Plucky Caressa Horvath travels with her anthropologist husband to Tripoli, where a band of vicious nomads kidnaps her, believing she is a sorceress, and force her to make a three-year odyssey across the Sahara. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo. Tour. Born into a carnival family at the turn of the 20th century, 16-year-old Caressa Horvath finds her life taking a dramatic turn when she attempts to rob Jacob Bowman, a rich, eccentric anthropologist 20 years her senior. Nothing daunted by their unconventional introduction, he marries her, and they travel to Tripoli to explore the Sahara Desert. Nomadic Tuaregs attack their caravan but spare Caressa's life, launching her three-year adventure in the desert, where she befriends a young boy named Bakuli, gets sold into slavery, and eventually meets her great love, a wandering Scotsman named Jared MacKay. Gilman, noted for her Mrs. Pollifax mysteries, takes a slightly different direction here, producing a lively, satisfying novel of adventure, danger, and romance. A good choice for most popular fiction collections. - Maria A. Perez-Stable, Western Michigan Univ. Libs., Kalamazoo Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. In another departure (Incident at Badamya, 1989, etc.) from the author's Mrs. Pollifax mystery series, an exotic background again takes a leading role--this time, a role shared by 16-year-old Caressa Horvath. The time is pre-WW I, and Caressa--a budding beauty, daughter of a struggling carnival family, expert juggler, and pickpocket-- has been sent with hard-saved money to a private school in Boston, to satisfy the mother who's determined to make a lady of her. Ever impoverished, Caressa makes an ill-judged attempt at theft that introduces her to wealthy linguist-anthropologist Jacob Bowman. He marries her, and soon after they leave on an exploratory mission to Africa--first to Tripoli, then across the Sahara. The expedition, through hostile Tuareg country, ends in disaster; but it's only a beginning for Caressa, taken captive, who will spend the next harrowing years fighting to survive enemies and the desert; finding friends; finding love--only to discover betrayal on her return to civilization. As her chronicle unfolds from the vantage of great old age, the reader will experience a land and an era brought to teeming life; share Caressa's highs and lows; and exult with her when the last laugh is hers. Gilman's best--and a tribute to the artful power of simple, old-fashioned storytelling in the hands of a master. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.