These passionate tales feature young women who learn that there’s nothing textbook about love…NEVER SEDUCE A SCOUNDREL The ballrooms of Mayfair have become much more appealing to Lady Amelia Plume since the arrival of Major Lucas Winter, an American with a dark past and a dangerous air. Lucas is brash, arrogant--and scandalously tempting. Yet Amelia suspects that Lucas has a hidden motive in wooing her. And she intends to discover it, by any means necessary. ONLY A DUKE WILL DO Louisa North likes her independence very much. So when Simon Tremaine, the dashing Duke of Foxwood, whom she once loved, returns bent on marrying her, she's skeptical. The fire between them burns as hot as ever, but when Simon's ulterior motive for marriage is exposed, along with the deeply buried secrets of her past, Louisa vows to make him pay...and the price will be his heart. BEWARE A SCOT'S REVENGE When Lady Venetia Campbell is kidnapped at pistol point by her father's sworn enemy, Sir Lachlan Ross, she discovers the wickedly sexy Scot is even more intoxicating than she remembers...and much more dangerous. Lachlan plans to use her as a weapon against her father, but Venetia is determined that his lust for revenge will be trumped by an even more powerful desire.

    Eliza arrives at her new home and finds herself falling for the mysterious lord of Havenwood, Malcolm Winfield. Despite the sinister rumors that surround him, Eliza is drawn to his melancholy charm and his crumbling, once-beautiful mansion. With enough love, she thinks, both man and manor could be repaired.Not long into their marriage, Eliza fears that she should have listened to the locals. There’s something terribly wrong at Havenwood Manor: Forbidden rooms. Ghostly whispers in the shadows. Strangely guarded servants. And Malcolm’s threatening moods, as changeable as night and day.As Eliza delves deeper into Malcolm’s troubling history, the dark secrets she unearths gain a frightening power. Has she married a man or a monster? For Eliza, uncovering the truth will either save her or destroy her.

    He was the tall dark stranger of her girlhood dreams, and had finally come to take her away. She returns with him to Sans Songe, the Leroux family plantation in Louisiana. A near-fatal accident on the road to the plantation does not bode well for her future there. And indeed, many nasty surprises await her at the plantation itself. Voodoo magic, poisoned food, and a murder mystery force Claire into a stalemate. She is helpless within the bosom of her frigid and isolating new family, while her husband has yet to come to her bed. He may even be hoping for her destruction, as she is drawn into an ever more tangled web of passion and intrigue...

    Amusing mystery story, its melodramatic plot unwinding against the charming background of a South Carolina townlet stirred to its depths by the passing of an historic mansion, through a spite will, to the possession of "a Yankee woman named Smith".

    Her petulant employer, Lord Marcus Carisbrooke, is as enigmatic as one of the heroes from her favorite Gothic romance novels. Yet behind his gruff manner she senses a deep and abiding pain. As Marcus's brittle exterior dissolves, Hilary catches a glimpse of the man beneath. But when she discovers the secret that haunts the Abbey, it puts them both in terrible danger - a danger they might never escape.

    She did not know that her children would not understand, would not forgive her. She had one moment of joy, shutting the door, leaving, followed by ten years of guilt.Then the death of the family matriarch Nan reunites Roz, now with a career, a flat and a lover, with her family. Histrionic Zoe and infuriatingly laid-back Jamie arrive on her doorstep. Suddenly Roz is a mother again. A human soup is stirred, and dark family secrets are revealed. But Roz soon realises that her children have only returned to her so that, in the proper scheme of things, they can leave her. Rather than she leaving them.

    Here are a dozen action stories from this dark and brooding universe.Contents"Salvation" by Jonathan Green"Into the Maelstrom" by Chris Pramas"Emperor's Grace" by Alex Hammond"The Raven's Claw" by Jonathan Curran"Children of the Emperor" by Barrington J. Bayley"The Black Pearl" by Chris Pramas""Acceptable Losses" by Gav Thorpe"Tenebrae" by Mark Brendan"Ancient Lances" by Alex Hammond"Hell in a Bottle" by Simon Jowett"Unthinking Justice" by Andras Millward"In the Belly of the Beast" by William King

    She finds herself falling for the attractive estate manager, who carries secrets of his own. As the tension grows more unbearable, Ellen will have to risk everything she holds dear to discover the secrets that lurk in the shadows of the Chateau D'Arc.

    Find a white girl in Brixton. Piece of cake. What I should have done is doubled my medication and lit a candle to St Jude - maybe a lot of candles. Add in a lethal ex-con, an Irish builder obsessed with Gene Hackman, the biggest funeral Brixton has ever seen, and what you get is the Blues like they've never been sung before.

    A semi-celebrity in the British tabloids, she’s known asmuch for her fame as a “lite” classical musician as for her own fabulous sense of style.But this self-made diva is dissatisfied with her stale, safe marriage to her collegesweetheart and her artistically shallow career. An extended trip to New York seems justthe thing, but Evie’s problems in London make the transatlantic journey with her: themedia demands on an emerging pop starlet; the increasing threats of a determined stalker; and a long kept secret that could ruin her image and all of the relationships she holdsdear.

    She’s one of life’s successes: an award-winning playwright living in a beautiful house with an equally celebrated writer. But she isn’t happy. Life is too easy. It’s becoming stultifying, negating her creative force.She decides upon a spell of sleazy living to give both her work and her soul a spring-clean – and elopes with her typewriter in search of just a hint of degradation. She finds it in Bayswater, and safe in bedsit land she immediately sets about getting to know her neighbours. However, her careless plotting of their lives leads to consequences both tragic and deliciously entertaining.

    Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family’s estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband’s origins…and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths’ past is just the beginning… All is not well at Wych Elm House. Dottie's husband is distant, and her son was grievously injured in the war. Footsteps follow Jo down empty halls, and items in her bedroom are eerily rearranged. The locals say the family is cursed, and that a ghost in the woods has never rested. And when Jo discovers her husband’s darkest secrets, she wonders if she ever really knew him. Isolated in a place of deception and grief, she must find the truth or lose herself forever. And then a familiar stranger arrives at Wych Elm House…

    This chapel, a stained glass folly set on the moors of Shropshire, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne’s last book, The Lost History of Dreams.However, Ada’s grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle’s story of Ada and Hugh’s ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.As the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship unfolds, so does the secret behind Robert’s own marriage—including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since the tragic accident three years ago, and the origins of his own morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn’t—things from beyond the grave.Kris Waldherr effortlessly spins a sweeping and atmospheric gothic mystery about love and loss that blurs the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death.

    Now it's made her a killer's target. Emme knows why the Dowager Duchess of Briarleigh invited her to a house party--to investigate whether the duke, Rhys Brammel, murdered his wife years ago. But Emme never imagined she would fall in love with the brooding duke. Branded by society as a possible killer, Rhys is suspicious of Emme and her alleged "gift." Then a late night encounter creates awareness of her other, more attractive, aspects. When Emme's life is threatened, Rhys becomes her protector. Emme and Rhys find passion and peril as they join forces to solve the mysteries at Briarleigh. She made him believe in spirits, but can she make him believe in love?

    Tormented by horrific nightmares since the death of her baby five years before, literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw agrees to accompany an author to Wales, where she encounters an eccentric young widow desperately afraid for her own infant's safety and a reclusive playwright who could be her only salvation.