A richly detailed novel, inspired by the dalliance between Elisa Lynch and the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano Lopez. Not quite a bodice-ripper, the Irish-born author's third book opens with the ambitious heroine in Paris in bed with the 26-year-old López. Madam Lynch, who stood by the increasingly insane Lopez during the disastrous Paraguayan war, is sometimes compared with Eva Peron.  (SAM73, $13.00)