Book picks similar to
The Wayward Miss Wyckenham by Melinda Hammond


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Forget Me Not


Adrianne Byrd - 2008
    Launching an investigation that plunges her deep into a world of police corruption, she's about to nail a suspect when stolen goods and several kilos of cocaine are discovered in her house. Certain the killer is setting her up to take the fall, Jaclyn turns to her old partner's best friend, FBI special agent Brad Williams—a man who ignites passion beyond her wildest dreams.or desire? Brad Williams has worked for years to infiltrate the group responsible for the death of Jaclyn's partner. Knowing just how ruthless and lethal the organization is, Brad tries to keep Jaclyn out of harm's way. But this headstrong woman isn't about to accept protection from a man—even if he's as sinfully seductive as Brad. So when Jaclyn's fragile trust in him is shattered by a lie, he will have to do everything in his power to convince her that true love is all about forgiving….

Surrendering to the Rake


Georgette Brown - 2017
     Determined to save her cousin from certain ruin at the hands a notorious rake, Miss Heloise Merrill impersonates her cousin and takes her place at the 'Chateau of Debauchery.' She intends to convince the rake – Sebastian Cadwell, Earl of Blythe -- to turn his attentions elsewhere. Deprived of his intended guest, Sebastian decides to provide the meddling Miss Merrill a much deserved set-down. But when things take a decidedly hot turn, he finds he wants to go beyond a simple set-down. Can Heloise stand her ground or will she surrender to the rake? For a more wicked version of this story, see Em Brown's SUBMITTING TO THE RAKE.

The Promise of Tomorrow


AnneMarie Brear - 2018
    After a year on the road, they stumble into a Yorkshire village where the Wheelers, owners of the village shop, take them in. This new life is strange for Charlotte, but preferable to living with McBride or surviving on the roads. Harry Belmont is an important man in the village, but he’s missing something in his life. His budding friendship with Charlotte gives him hope she will feel more for him one day, and he will marry the woman he yearns for. When McBride discovers where Charlotte lives, his threats begin. