Outlander

While on her second honeymoon in Scotland just after World War II, Claire Randall returns alone to a nearby henge, an ancient circle of stones, to gather a plant specimen that interests her. (After spending the war as a nurse in France, she has taken up the housewifely hobby of plant pressing to please her husband, an Oxford don.) As she picks the plant, she accidentally touches one of the stones, and it screams. Suddenly, it's the year 1743, and she is in the war camp of Scottish insurgents, a battlefield nurse once more--or is she a witch? Whatever the case, Claire's life is in peril. Should she go back to the twentieth century or stay with the passionate James Fraser? This is escape fiction at its best, and Claire's decision won't surprise any reader with an adventurous soul. ~--Cynthia Ogorek

Time-traveler Claire Randall returns to 18th-century Scotland in this compulsively readable sequel to Outlander. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Claire Randall is vacationing in the Scottish Highlands with her husband when she somehow travels through time to the 17th century. Rescued from British troops by a clan of Highlanders, Claire is forced to create a life in the past-a task made easier by attractive Scotsman Jamie Fraser. Brilliantly rendered details of the time and place for historical fiction fans plus swoon-worthy chemistry are two reasons this has also made an excellent TV adaptation is in its first season on STARZ. (LJ 8/96) (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Once-in-a-lifetime romantic passion and graphically depicted torture sessions are only the two extremes of this lively time- travel romance set in 18th-century Scotland--an imaginative and lighthearted debut by a promising newcomer. World War II has finally ended and Claire Beauchamp Randall, a British Red Cross nurse, has gone off to Scotland with her historian husband, Frank, to try to resume their married life where it left off six years before. Their diligent attempts to make a baby come to a halt, however, when Claire discovers an ancient stone circle on a nearby hilltop, slips between two mysterious- looking boulders, and is transported willy-nilly to the year 1743. Stumbling down the hillside, disoriented and confused, Claire is discovered by Jonathan ``Black Jack'' Randall, an evil English officer who happens to be her husband's direct ancestor and physical look-alike. Randall notes Claire's revealing 1940's summer dress, assumes she is a whore, and attempts to rape her, whereupon she is rescued by the fierce MacKenzie clan, who take her to their castle and confine her there. Claire adjusts to her changed circumstances with amazing ease, using her nursing experience to tend to her hosts' illnesses while she impatiently awaits a chance to return to the circle of stones. Before she can get away, circumstances force her into a marriage with James Frazer, a Scottish renegade from English justice and Jonathan Randall's archenemy. Young Jamie's good looks, passion, and virility soon redirect Claire's energies to defending her stalwart new husband against her former mate's evil clone, and the fierce, courageous but historically doomed Scottish clans against the course of destiny itself. A satisfying treat, with extra scoops of excitement and romance that make up for certain lapses in credibility.

