His hired bride Book

What a great idea; showing how the advice of one gutsy female helped four succeeding generations of women through tough patches in their lives. The back cover made this sound absolutely charming. An added benefit was having Jill Marie Landis writing one of the sections.

Well, the problem starts at the beginning. The reader learns about the ancestor who will guide four more generations. Bella Duprey was the best courtesan of the Barbary Coast. She owned a saloon and heard that Sam Heart, a man she was in love with, had bet that he would get Bella to invite him into her bed.

Although she was supposed to be in love with Sam, she decides to cheat at cards and win his most loved possession -- his Heartbreak Ranch. Worse than that, she has him shanghaied (dumped on a boat where he would become a slave until he escaped or died). This is someone we want to advise future generations of women?

Bella leaves a life-sized portrait of her nude self and a 4 part book called "The Art of Fascination." Her ideas were shocking; men are to be trained like dogs! At first, I thought it was a joke. Jill Marie Landis and Fern Michaels have had long careers in writing and should know better.

I'm only sorry that I have to give this junk a star at all; it certainly doesn't deserve it.