In Washington, D.C., Colonel Charles P. Rook is tapped to organize the district’s security and to protect president-elect Abraham Lincoln from the death threats pouring in to the White House. He surrounds the president with bodyguards and fills the city’s rooftops with sharpshooters, diligently investigating the conspiracies being fomented with increasing intensity by Southern secessionists. Yet amidst the chaos and confusion, a foreigner slips unnoticed into the teeming city. Hired by a wealthy Southern planter to eliminate President Lincoln and destroy the Union once and for all, the assassin catches Rook’s attention by cutting down anyone who gets in his way. As the bodies begin to pile up, Rook realizes he is caught in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a cold-blooded killer who will stop at nothing to complete his mission. Rook’s only hope is Portia, a runaway slave who holds the key to the assassin’s identity—if she can stay alive long enough to deliver it. Packed with dynamic characters, rich period detail, and a chillingly sinister villain, The First Assassin is a riveting thriller for fans of historical fiction.

    A timeless tale of redemption with the best plot-twist at the end I've seen in a long, long time. Can't wait for book two!" New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Melissa Foster Katherine wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't found the letter... In the summer of 1905 Katherine Arthur's mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget. When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband Frank it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank. But, it was a society of uncertainty--a domain of natural disasters, temptation, hatred, even death. 

 Ten-year-old Katherine had loved her mother fiercely, put her trust in her completely, but when there was no other choice, and Jeanie resorted to extreme measures on the prairie to save her family, she tore Katherine's world apart. Now, seventeen years later, and far from the homestead, Katherine has found the truth – she has discovered the last letter. After years of anger, can Katherine find it in her heart to understand why her mother made the decisions that changed them all? Can she forgive and finally begin to heal before it's too late? **Independent Publisher Awards** 2011 Gold Medal, Best Regional Fiction-Midwest **National Indie Excellence Book Awards** 2011 Finalist Award-Historical Fiction 2011 Finalist Award-Regional Fiction **USA Best Books 2011 Awards** Winner, Fiction--Western Finalist, Fiction--Historical Finalist, Best New Fiction **International Book Awards** 2011 Finalist Award-Historical Fiction 2011 Finalist Award-Best New Fiction

    Those words adorned every building in Livingston, Virginia during the summer of 1963 confusing and angering five-year-old Stephen Phillips. Those words told him that what he felt for his colored neighbor Ruthie was wrong. As a teenager, Ruthie becomes the only ray of sunshine in his abusive life and he is not willing to let her go without a fight, a fight that could lead to murder.

    To protect herself and her young brother from her violent and unstable husband, she flees north, finding anonymity and sanctuary as the cook in a Northwoods lumber camp. The camp owner, Robert Foster, wonders if the lovely woman he's hired has the grit to survive the never-ending work and harsh conditions of a remote pine forest in winter. Katie wonders if she can keep her past a secret from a man she is slowly growing to love.With grace and skill, Serena Miller brings to life a bygone era. From the ethereal, snowy forest and the warm cook-stove to the rowdy shanty boys and the jagged edges of the saw, every detail is perfectly rendered, transporting the reader back to the time when pine was king, men were made of iron, and rivers were choked with logs on the way to the sawmills. Readers will have a hard time leaving the Northwoods when they turn the last page.

    It’s destiny calling. Asking for ragtime lessons, he’s told, “No, Ragtime is colored music.” So Brun runs away from the family farm to Sedalia, Missouri, to persuade Joplin to take him on as a pupil. What Brun doesn’t expect is to trip over the body of a young woman. He thoughtlessly picks up a couple of items before he rushes away from the murder scene.When Edward Fitzgerald, a man who befriended Brun his first night in town, is arrested for the woman’s murder, Brun is certain he’s innocent. But if the boy shows anyone the things he pocketed at the scene—things he now knows belonged to Scott Joplin—he’ll point the finger at the composer...and himself. Brun decides to get Fitzgerald, Joplin, and himself off the hook by finding the real killer, but for that he eventually needs some help from Dr. Overstreet, the alcoholic town mayor; and John Stark, a man pushing sixty, who’s been employing Brun at his music store.Sedalia is rife with suspects, some of them opportunists bent on stealing Joplin’s music. And then there are the girls and women—mysteries to Brun—like a teenager seized with religious fever, a couple of mischievous prostitutes, and an attractive, ambitious young woman with a hint of scarlet in her past, who further complicate his pursuit of the killer.