Jamie made a fire in a sheltered spot, and sat down next to it. The rain had eased to a faint drizzle that misted the air and spangled my eyelashes with rainbows when I looked at the flames. He sat staring into the fire for a long time. Finally he looked up at me, hands clasped around his knees. "I said before that I'd not ask ye things ye had no wish to tell me. And I'd not ask ye now; but I must know, for your safety as well as mine." He paused, hesitating. "Claire, if you've never been honest wi' me, be so now, for I must know the truth. Claire, are ye a witch?" I gaped at him. "A witch? You--you can really ask that?" I thought he must be joking. He wasn't. He took me by the shoulders and gripped me hard, staring into my eyes as though willing me to answer him. "I must ask it, Claire! And you must tell me!" "And if I were?" I asked through dry lips. "If you had thought I were a witch? Would you still have fought for me?" "I would have gone to the stake with you!" he said violently. "And to hell beyond, if I must. But may the Lord Jesus have mercy on my soul and on yours, tell me the truth!" The strain of it all caught up with me. I tore myself out of his grasp and ran across the clearing. Not far, only to the edge of the trees; I could not bear the exposure of the open space. I clutched a tree; put my arms around it and dug my fingers hard into the bark, pressed my face to it and shrieked with hysterical laughter. Jamie's face, white and shocked, loomed up on the other side of the tree. With the dim realization that what I was doing must sound unnervingly like cackling, I made a terrific effort and stopped. Panting, I stared at him for a moment. "Yes," I said, backing away, still heaving with gasps of unhinged laughter. "Yes, I am a witch! To you, I must be. I've never had smallpox, but I can walk through a room full of dying men and never catch it. I can nurse the sick and breathe their air and touch their bodies, and the sickness can't touch me. I can't catch cholera, either, or lockjaw, or the morbid sore throat. And you must think it's an enchantment, because you've never heard of vaccine, and there's no other way you can explain it." "The things I know--" I stopped backing away and stood still, breathing heavily, trying to control myself. "I know about Jonathan Randall because I was told about him. I know when he was born and when he'll die, I know about what he's done and what he'll do, I know about Sandringham because ... because Frank told me. He knew about Randall because he ... he ... oh, God!" I felt as though I might be sick, and closed my eyes to shut out the spinning stars overhead. "And Colum ... he thinks I'm a witch, because I know Hamish isn't his own son. I know ... he can't sire children. But he thought I knew who Hamish's father is ... I thought maybe it was you, but then I knew it couldn't be, and..." I was talking faster and faster, trying to keep the vertigo at bay with the sound of my own voice. "Everything I've ever told you about myself was true," I said, nodding madly as though to reassure myself. "Everything. I haven't any people, I haven't any history, because I haven't happened yet. "Do you know when I was born?" I asked, looking up. I knew my hair was wild and my eyes staring, and I didn't care. "On the twentieth of October, in the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and eighteen. Do you hear me?" I demanded, for he was blinking at me unmoving, as though paying no attention to a word I said. "I said nineteen eighteen! Nearly two hundred years from now! Do you hear?" I was shouting now, and he nodded slowly. "I hear," he said softly. "Yes, you hear!" I blazed. "And you think I'm raving mad. Don't you? Admit it! That's what you think. You have to think so, there isn't any other way you can explain me to yourself. You can't believe me, you can't dare to. Oh, Jamie..." I felt my face start to crumple. All this time spent hiding the truth, realizing that I could never tell anyone, and now I realized that I could tell Jamie, my beloved husband, the man I trusted beyond all others, and he wouldn't--he couldn't believe me either. "It was the rocks--the fairy hill. The standing stones. Merlin's stones. That's where I came through." I was gasping, half-sobbing, becoming less coherent by the second. "Once upon a time, but it's really two hundred years. It's always two hundred years, in the stories. ... But in the stories, the people always get back. I couldn't get back." I turned away, staggering, grasping for support. I sank down on a rock, shoulders slumped, and put my head in my hands. There was a long silence in the wood. It went on long enough for the small night birds to recover their courage and start their noises once again, calling to each other with a thin, high zeek! as they hawked for the last insects of the summer. I looked up at last, thinking that perhaps he had simply risen and left me, overcome by my revelations. He was still there, though, still sitting, hands braced on his knees, head bowed as though in thought. The hairs on his arms shone stiff as copper wires in the firelight, though, and I realized that they stood erect, like the bristles on a dog. He was afraid of me. "Jamie," I said, feeling my heart break with absolute loneliness. "Oh, Jamie." I sat down and curled myself into a ball, trying to roll myself around the core of my pain. Nothing mattered any longer, and I sobbed my heart out. His hands on my shoulders raised me, enough to see his face. Through the haze of tears, I saw the look he wore in battle, of struggle that had passed the point of strain and become calm certainty. "I believe you," he said firmly. "I dinna understand it a bit--not yet--but I believe you. Claire, I believe you! Listen to me! There's the truth between us, you and I, and whatever ye tell me, I shall believe it." He gave me a gentle shake. "It doesna matter what it is. You've told me. That's enough for now. Be still, mo duinne. Lay your head and rest. You'll tell me the rest of it later. And I'll believe you." I was still sobbing, unable to grasp what he was telling me. I struggled, trying to pull away, but he gathered me up and held me tightly against himself, pushing my head into the folds of his plaid, and repeating over and over again, "I believe you." At last, from sheer exhaustion, I grew calm enough to look up and say, "But you can't believe me." He smiled down at me. His mouth trembled slightly, but he smiled. "Ye'll no tell me what I canna do, Sassenach." He paused a moment. ... A long time later, he spoke. "All right. Tell me now." I told him. Told him everything, haltingly but coherently. I felt numb from exhaustion, but content, like a rabbit that has outrun a fox, and found temporary shelter under a log. It isn't sanctuary, but at least it is respite. And I told him about Frank. "Frank," he said softly. "Then he isna dead, after all." "He isn't born ." I felt another small wave of hysteria break against my ribs, but managed to keep myself under control. "Neither am I." He stroked and patted me back into silence, making his small murmuring Gaelic sounds. "When I took ye from Randall at Fort William," he said suddenly, "you were trying to get back. Back to the stones. And ... Frank. That's why ye left the grove." "Yes." "And I beat you for it." His voice was soft with regret. "You couldn't know. I couldn't tell you." I was beginning to feel very drowsy indeed. "No, I dinna suppose ye could." He pulled the plaid closer around me, tucking it gently around my shoulders. "Do ye sleep now, mo duinne . No one shall harm ye; I'm here." I burrowed into the warm curve of his shoulder, letting my tired mind fall through the layers of oblivion. I forced myself to the surface long enough to ask, "Do you really believe me, Jamie?" He sighed, and smiled ruefully down at me. "Aye, I believe ye, Sassenach. But it would ha' been a good deal easier if you'd only been a witch." Excerpted from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.