Pride and Pretense

Not your mother's Jane Austen! Some readers see the title as evidence that Pride and Pretense is an adaptation of Darcy and Elizabeth's story. Quite the opposite! As one reader declared, "Pride and Pretense has great sexual tension." Another called it, "steamy without being graphic." It is true that Zan Alexander is as proud as Derbyshire's wealthiest landowner, but when Zan first appears in Pride and Pretense, he is as poor as only an undiscovered writer can be. And it is as an impoverished scribbler that Zan suffers humiliation at the hands of beautiful Maggie Stanton, not quite 16. A doctor's privileged daughter, she pretends to be college-bound. When the two are discovered in a compromising embrace by Zan's best friend, who is also Maggie's protective older brother, Zan is shocked and mortified to learn her actual age. He gives Maggie a look of loathing she can't forget. Now ten years later, Zan is a celebrated playwright, the talk of Broadway, and Maggie is all grown up, a newspaper drama critic assigned to cover the opening of his autobiographical play and get his life story. Will Zan remember Maggie, and, if so, will he be inclined to exact his revenge? Set in the beautiful Adirondacks, the romance has its lighter moments along with some heated ones, too.