Secrets: Volume 11 the Best in Women's Erotic Romance (Secrets (Red Sage)) [Paperback]

This is a wonderfully sensual anthology that readers will manage to inhale once they get their hands on a copy of this book. Some of todays hottest and brightest stars of erotic fiction have contributed to this book and as a result the reader will we treated to a feast for the senses that will captivate and transport the reader to whatever make-believe world these authors have created. There is not one dud found within these pages. All four stories are good in their own right and there is a little something for everyone.

Jennifer Probst story "Masquerade" is the story of one woman finally letting go and allowing herself to feel for the first time ever. What she doesn't know is that the one person her very best friend is going to be the one that will bring her out of her shell. Will she allow herself to have a happy ending?

Jess Michaels "Ancient Pleasures" is a story about a widow who has traveled a great distance to see what had so captivated her late husband. When she finds herself trapped in an ancient tomb with an American tomb raider she will find that her journey was not about what she thought it would be.

Kimberly Dean's "Manhunt" is the story of one good cop that has been framed for murder and the ADA that should have had more faith in him but instead managed to get him convicted. When Michael escapes he goes to the one person he knows can help him. The lady that put him in jail to begin with. Can he convince Taryn that he is innocent and still keep his hands off?

Angela Knight's "Wake Me" takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of times, genre's and hero's that will have the reader glued to the pages. Chloe has had her heart broken. She is given the mysterious gift of a painting that has a handsome knight in repose sleeping. She decides to hang her handsome knight above her bed and once she does she experiences the most erotic dreams highlighting some of her deepest fantasies that she's read in her historical romances. But is it really a dream or is her knight a true flesh and blood man that needs help in order to love her for the rest of her life?

Red Sage's "Secrets" anthologies always offer top drawer reads and this volume is no different. I highly recommend this book if you not only like your reads spicy, but like a well fleshed out story as well.

Official Reviewer by www.romancedesigns.com

After a quality dip in Volume 10, Volume 11 is back on track, although I had my initial concerns. It kept my fingers busy... turning pages, of course!

Masquerade by Jennifer Probst
Hailey, the main character wants to get layed by a man she never met, the boss of an international software company.
Advice: Skip the first 12 or 15 pages and get right to the hea(r)t of the matter. My main complaint is a common failing: Why write a pretense of a European setting if everyone and everything looks, smells, and sounds American generic? With all the great French, Italian, and Scandanavian singers, why is everyone in Italy listening to American schmaltz? Why specify a software company (obviously not the author's long suit) when Europe is hardly known for software? Why does the main character fail to catch on that a supposedly sophisticated European speaks with American colloquialisms? It's not European and the setting may as well be Lake Como in Minnesota instead of Europe's largest lake. I know this rant is about meaningless stage dressing for a fantasy, but it annoys me, and perhaps it's unfairly apparent because two other authors in the volume do foreign settings well.
The heroine was hard to take at first. She is a severely sexually conflicted woman so ditzy she seems less likely to consumate an anonymous international love affair than end up as a corpse by the side of the road.
However, along about the 18th page, the story takes off. The masquerade's Phantom (a colleague who has fallen in love with her, impressed by her sympathy during his marriage collapse and willing to overlook her serious religious hangups), turns her toward a couple on a stairway where the man is stroking the bare privates of a woman. The Phantom tells her she is to be as open with him as the woman's legs. At last the author is in her element, and she's a mistress of it. She is not at all afraid of graphic description. The sexual submissivess of the main character was delicious. Unlike some characters we've seen, she's not afraid to pleasure a man, and find pleasure in being actively oral. Ahh.
From there on out, I leaned back, [...] The trappings of the story deserve about 2 stars, but the sex gets a full 6.