    Damien Cole. Ignoring the whispered warnings and rumours that he's a man to fear, she takes her position at his eerie estate, where she quickly discovers that nothing is at it seems, least of all her handsome and brooding employer. As Darcie struggles with her fierce attraction to Damien, she must also deal with the blood, the disappearances ... and the murders.With her options dwindling and time running out, Darcie must rely on her instincts as she confronts the man she falling in love with. Is he an innocent and misunderstood man ... or a remorseless killer who prowls the East End streets?Note: All books in the Dark Gothic series can be read as stand-alone novels.

    Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of the man she adored and consumed by a history she never knew, she is pulled into another time.The Ireland of 1921, teetering on the edge of war, is a dangerous place in which to awaken. But there Anne finds herself, hurt, disoriented, and under the care of Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who is oddly familiar. Mistaken for the boy’s long-missing mother, Anne adopts her identity, convinced the woman’s disappearance is connected to her own.As tensions rise, Thomas joins the struggle for Ireland’s independence and Anne is drawn into the conflict beside him. Caught between history and her heart, she must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she’d find. But in the end, is the choice actually hers to make?

    In his possession is a notebook once belonging to Isaac Newton. This is just the latest in a series of shocking crimes connected to objects once belonging to the famous scientist. The police are stumped and the pressure for an arrest is mounting. Enter Vincent Blake, London's leading stolen-art investigator. As Blake sets out to solve the case, a series of devastating events threaten to destroy everything he holds dear. Broken but undeterred, he comes upon a shocking discovery: within the coded pages of a mysterious crimson book, annotated in Newton’s own handwriting, is an explosive revelation. Possessing this secret knowledge turns Blake into a marked man. Caught in the crosshairs of two sadistic hitmen, Blake is propelled into a breathtaking race through London and its dark historical secrets. With time running out, will Blake solve Newton’s deadly puzzle before the world is plunged into a catastrophe of biblical proportions?

    Agrippina, the emperor Claudius' niece, reads in the stars that someone born in Alexandria on July 19, 32 AD, is destined to help raise her son, the future emperor Nero, to the throne of the Caesars. This fated young man is Epaphroditus, a library slave and the book's narrator, who at the age of 16 is taken by force to Rome to serve young Nero. Epaphroditus becomes Nero's confidant as the art-obsessed Caesar dreams of an age when music rules the world. After Nero performs his musical spectacles in public, apocalyptic Christians-believing him to be the antichrist-set Rome afire. Revolutionary unrest strikes Rome, a fiery comet makes a foreboding appearance, and the young emperor makes a concert tour of Greece as enemies sprout like Hydra's heads. Epaphroditus, fortified by the return of his faith in astrology, discovers that he, Nero's protector, is fated to kill his Caesar. Author Humphry Knipe's brilliant historical novel shakes the rafters of conventional belief about Nero and his Rome and the ancient science of astrology.

    In Chicago's Ukrainian Village, Nadya Lysenko has built her life on a foundation of secrets.When Nadya was sixteen, she snuck out of her house in Western Ukraine to meet a fortuneteller in the woods. Ignoring the threat of Nazis and Russians, Nadya was driven by love and a desire to learn the unknown. She never expected it to be the last time she would see her family.Years later, Nadya continues to be haunted by the death of her parents and sisters. She clings to her traditions and stories from Ukraine, the only parts of her past that she can share with her family. The myths and magic of Nadya's childhood are still a part of her reality: house spirits misplace keys and glasses, dreams unite friends across time and space, and a fortuneteller's cards predict the future.Her beloved dead also insist on being heard, through dreams and whispers in the night. They want the truth to come out. Nadya needs to face her past and confront the secrets she buried within-THE SILENCE OF TREES.

