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The Little Shop of Found Things
Paula Brackston - 2018
Xanthe has always had an affinity with some of the antiques she finds. When she touches them, she can sense something of the past they come from and the stories they hold. So when she has an intense connection to a beautiful silver chatelaine she has to know more.It’s while she’s examining the chatelaine that she’s transported back to the seventeenth century. And shortly after, she's confronted by a ghost who reveals that this is where the antique has its origins. The ghost tasks Xanthe with putting right the injustice in its story to save an innocent girl’s life, or else it’ll cost her Flora’s.While Xanthe fights to save her amid the turbulent days of 1605, she meets architect Samuel Appleby. He may be the person who can help her succeed. He may also be the reason she can’t bring herself to leave.With its rich historical detail, strong mother-daughter relationship, and picturesque English village, The Little Shop of Found Things is poised to be a strong start to this new series.
Forging the Shilling Girl (The Hudson Sagas Book 1)
Emma Hardwick - 2020
Young, widowed Clare Byrne, is escaping the famine in Ireland. On the coffin ship from Dublin, in the final hours of the journey to England, Clare goes into labour. Weakened and alone, the young, beleaguered mother gives birth near the quayside. Unable to look after the newborn, the child is bought for a single shilling by a curious gentleman, the industrialist Samuel Hudson. What will happen to the young girl? What plans does Mr Hudson have for her? Will the child thrive, or merely survive? Also by Emma Hardwick ----------------------------------- The Urchin of Walton Hall
The Soldier's Seed (Southern Skyes)
Sharyn Bradford Lunn - 2012
In this sweeping story of love and loss, fortune and fate, this masterful storyteller recounts the journeys of the McCabe and Skye families, along with the people who shape their lives, as they strive to make good in the penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land during the early 1800s. The saga chronicles the two families’ trials and triumphs, joys and injustices, and the inner torment as their lives come full circle and old secrets are revealed. The epic begins with the love of a soldier in the New South Wales Corps for a high-spirited convict woman, but tragedy leads him to the arms of a beautiful native woman. From these unions arise generations of proud Australians who play their part in forging the Great Southern Land. The story of these courageous men and women, their dreams, their dynasty, and the heritage they share is as unique as the land from which they sprang. Southern Skyes brings Australia's history to life with compelling characters, rendering the Australian landscape in all its rugged magnificence. The Soldier’s Seed – Book 1 of Southern Skyes The Soldier’s Seed, the first book of the Southern Skyes family saga, is a novel that captures the wide range of relationships between colonial, convict, and indigenous families during the tumultuous events that defined the early penal colonies of Australia. Nicholas Thomas, a soldier in the New South Wales Corps, loathes his life in Sydney Town and through a series of events of his own making he finds himself running from his past to what could be an even worse fate. While pioneering a new settlement that encounters one problem after another, he struggles to find his true self and identify what he really wants from life . . . until he meets a woman a soldier shouldn't love. When tragedy strikes, he is forced to make choices that will affect his descendants for decades to come. The Soldier's Seed is a heart-rending adventure and an exciting introduction to Australian history and the epic Southern Skyes series. PLUS a Bonus Chapter! Take a sneak peek at Southern Skyes Book 2 – The Divergence
Starbuck Nantucket Redemption
Garth Jeffries - 2020
Peter Bois is one of the wealthiest men on Nantucket but is far from successful; his business is being picketed for polluting the oceans, his wife wants a divorce, and his best friend is dead. But fate has plans for him.On a picnic at the beach with his alienated family, Peter is caught up in a riptide and transported back in time to the early 19th-century as a greenhand on a Nantucket whaleship, clueless to where he is and ignorant to what is expected of him. Struggling to accept his new reality, he must confront the man he is and come to grips with life nearly two hundred years in the past as the ship pursues whales and battles storms thousands of miles out to sea. His only help? A crewman who looks and acts just like his dead best friend.On a voyage bristling with danger and death, Peter must survive long enough to figure out how to get back to his own time and back to where he can right his many wrongs.Engaging and innovative, this fast-paced and uplifting novel is a must-read for audiences young and old.
To Capture What We Cannot Keep
Beatrice Colin - 2016
But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Émile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife. As the Eiffel Tower rises, a marvel of steel and air and light, the subject of extreme controversy and a symbol of the future, Cait and Émile must decide what their love is worth. Seamlessly weaving historical detail and vivid invention, Beatrice Colin evokes the revolutionary time in which Cait and Émile live - one of corsets and secret trysts, duels and Bohemian independence, strict tradition and Impressionist experimentation. To Capture What We Cannot Keep, stylish, provocative, and shimmering, raises probing questions about a woman's place in that world, the overarching reach of class distinctions, and the sacrifices love requires of us all.
The Lady Rogue
Jenn Bennett - 2019
She’s read every book in his library, has an impressive knowledge of the world’s most sought-after relics, and has all the ambition in the world. What she doesn’t have is her father’s permission. That honor goes to her father’s nineteen-year-old protégé—and once-upon-a-time love of Theodora’s life—Huck Gallagher, while Theodora is left to sit alone in her hotel in Istanbul.Until Huck returns from an expedition without her father and enlists Theodora’s help in rescuing him. Armed with her father’s travel journal, the reluctant duo learns that her father had been digging up information on a legendary and magical ring that once belonged to Vlad the Impaler—more widely known as Dracula—and that it just might be the key to finding him.Journeying into Romania, Theodora and Huck embark on a captivating adventure through Gothic villages and dark castles in the misty Carpathian Mountains to recover the notorious ring. But they aren’t the only ones who are searching for it. A secretive and dangerous occult society with a powerful link to Vlad the Impaler himself is hunting for it, too. And they will go to any lengths—including murder—to possess it.
There Are No Saints
Stephen Kanicki - 2021
This is his story:For the low price of five dollars, Dexter “Dex” James will exorcise your demons: the demon of lust, drink, and gluttony. Unfortunately, he’s new in town, and few people take him seriously. The ones that do, don’t have a dime to spare. Desperate for money, he elicits help from a boy named Boo and a beautiful woman, named Miss Leslie—she’s half his age and a prostitute, but Dex is smitten.After performing a supposed miracle, Dex becomes the talk of Titusville. His billfold and ego grow with each exorcism. Only Miss Leslie’s love could make him happier. However, when an evil entity threatens a young girl, Dex must make a choice: take the coward’s way out or stay and fight?
The Bermuda Privateer
William Westbrook - 2017
Fast paced and covering an area new to me; I was enthralled by the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the Caribbean. There are battles and conspiracies galore, with engaging characters and thrilling actions." Nicholas Fallon is captain of the schooner Sea Dog, a privateer that is fast, beautiful and deadly. Unbound by Royal Navy tradition, Fallon enjoys total independence in where he goes, how he fights, and whom he takes as crew. A woman—Beauty McFarland—is his second-in-command. It's 1796, and Sea Dog's owner, Ezra Somers, employs Fallon to protect his Caribbean salt trade from French privateers and pirates. Wicked Jak Clayton is especially ruthless. When the two meet just off the Bahamas, even Fallon's cunning can't overcome their mismatch in firepower and desertion by a cowardly ally. Later, in Bermuda, Fallon is enlisted by the Royal Navy to intercept a Spanish flotilla carrying gold and silver to France. But a massive hurricane halts the British attack on the Spanish transports, driving several ships, including Fallon's, onto the Florida shore. Held by Spanish soldiers, Fallon and the surviving crew escape by turning enemies into friends. Once free, only one mission remains. Wicked Jak Clayton must die! The Bermuda Privateer is an action-filled sea story with layered storylines and a modern storyteller's voice.