Diana Gabaldon

The Outlander


In Outlander, a 600-page time-travel romance, strong-willed and sensual Claire Randall leads a double life with a husband in one century, and a lover in another. Torn between fidelity and desire, she struggles to understand the pure intent of her heart. But don't let the number of pages and the Scottish dialect scare you. It's one of the fastest reads you'll have in your library.
While on her second honeymoon in the British Isles, Claire touches a boulder that hurls her back in time to the forbidden Castle Leoch with the MacKenzie clan. Not understanding the forces that brought her there, she becomes ensnared in life-threatening situations with a Scots warrior named James Fraser. But it isn't all spies and drudgery that she must endure. For amid her new surroundings and the terrors she faces, she is lured into love and passion like she's never known before.

I was lame and sore in every muscle when I woke next morning. I shuffled to the privy closet, then to the wash basin. My innards felt like churned butter. It felt as though I had been beaten with a blunt object, I reflected, then thought that that was very near the truth. The blunt object in question was visible as I came back to bed, looking now relatively harmless. Its possessor [Jamie] woke as I sat next to him, and examined me with something that looked very much like male smugness."
Gabaldon creates characters that you'll remember, laugh with, cry with, and cheer for long after you've finished the book

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Dragonfly in Amber


This time-traveling romantic adventure will please fans who have been waiting for the further adventures of Dr. Claire Beauchamp Randall, a 20th-century American who goes to Scotland in search of her 18th-century husband, virile Scot Jamie Fraser, whom she met and married in Outlander ( LJ 7/91). Book 2 takes readers along on Randall's quest, as she hopes to find a state or time (like that of the title's dragonfly suspended in a piece of amber) where Fraser still exists. This imaginative novel suffers somewhat from the author's overuse of personification ("spectacles gleaming with concern and curiosity") and her confusing switches between the two first-person narrations, which sometimes cloud an otherwise intriguing adventure. But Outlander 's readers will still devour this hefty volume without complain

Voyager

In this triumphant conclusion to the time-travel trilogy she began with Outlander , Gabaldon continues the saga of 20th-century physician Claire Randall and 18th-century Jacobite rebel Jamie Fraser. The first quarter of this mammoth novel covers, in alternate sections, the 20 years the couple spends apart. Jamie is imprisoned, then pardoned and finally sets up shop as a (seditious) printer. Believing that Jamie died at Culloden, the pregnant Claire returns to her own century, reunites (unhappily) with her first husband and gives birth to a daughter, Brianna. But when Claire takes Brianna to Scotland in 1968 to introduce her to her true heritage, they uncover evidence that Jamie had survived. Claire determines she must rejoin him and once again steps fatefully through the stones on Craigh na Dun to find Jamie in Edinburgh in 1766. They wish nothing more than to lead a quiet life, but the kidnapping by pirates of Jamie's young nephew sets the couple off to the New World in pursuit, followed by old enemies and faced by new and vicious dangers. Gabaldon adroitly shepherds her protagonists through the eternal misunderstandings of the sexes, as well as those due to the different epochs in which they were born. Although this latest volume lacks some of the scope and grandeur of the previous two, her use of historical detail and a truly adult love story confirm Gabaldon as a superior writer of historical romance.

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Drums of Autumn

Gabaldon has few rivals in writing exciting?and hefty?historical romances. The fourth in a series of linked sagas (Outlander; Dragonfly in Amber; Voyager), her new epic has a delicious premise. Claire Randall, the post-WWII bride of historian Frank Randall, steps through a skew in the Scottish stone circle Craigh na Dun and lands in Revolutionary America and the arms of Highlander Jamie Fraser?putting a new spin on the notion of a two-timing woman. Bold and bawdy, but a believing Catholic, Claire struggles to live a rich and moral life?or, rather, rich and moral lives?under these extraordinary circumstances. Claire's adventures in 18th-century Charleston alternate with equally engaging chapters devoted to her 20th-century daughter, Brianna. Raised as Frank Randall's child, Bree discovers that Jamie Fraser is her real sire. She takes off on a harrowing, confrontational quest through time and space with her suitor, Roger Wakefield, in hot pursuit. Gabaldon's range is impressive, whether she's evoking the rawness of colonial America, the cozy clutter of a modern Scottish parsonage, the lusts of the body or the yearnings of the spirit. Her legion of fans will love diving into this ocean of romance.

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