WOLF IN TIGER'S STRIPES (A Romance of Tasmania)

Selected for Booklist Editor’s Top ten Romance Fiction List
American environmental journalist Judith Theresa Bryan has fled to Tasmania after a fiasco in Queensland, Australia, where a deceptive environmentalist led her down the path to professional disgrace and cost her the job she loved.
But in Tasmania, she gets a new chance, albeit one tainted by the fact that the same man who deceived her before will once again be involved in the story.
But what a story! If she can pull it off…
Judith is given the plum assignment of recording a full-scale search for the elusive and probably extinct thylacine—Tasmanian Tiger—and unrestricted access to the files of the leading expert on the topic, grazier Bevan Keene, who will lead the expedition.
One immediate problem is that Keene dislikes and distrusts all journalists, and especially environmental journalists. He also is on record as saying that no sane Tasmanian grazier would admit to having seen a Tassie Tiger on or even near his own land!
On the subject of whether the animal actually exists, Keene is nothing short of disingenuous. First he admits to Judith that he, personally, has indeed seen the allegedly extinct “tiger”, then denies having said any such thing. It is a problem that plagues Judith’s involvement in the expedition—she doesn’t trust Bevan Keene, he doesn’t trust her, but they seem to be falling for each other at the same time. Her mind tells her one thing; her body quite a different story entirely!
Is Keene just a wolf, with all-too-realistic expectations of making the copper-headed Judith his next conquest? Or is he, as she sometimes almost believes, the human incarnation of the Tassie Tiger they are supposed to be seeking, with a legitimate place for her in the mystique that surrounds him?
Judith has no choice but to follow Bevan’s lead through the Tasmanian wilderness in search of an animal that is supposedly extinct and a professional future that appears too often to be going in the same direction.
In the end, they find what Bevan Keene said all along that they were “meant to find.” And they find each other.


Critical Acclaim for... “WOLF IN TIGER’S STRIPES”


STARRED BOOKLIST REVIEW (1-2010 issue):

“Gordon’s newest contemporary romance offers a superb combination of biting sociopolitical commentary, a cracking good adventure, mystery and intrigue on several levels, and finely honed sexual tension. Not to mention a remarkable facility for description of both character and setting. This tale will please readers both new and loyal to the straightforward contemporary genre as well as fans of environmental fiction and travel narratives. Victoria Gordon is Gordon Aalborg’s pseudonym for romance. As Aalborg he writes thrillers, and he’s the author of Cat Tracks (2002), a novel about feral cats in the Australian bush.” — Lynne Welch


Publishers Weekly Review- in their 10-19-09 issue.

“Wolf in Tiger's Stripes Victoria Gordon. Five Star, $25.95 (252p)
ISBN 978-1-59414-844-6
The elusive, possibly extinct Tasmanian tiger brings together an American environmental journalist and an Australian grazier in Victoria Gordon's predictable but enjoyable down-under romance (after The Horse Tamer's Challenge, written as G.K. Aalborg). Judith Bryan gets a plum assignment that requires working with Derek Innes, a backstabbing eco-journo rival who's bested her before, and Bevan Keene, a rugged Aussie stockman who's supposedly seen one of the rare Tassie tigers. Bevan leads the publisher-backed expedition to find the creature with Judith, Derek, a photographer, some conservationists and Bevan's rural friends Roberta Jardine and Ted Norton. Bevan is an appropriately macho romantic hero, a more aggressive Crocodile Dundee sans crocodile (“...don't you think I've got better things to do than bugger about in the scrub with a bunch of conservationist wankers...?”) and Judith is a too wide-eyed reporter (“What's a wanker?”). The group's problems in getting along (greenies vs. anti-greenies; ste