PIRATES

For her first hardcover, Miller turns her prodigious romance hand to sensuous time-travel, here mating Duncan Rourke, a colonial pirate-patriot, and Phoebe Turlow, his feisty, funny 20th-century soulmate. Demoralized after her divorce (even her dog leaves home), 26- year-old Phoebe takes a sleazy sales junket to Paradise Island in the Caribbean to spend a few days soaking up sun. In the rundown Eden Hotel, once the home of buccaneer Rourke (he stole arms from the British to give to the patriots), Phoebe hears plaintive harpsichord music in the night; then, on her way to a costume party—wearing a low-cut, laced-up ``wench's costume''—she steps off an elevator and into the 18th century. When Phoebe gets a load of Duncan and his ``finely muscled thighs,'' something slams into her heart ``like a mallet laid hard to a great brass gong.'' Poor Duncan doesn't know what to make of Phoebe, with her short hair and bizarre English (not to mention her driver's license), but he's smitten too. His mysterious island servant, enigmatically called Old Woman, tells Phoebe not to worry: She and Duncan are fated to marry and have children, though not necessarily in that order. Phoebe also assures Duncan that his side will win the Revolutionary War and teaches him about codependency and shopping malls. Duncan, meanwhile, teaches Phoebe about passion. When he's seriously wounded, the couple abruptly find themselves back in the 20th century, where he can avail himself of antibiotics and visit Disney World. ``Pirates of the Caribbean'' is not as good as the real thing, however, and the lovers return to 1780. A likely crowd-pleaser from a veteran romancer who knows how to stoke all the predictable fires of passion. (Author tour)