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

    At eighteen, she met Tod Hostetter at a local dance, having no idea that the mercurial charmer she would impulsively wed was heir to one of the wealthiest families in America. But when he died twelve years later, Allene packed her bags for New York City. Never once did she look back.From the vantage point of the American upper class, Allene embodied the tumultuous Gilded Age. Over the course of four more marriages, she weathered personal tragedies during World War I and the catastrophic financial reversals of the crash of 1929. From the castles and châteaus of Europe, she witnessed the Russian Revolution and became a princess. And from the hopes of a young girl from Jamestown, New York, Allene Tew would become the epitome of both a pursuer and survivor of the American Dream.

    But with so many victims in her close circle, young socialite Allene questions if the flu is really to blame. All appear to have been poisoned—and every death was accompanied by a mysterious note.Desperate for answers and dreading her own engagement to a wealthy gentleman, Allene returns to her passion for scientific discovery and recruits her long-lost friends, Jasper and Birdie, for help. The investigation brings her closer to Jasper, an apprentice medical examiner at Bellevue Hospital who still holds her heart, and offers the delicate Birdie a last-ditch chance to find a safe haven before her fragile health fails.As more of their friends and family die, alliances shift, lives become entangled, and the three begin to suspect everyone—even each other. As they race to find the culprit, Allene, Birdie, and Jasper must once again trust each other, before one of them becomes the next victim.

    An outsider in his own country—adrift between two worlds divided by class, race, and culture—he’s always been searching for home. Alongside a flock of other streetwise young men, each looking for direction and each easily susceptible, Tariq finds his cause in the Muslim revival.Idealistic, driven by faith, and empowered with purpose, he’s drawn to radical Islam—his last resort for achieving a sense of belonging, for embracing and being embraced. It’s only when he enlists in the war against Assad that Tariq’s eyes are truly opened. Dispirited with the violence, faced with the consequences of his choices, and increasingly distanced from the brutalities of jihad, Tariq’s spiritual struggle is now his alone. So are the stories he will tell to make sense of his life.In this daring and unprecedented work of literary fiction, Demian Vitanza explores the power of memory, the lure of rebellion, the search for meaning amid chaos—and the toll that such a journey can take before finally finding one’s way home.

    Jem Phipps has always loved Katy. His proposal of marriage rescues her from scandal but after tragedy strikes, Jem becomes a reluctant soldier on the battlefields of The First World War, leaving Katy behind, restless and alone. Lionel White, the local curate, has just returned from India bringing a dash of colour to the small village and offers Katy a window on the wider world. Only when Katy joins up as a WAAC girl does she finally break free from the stifling class-ridden hierarchies that bind her but the brutality of 20th-century global war brings home the price she has paid for her search. Through the horrors of WW1, she discovers only love brings freedom. In essence, Daffodils is a love story, whose tender heart is almost torn apart through this tumultuous time. COMPLETELY REVISED EDITION

    However, Beth's hopes of a quiet life are dashed when Richard, dissatisfied with his meagre inheritance and desperate for promotion, decides to force her into a marriage for his military gain. And he will stop at nothing to get his way.Beth is coerced into a reconciliation with her noble cousins in order to marry well and escape her brutal brother. She is then thrown into the glittering social whirl of Georgian high society and struggles to conform. The effeminate but witty socialite Sir Anthony Peters offers to ease her passage into society and she is soon besieged by suitors eager to get their hands on her considerable dowry. Beth, however, wants love and passion for herself, and to break free from the artificial life she is growing to hate. She finds herself plunged into a world where nothing is as it seems and everyone hides behind a mask. Can she trust the people professing to care for her?The first in the series about the fascinating lives of beautiful Beth Cunningham, her family and friends during the tempestuous days leading up to the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, which attempted to overthrow the Hanoverian King George II and restore the Stuarts to the British throne. Join the rebellion of one woman and her fight for survival in... The Jacobite Chronicles.

