IRISH MAGIC II

Companion volume to the paperback Irish Magic, ambitiously subtitled ``Four Unforgettable Novellas of Love and Enchantment.'' In Susan Wiggs's sexy ``The Changeling,'' Hank Farrell of Muleshoe, Texas, sells his ranch and brings his grandmother's ashes to the Irish coast to be scattered. His first morning at Carrygerry House finds him falling for Aislinn Finn, the owner's changeling daughter. A changeling is a baby switched at birth by fairies, who steal a human infant and leave one of their own in its place. Aislinn is forever barred from human love—any man she loves will, supposedly, die. Nonetheless, out in the fields she surrenders herself to Hank: ``. . . the earth was solid beneath her and the sky split apart with shooting stars as she climbed and then shattered like the great celestial mirror overhead...shattered and was made whole again, until she lay quiet and was close to him.'' In Barbara Samuel's ``Earthly Magic,'' a wandering bard saves a human princess from being kidnapped by a fairy prince, who needs only to kiss her to capture her forever. How can the smitten bard save the king's daughter when the fairy prince has cursed and struck the singer dumb? Well, pagan sex helps. Llywelyn's ``To Recapture the Light'' is an accomplished tale, transparent as springwater. The aging fairy Lasair Leary meets Cormac Casey, an artist out scouting fairy sites he can illustrate for a book when love's thunderbolt strikes. But if she gives him her love she will lose centuries from her life. Alas, Cormac is going blind, and love must find a way, which it does, though rather tragically. Roberta Gellis's richly erotic ``Bride Price'' tells of a woman who after ten years calls her importunate fairy prince to come and marry her, then demands that he provide endless certitudes of love. A bedtime bonbon for the ladies.