She thought she would like everything about Holland -- except Marnix van Hessel. As "lord of the manor," he behaved as if it were still the Middle Ages! Why couldn't he just marry his fiancée and leave Henrietta in peace?

    At the Habitation, a large and decaying riverside house, the Crawfords were on the verge of bankruptcy - and when Martha Mary was obliged to take on the responsibility for her family, a series of dramatic events occurred that would test her indomitable fortitude.

    It is the story of a spirited young woman of eighteen who has left an unhappy, uncertain past in England and made a new life for herself as a trapeze artist in a small touring circus...But that forgotten past will stumble upon her one day, beside a stream in Hungary, where the circus has pitched its tents for a time. It will come in the form of a mysterious young man-handsome, appealing, yet curiously remote-whose appearance is the beginning of a strange, dangerous intrigue that involves deception, romance, disappearance and, in the end, the revelations of a family's darkest secrets.

    She found him a somewhat intimidating character--large in build and large in personality! And somehow Eliza kept getting on his wrong side, which didn't stop her from falling in love with him even though he was engaged to the very suitable Estelle van der Daal. Eliza found Estelle a bit of a bore, but if that was what Christian wanted, who was Eliza to quibble!

    Yet within weeks of arriving she was married to the devastatingly handsome Professor Radmer ter Bavinck. Radmer had assured Lavinia that the marriage would be on a friendly basis only. He needed a kind stepmother for his daughter and a competent housekeeper to run his home. It seemed to be the ideal arrangement—for everyone except Lavinia!

    He asked Beth Partridge-- kind, capable, sensible Beth--to watch them for a week. She did a fantastic job, so one week extended to two, and then longer.... The professor was happy--the children loved Beth and their mother knew they were in good hands. Everyone was happy, except Beth. She had fallen in love with her aloof employer, but he wasn't likely to be interested in her. Beth wanted to return to her hospital job and escape all the emotional turmoil, but how could she when the children needed her?

    Then she met Dr. Jason Mourik van Nie, and he changed her mind.Learning to trust again wasn't easy for either of them. This time, Letitia vowed, there would be a happy ending. But then Jason got the wrong idea about one of her male friends….Could a chance meeting set it right? Surely fate wasn't going to let a simple misapprehension stand in the way of true love?

    Before long, Alexandra had fallen in love with Taro -- and Penny did, too. It had to be a teenage crush. Yet Taro did little to discourage the girl, and when he began to side with Penny against her, Alexandra began to have suspicions about Penny . . .

    

    She is a successful editor of books for young people at a New York publishing house. She has her own apartment with a wood-burning fireplace. She has the delightful Mike Andric eager to marry her.Not so enviable is the overwhelming sense of loss and loneliness she carries with her. Every year as April comes closer, she is subject increasingly to exhausting valleys of depression.She was brought up in Connecticut by her mother, who told her matter-of-factly when she was 12 that she had never married Miriam's father and that he had been killed in the war. With this brief recital, her mother considers the subject closed. Miriam only knows that the two grew up together in a small town in Maine. Throughout her adolescence she fixes on one hero after another and dreams that her father must have looked like them. When Miriam is 21 her mother dies in a bus accident. Much later, the young woman musters the courage to go through her mother's few personal possessions. They include her photograph albums, which Miriam had pored over as a child. They also include a few pieces of jewelry. When Miriam goes through them, she finds that the jewel box's moire bottom is a false one. Under it are three long letters, the last written to her mother shortly before her death. All are signed "Fern". A photograph in one of the albums shows a child named Fern in a clown suit.The letters are postmarked "Parmenter, Maine". An opportunity comes for Miriam to spend an extended period of time editing a manuscript away from her office. A fragment of poetry underlined in one of her mother's books... "Where the lost Aprils are, and the lost Mays..." haunts Miriam, and she heads for Parmenter to do her editorial work and to find her mother's lost Aprils.At Parmenter, in exorcising her own ghosts, she finds a good deal more, including arson and mayhem, in the suspenseful Ogilvie tradition.

    She'd all but given up hope of surviving on her artistic talents, when a mysterious letter arrived, informing her that she had been highly recommended to the grand Palazzo Murano.Baffled but heartened, Mary arrived at the Palazzo and was instantly ensconced in the household. Only then did she discover her unknown benefactor to be none other than Todaro del Doria, a nobleman whose amorous adventures were infamous but whose quiet personal affairs were too dangerous to reveal, a man she didn't know - but with whom she'd soon share an intrigue of the heart that could cost them both their lives...