Armstrong, Kelley. Bitten.

(Women of the Otherworld, Book 1). Plume. 372p. c2001. 0-452-28348-5. $13.00. A

Did you know there were female werewolves? Elena didn't--until she became one. Just after she gets engaged to hunky Clayton, a large pale dog nips her. That seemingly small love bite causes Elena to change periodically into the only female werewolf on the east coast of America; bitten females usually do not survive. The dog? Clay: a born werewolf. Elena tries to regain her normal life, and escapes to Toronto where she finds a kind lover.

All seems manageable, with Elena hiding her occasional needs to change, until she gets an urgent phone call drawing her back into the werewolf Pack. There she hears that the local community fears wild dogs that have started killing humans. Before Elena left, she had kept records of all the werewolves; now she was called to help find out which "mutt" had attacked--and had compromised--the Pack. Elena also feels a pull to her old fiance Clay. Will she be able to escape again? Will she want to? Or will she be killed in the process?

A compelling, if somewhat predictable, fantasy. A couple of plot twists keep the reader's interest, and the sympathetic characters are well drawn. This book gives a whole new meaning to the term "bodice ripper": hot heavy breathing by lovers and killers, human and werewolf. This volume is the first in the series Women of the Otherworld, and the first novel for Armstrong. She's a keeper. Dr. Lesley S.J. Farmer, Lib. Svcs., CSULB, Long Beach, CA