    Their erotic and ideological vicissitudes are driven by a reality they cannot control, like that of Homer’s characters. Invisible gods intervene in their lives to intertwine their physical attraction and intellectual admiration, courage and fear, secrets and unexpected complicity. They build their difficult and beautiful love in one of the most turbulent and romantic scenarios of Latin American history. They swim with the current; they enjoy it and enlarge it. But they are also dragged along by eddies that leave them breathless and turn their world upside down. Aguinis’ titles tend to be paradoxical. However, for this novel, he has preferred to place emphasis on the multiple meanings of the word passion. Passion refers to love, and also to the strength of ideals, to suffering, pleasure, salvation and the yearning for freedom. The emotional combat of the protagonists runs in parallel with the dizzying brilliance of concrete situations. This is what allows the suspense to grab the reader from the first page to the very end. A free-flowing, sweeping, and thrilling rhythm dominates the text, like that of musical passions. It should come as no surprise that this novel—where the voices of the female protagonist, her lover, and the omniscient writer alternate—has been written following Bach’s counterpoint model. From a distance, ineffable, we still hear the resounding epic of another war where the liberators sang to a different Carmela—also a torch, also a passion. Aguinis portrays his creations skillfully and renders them indelible. His skill in handling emotions does leaves no line void of poetry or consequences. And his extremely accurate style is a grounding that turns this work—situated in exceptional times—into one of the best love stories to mark out the course of literature.

    When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.  As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress’s maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.   Featuring a cast of characters drawn from history, The Queen of the Night follows Lilliet as she moves ever closer to the truth behind the mysterious opera and the role that could secure her reputation -- or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.

    An infamous poet living in self-imposed exile. An ancient treasure about to fall into the wrong hands.Melanie Karsak's Chasing the Star Garden takes readers on a thrilling adventure from the gritty opium dens of gaslamp London to the gem-coloured waters of the ancient world. Lily Stargazer, a loveable but reckless airship racer with a famous lover and shattered past, reluctantly plunges into a centuries-old mystery in a romantic adventure best described as Dan Brown meets Mary Shelley.It all begins on one of the worst days of Lily’s life. She just lost the London leg of the 1823 Airship Grand Prix. To top it off, a harlequin fleeing from constables shoved a kaleidoscope down her pants, told her to fly to Venice, then threw himself from her airship tower. What’s a girl to do? For Lily, the answer is easy: drink absinthe and smoke opium. Lily’s lover, Lord Byron, encourages her to make the trip to Venice. Lily soon finds herself at the heart of an ancient mystery which has her running from her past and chasing true love and the stars along the way.

    Ernst, a cross-dressing lounge singer at a seedy nightclub, had many secrets, a never-ending list of lovers, and plenty of opportunities to get into trouble.Hannah delves into the city's dark underbelly to flush out his murderer, but the late night arrival of a five-year-old orphan on her doorstep complicates matters. The endearing Anton claims that Hannah is his mother. and that her dead brother Ernst is his father.As her investigations into Ernst's murder and Anton's parentage uncover political intrigue and sex scandals in the top ranks of the rising Nazi party, Hannah fears not only for her own life, but for that of a small boy who has come to call her 'mother.'

    But in New York City, two young Irish immigrants are fleeing something else. For Evelyn Brennan, an impending marriage she doesn’t want. For Lucius Flynn, the burden of a life in business and trade under his tyrannical father. Brash and adventurous, Lucius decides the only way to be free of his doomed future as a bored tradesman is to risk everything on the burgeoning and dangerous gold fields of California. However, that “everything” that he plans on risking is in fact the dowry of his headstrong bride, Evelyn. The truth that they were once childhood friends is something Evelyn sorely tries to forget as her new husband drags her along the quickest but deadliest path to the California gold rush: the Panama Route. Under the pretense of honeymooning in New Orleans, Lucius and Evelyn board a steamship bound for California, where they bear each other’s company with little grace and frequent bickering. Evelyn’s contempt for Lucius’ adventure is soothed, however, when she meets an Australian named Brock Donnigan. Sharp, handsome, and heartless, Brock sets out to seduce Evelyn just as Lucius finds himself falling in love with her. Through their adventures and misadventures over land and sea, the two men try to win Evelyn’s affections. But as they draw nearer to Panama City, where a mass migration of Argonauts lies in wait for transportation to California, a battle of wits and wills escalates into a war where all fortunes, dreams, and innocence may be lost; where lust demands blood, and love inspires sacrifice.From the black cliffs of Ireland to the streets of New York, from the Spanish fortress of Havana to the beaches of Panama, Liberty Hill is a sweeping historical romance that combines what we love most about the West- guns, saloons, horses, and handsome outlaws- with the tropic heat of Central America.The first young adult fiction in her Western Tide series, Sonja Heisinger molds a fresh and epic literary experience from an old world setting. Liberty Hill awakens the past with the exciting elements of drama, comedy, and action, with the additional zests of forbidden pleasure and unrequited love. This adventure book takes you on a wild journey that anyone looking for an exciting historical fiction will love!

