, both Kit and Peach are marked for trouble. Ben Wilkins, the bully who almost cheated her brother out of the farm plans to give the pair plenty of trouble. Like storm clouds building on the horizon, each one of the stories in Unchained Lightning charges the air with electricity! Great authors writing great stories!One of the best anthologies I've ever read. Every one of the stories in Unchained Lightning is outstanding! Michaels, Vaughan, Mills, and Potter-- they're all amazing. Each story in Unchained Lightning will make you feel the wind, the sting of the rain, and the pounding of your heart when the thunder explodes overhead!Annette Carney -- Copyright � 1994-97 Literary Times, Inc. All rights reserved -- From Literary Times

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