You have to admire Robards: she turns out one satisfyingly escapist tale after another, all featuring tough, independent heroines skeptical of romance but full of passion and quite alluring to men. Here her star is Chicago anchorwoman and single mom Lynn Nelson, who has decided to try to mend her rapidly unraveling relationship with her 14-year-old daughter, Rory, by accompanying her on a wilderness trip in beautiful but scary Utah. Rory is more dazzled by Jess, the almost too handsome cowboy in charge of their group, than by the scenery, and Lynn, who has deep-sixed her love life to concentrate on motherhood and work, is furious. How dare Rory flirt with this predatory phony! How dare Jess even think about seducing a child! Amusing in a lame sort of way, this conflict starts to get redundant, and then Robards jump-starts the action and transforms her little melodrama into a cliff-hanger, literally. Soon Lynn, Rory, and Jess are fighting for their very lives, having survived their fall only to stumble upon a cult of murderous religious fanatics running amok in the forest. Jess turns out to be the real thing and far more interested in Lynn than Rory; the suspense is unrelenting, the ardor sweet, and Robards, once again, thrills her enraptured readers. --Donna Seaman

When divorced Chicago anchorwoman Lynn Nelson, 35, signs on to chaperone high school students on a horseback riding vacation in the Utah mountains, she views it as an opportunity to bond with her increasingly estranged teenage daughter, Rory. In the prolific Robards's latest romantic tall tale (after Hunter's Moon), what Lynn doesn't count on, besides the bruising reality of actually riding horses, is finding love and stumbling on a plot to blow up the world. When Lynn meets hunky outfitter Jess, both immediately feel a strong antipathy that teeters perilously close to attraction. Matters take a melodramatic turn when an accident separates Lynn, Jess and Rory from their group and they happen upon a presumably deserted mining camp where they find themselves plunged into a nightmare. Confronted with a scene of mass murder, pursued by deadly religious cultists, they must depend on one another in order to survive‘and to avert global catastrophe, for the cultists plan to detonate nuclear bombs and unleash chemical weapons throughout the world. Perils-of-Pauline chapter endings keep the pages turning, although clichéd characterizations‘Marlboro Man Jess, overachieving Lynn, annoying teen Rory‘mar the whole. It's hard to accept that a contemporary career woman who exclaims "Rats! Curses!" when faced with a problem will play a pivotal role in averting Armageddon. But then, romantic suspense, not suspension of disbelief, has always been Robards's signature, and here, as before, she signs her tale with a flourish. Major ad/promo; author tour. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

"How many more...heaving bosoms must readers endure?" groaned LJ's reviewer of Hunter's Moon (LJ 11/15/95). Not enough, if its appearance on national best sellers lists is any indication. A man and woman are separated from their cohorts during a wilderness trip, with predictable results. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.