    She’s vulnerable. She’s just what Marco was looking for.Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.Is he?She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems?With Stella’s life still in freefall, Marco whisks her away to a secluded cottage where she is isolated from everyone except him. But the closer he pulls her, the worse she gets. He tells her it’s all in her head, and she just needs time away from the world.No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question whether she was wrong to trust Marco. Was she wrong to trust herself? Is the one person she thought was fighting for her survival actually her biggest threat?

    She reluctantly joins an orphan train on a voyage of hope, despair and the search for a home. Not just for her siblings but for almost forty other orphans desperate for a future. Orphan Train Trials Bella Jones and Kathleen Collins are as close as sisters and want to stay together. But their pasts come back to haunt them. A past Orphan Train survivor, can Bella save young twins, Megan and Eileen from a fate worse than the one Bella survived? Kathleen can't help, she has her own problems with missing brothers. Can she save them from the hangman's noose? Orphan Train Christmas Kenny Clark wants a family for Christmas. Kathleen is working hard to secure the best outcomes for all the orphans but what of her chance of happiness?

    Napoleon III has installed a foreign monarch in Mexico to squash the current regime. Maximilian von Habsburg of Austria accepts the emperor’s crown. But it is his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Princess Charlotte, who throws herself passionately into the role. Known to the people as Empress Carlota, she rules deftly from behind the scenes while her husband contents himself with philandering and decorating the palace.But Carlota bears a guilty secret. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she’s thrown herself into a reckless affair. Desire has blinded Carlota to its consequences, for it has left her vulnerable to her sole trusted confidante. Carlota’s devious lady-in-waiting has political beliefs of her own—and they are strong enough to cause her to betray the empress and join a plot to depose her from the throne. As Carlota grows increasingly, maddeningly defenseless, both her own fate and that of the empire are at stake.A sweeping historical novel of forbidden love, dangerous secrets, courtly intrigue, and treachery, The Empress passionately reimagines the tragic romance and ill-fated reign of the most unforgettable royal couple of nineteenth-century Europe during the last throes of the Second Empire.

    She cooks, cleans, launders, and cares for her ten-year-old son, Solly, a sweet but challenging child whose busy behavior and failure to speak elicits undesired advice from others in town. Ella’s plate is full from sunup to sundown. When a room in her boarding house opens up, the respected town doctor brings Ella a new boarder―the handsome and gallant Mr. David Rainwater—but Ella is immediately resistant to opening up her home to this mysterious stranger. Even with assurances that Mr. Rainwater is a man of impeccable character, a former cotton broker and a victim of the Great Depression, Ella stiffens at the thought of taking him in. Dr. Kincaid tells Ella in confidence that Mr. Rainwater won’t require the room for long: he is dying. Begrudgingly, Ella accepts Mr. Rainwater’s application to board, but she knows that something is happening; she is being swept along by an unusual series of events. Soon, this strong-minded, independent woman will realize that the living that she has eked out for herself in the small bubble of her town is about to change, whether she likes it or not... Racial tensions, the financial strain of livelihoods in cotton drying up into dust, and the threat of political instability swirl together into a tornado on the horizon. One thing is certain: the winds of change are blowing all over Texas—and through the cracks in the life that Ella Barron has painstakingly built. This is the story of a woman who takes her life’s circumstances in both hands, but who will be forced to reckon with the chaos of her historical circumstances..