    As a faithful wife devoted to an unfaithful husband, Jackie knew humiliation well. Living in the public eye intensified her disgrace. Through the years, Jack Kennedy's lustful escapades grew in carelessness and frquency. When his trysts with Marilyn Monroe threaten to become public, Jackie must decide how far she'll go to save the presidency and her marriage.

    She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.If she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future -- and her family's.With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist..

    Clinging to her battered faith, she heads west to escape her grief and runs headlong into the man who caused it. Tall and headstrong, Eliza expected to remain an "unclaimed treasure." Devastated in the wake of the war, she sets out for New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo mountains in search of peace and new purpose but finds that the western frontier is a wild place where former enemies--Yankees and Rebels, Freedmen and Indians--square off in the quest for land and gold. Eliza must confront her prejudices and fears, and Jacob Craig embodies that conflict. The mountain man wins her trust with his gentle strength, but he harbors a secret. As a Union sharp-shooter, he met her fiance on the field of battle and cost him his life. Eliza must learn that she will not find purpose or peace anywhere until she finds in God a faith more precious than gold. A real ghost town comes to life in this award-winning story of love, forgiveness, and the sovereignty of God.

    Although she knows how to disappear in a crowd, Elodie is too terrified to slip by the German officers while carrying her poorly forged identity papers. She is frozen until a man she’s never met before claims to know her. In desperate need of shelter, Elodie follows him back to his home on the cliffs of Portofino.   Only months before, Elodie Bertolotti was a cello prodigy in Verona, unconcerned with world events. But when Mussolini’s Fascist regime strikes her family, Elodie is drawn into the burgeoning resistance movement by Luca, a young and impassioned bookseller. As the occupation looms, she discovers that her unique musical talents, and her courage, have the power to save lives.   In Portofino, young doctor Angelo Rosselli gives the frightened and exhausted girl sanctuary. He is a man with painful secrets of his own, haunted by guilt and remorse. But Elodie’s arrival has the power to awaken a sense of hope and joy that Angelo thought was lost to him forever.

    Three stories of women of courage. Sarah Becket campaigns for the women’s Vote; Catherine O’Connell-Gort struggles for Irish freedom; Ann Carter rebels against the King of England. Each woman fights for her beliefs. All three are betrayed by the men they love. Thrilling historical fiction based on real events. These three women - Sarah Becket, Catherine O'Connell-Gort and Ann Carter - are all imagined characters, but the historical scenes in their stories really happened, and women just like Sarah, Catherine and Ann faced real choices every bit as dramatic and dangerous as those described in these stories. Three quality historical novels for the price of two. 800+ pages. See what reviewers say: 'Cat & Mouse is a well written and researched epic drama with great historical merit wrapped around a fascinating web of characters ... which provides something for everyone: riots, romance, mystery, intrigue and crime all the while depicting lies, deception, betrayal and political struggles complete with a climatic ending - what more could you want from a novel?' Andrea Saxelby for the Kindle Book Review. 'Cat & Mouse is a novel about people, a mixture of romance and thriller. First it engagingly explores its characters' very different worlds. Then it carefully brings them together for a shattering conclusion. You won't forget this book!' Moorsman 'The Blood Upon the Rose is a masterfully written historical romance that places the reader in Ireland during the aftermath of World War 1 ... I enjoyed this book so much, that I look forward to reading it a second time.' Alle Wells, author of Railroad Man. The Blood Upon the Rose: 'One of the most poignant love stories I have ever read.' Jenny Twist, author of Domingo's Angel 'In a nutshell, I thought that The Monmouth Summer was a masterpiece ... I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the Seventeenth Century and looking to read a well researched, action packed story of an incredibly famous rebellion in English history.' Samantha J. Morris. The Monmouth Summer is a superb historical novel. Not only is the book compelling as great fiction, it provides the reader with a strong sense of the social and cultural milieu of late Seventeenth Century England.' Howard Wolf. Women of Courage is ‘a 3 book bundle of historical sagas spanning over 1200 pages making for a hefty bargain when you also consider each individual book sells for $4 thus saving you a bit more than half the price. Each book is loaded with plenty of flawed yet believable characters set in interesting and largely historically accurate settings.’ Don Kidwell, Amazon top 500 reviewer. Download Women of Courage NOW