Ancient Pleasures by Jess Michaels
Wow. I made the mistake of flipping through this part of the book at Borders, when I suddenly found myself aroused. I paid and ran home. I read it quickly and later on I read it more slowly to my husband. He also found this story 'uplifting'.
The trick of seduction is to get characters to suspend inhibitions, and the author does it quickly and cleverly. Within 5 pages or so, her characters get to it, and without food, water (except for a dip), or a bathroom break, they continue right up to the end. The range of 'festivities' is also broad, so varied amazon might not let me list them. I did wonder how the inexperienced heroine had [...], but no big deal. Isabella is not a passive character, but actively works up not only her own pleasure, but that of Jake as well. She is not afraid to touch herself or touch him, and both are deliciously oral.
My other compliment is that when Jess Michaels depicts foreigners she rarely makes the mistake of making them sound American. Her scene is obviously a fragment of imagination, but she does it well, giving it a 'real' feel.
The story is superbly explicit and the sex deserves more than the 5 star limit.

Manhunt by Kimberly Dean
Unlike the other stories which are set in imaginative time or space, Manhunt could have taken place next door with a male character good enough to eat. Also different is that it feels nearly book length and even includes an epilog. Finally, you should read Secrets volume 9 FIRST.
You just know that any book that book starts with a guy catching a wet, naked woman is promising. Fortunately, the author keeps her promise.
The premise is both crazy enough and good enough for a TV movie: An innocent man seizes the prosecutor, Taryn (I love that name!) who convicted him, and wants her to prove his innocence. Fortunately for us one-handed readers, he may not have been guilty of the crime, but he's not innocent at all.
The story really plays to those of us with captive fantasies. Oooo. I want to read this one to my husband.

Wake Me by Angela Knight
Whew! Wet dreams for women! This story is a twist on the fairy tale princess kissing the frog. It also is a story about a picture, a picture of a knight given a woman who begins to encounter him in her sleep, a knight who whispers 'wake me'. The knight, Randolf, it turns out, is held captive by a kind of witch in the frame and awaits release, but he doesn't wait passively. He and his 'victim' jump through time and space in all the romance novel settings imaginable, including a literal bodice-ripping.
The story gets right what other authors sometimes get wrong: she makes you 'feel' you really are in a castle, a pirate ship, or an Old West setting. It is light and self-mocking. It pokes fun at political correctness, romance writing, and even our lust for submissive pleasure. However, the sex is explicit, just the way we love it. I found myself wanting to see the author do a good 'blistering' scene, but the bondage is pretty damn fine.
Should an 'average' man happen to pick up this story, he is likely to feel inadequate. The author is obviously a believer in 'bigger is better', at least in men and Chloe's first 'taste' of him will fulfill your oral fantasies. (The story initially suggests she doesn't like oral sex which left me wondering if that might have been the unspoken reason her relationship with Chris bombed, but suddenly she loves it with the blond Viking.)
Although this didn't seem as sexual as the other stories, it is the best written. It's not as long as the others, but it has the most depth. It gave good balance and was a lovely ending to the book. Gimme, gimme... but don't wake me!
To turn a phrase around, a thousand words are worth a picture. At about 10 cents per thousand word picture, this story and this volume 11 of Secrets is a bargain.

Masquerade by Jennifer Probst. Hailey, tired of living the life of a repressed wallflower, decides to seduce her boss at his annual sexual masquerade orgy. She asks her best friend, Michael, to learn what her supervisor will be garbed in over the weekend. Michael loves Hailey and plans to be the one that she seduces.

Ancient Pleasures by Jess Michaels. In 1897 Egypt, Isabella arrives at the tomb that her late husband discovered hoping to learn why he came back a different person. Inside the tomb are Jake and another man. Stones fall isolating Jake and Isabella from everyone else. As they give into their desire for one another, they wonder if it is the tomb's curse or the love between two people.

Manhunt by Kimberly Dean. Former detective turned drug dealing fugitive and murder suspect Michael arrives at the home of Assistant district attorney Taryn. He needs her to help prove his innocence. He decides seduction is the best way to get her on his side and under him.

Wake Me by Angela Knight. Radolf the knight is cursed to remain inside a painting until a woman who loves him comes along to release him. He believes Chloe is the one. Chloe is attracted to the knight in a painting that she received anonymously. Soon afterward she starts having wet fantasies. Radolf realizes he still must persuade her that her dreams are real if she will believe in their love.

No secret this reviewer is big fan of the annual erotic romances. The eleventh edition contains four hot tales starring wonderful protagonists and plenty of romance.

Harriet Klausner