Mills & Boon
ISBN: 0263878201
July 2, 2010
Buy from Amazon.co.uk

Harlequin Presents
ISBN: 0373527861
October 12, 2010
Buy from Amazon.com

The Good Greek Wife

Description

The return of the proud Greek husband...

He was declared missing at sea – but now notorious Zarek Michaelis is back and ready to take control! First he’ll see to his business, and then to his wayward wife...

For two years Penny has struggled to come to terms with Zarek’s disappearance. But enough is enough. It’s time to move on… Her proud Greek husband is still as darkly handsome as ever, and the attraction between them is just as potent. But Penny can’t trust Zarek’s motives – does he just want her body and the fortune he left behind…or to try again?

Note from Kate

My editor asked me to write a short article on how I came to write A Good Greek Wife? This was originally published in the Romance magazine that they send out to all their UK Readers’ Club customers – but I thought you might like to see it here as well.

‘I have a project you might be interested in’, my editor said.’ It’s a bit different – a bit of a challenge.’

Well, I’m always ready for a challenge, and when I heard about this one I was really intrigued. A mini-series of books based on the ancient Classic Greek Myths, updating them to fit into the Modern Romance line. I really wanted to be involved but first I had to find the right story to bring modernise. Weren’t all Greek Myths about monsters and battles and sword fights?

But then I remembered the story of Odysseus. A man who goes missing for years and whose wife waits at home, never knowing if he is coming back or not. That was just the inspiration I needed. It was the sort of story that fitted perfectly into the Modern Romance line–up. Of course there were some things I needed to change slightly. Odysseus was a King who had gone off to the Trojan Wars and he didn’t return for over ten years. That might have worked in ancient times, but would be more difficult today. But the essence of the story remained the same. My ‘Odysseues’ - Zarek Michaelis – is a Greek shipping magnate who went missing for two years after an attack on his boat (the Troy). And like the original, when he returns he find that his wife(whose name is Penny, after Odysseus’s wife who was Penelope) has new suitors, all wanting to take over the kingdom (or in this case the company) he owned. So he has to prove himself to his wife and she has to prove that she has stayed faithful and loving all the time he has been missing. They have to get to know each other all over again and rediscover the love that had brought them together in the first place.

And it was as I was writing this story that I got a new insight into why Mills and Boon romances are so consistently popular and have been for so long. The emotions and the passions that the authors write about are truly the ‘classic’ emotions - feelings that are as old as time and never change fundamentally, no matter what era or place the book is set in. Whether the hero is an ancient Greek warrior or a Modern Greek Billionaire, the central core of the story – that love conquers all – is always essentially the same. And that’s what makes a classic love story. And a classic love-story is what I hope I've created in A Good Greek Wife?