Nan D Arnold Category:  Women Publisher: Champagne Books Type: Fiction Copyright: February 2010 ISBN-13: 9781926681122 Life's a song: you gotta hit the high notes. Maggie Duncan is staring down the big five-oh when she meets by chance an AWOL opera star and a color-blind cop. One teaches her life is a song, one will partner her in a special duet.   Excerpt Maggie Duncan’s fourth decade on earth sped along at warp speed as she clung to its coattails, widowed, childless, and unattached. Currently seated in the eat-in kitchen of an attractive townhouse, she considered the wine glass her host, a man called Stavros, set before her. The balloon shaped bowl on a long fragile stem looked half as wide and approximately as deep as that big zero in Florida’s abdomen known as Lake Okeechobee. “So, your name is Stavros.” Maggie’s blunt tipped finger rimmed the glass. She’d met him by chance at a convenience store only an hour before. “Just Stavros?” He nodded. “Mysterious.” She took a tentative sip. The merlot’s warmth wrapped second thoughts about her reckless acceptance of his invitation into a snug blanket and Maggie gazed into mesmerizing eyes as dark and shiny as moonlit water. What color were they? Dark … brown. No, actually, they were green and as dark as malachite. He chuckled. “Call me Stav, if you prefer.” The man of Mediterranean heritage filled his own glass but offered no last name or details. Maggie briefly wondered if the name he’d given her was real, or created just for her. She didn’t normally engage in pick ups, in fact never before, but wandering the dateless desert for some time prompted Maggie to know if she could attract a man as magnetic as the one across from her. “Excellent wine, no?” Stav’s voice settled on her eardrums like a zephyr. The resonant timbre, such that any pied piper would envy, seduced her into tagging along with Stav after she’d purchased bottled water following a long bike ride. “Very good.” Maggie replied. Even she tasted the difference of this wine compared to the swill in her pantry, boxed in four-packs, used primarily for cooking. She pulled away a strand of ash brown hair that strayed to her blue dress and clandestinely studied Stavros. Maggie noticed gray in his hair, too, and age creases on his forehead. Wait. Wasn’t wine supposed to dull reality? She took another sip, then another, and finally one bold gulp for good measure. Stav reached for her hand and held it. Maggie didn’t object. He’d already charmed her out of her common sense. What could he charm her into? Taking into account the lap-pool capacity of the glass, the amount of wine she’d imbibed, how warm her hand felt in his and her current emotional vulnerability, probably a lot.

Hitting the High Notes
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Sometimes romance novel heroines can seem a bit formulaic. Sweet, innocent, but slightly sassy, 20-something in need of a rescue, right? In “Hitting the High Notes” you’d be delightfully wrong!

Ms. Arnold has created a hilariously memorable cast of characters. Brilliantly hilarious!

But by far my favorite character in the entire book was Maggie’s best friend, Brenda. Brenda is the brazen, intelligent, confident leader of a Grandmother’s biker gang: the Dalai Mamas. She’s responsible for saving Maggie’s butt on several occasions by calling in her biker buddies for some cheerfully wielded, tough woman savvy. She’s just as liable to flash her gun as she is to show off pictures of her adorable grandchildren.

I was enormously pleased to note that Ms. Arnold has written a sequel to “Hitting the High Notes”. I can’t wait to read it...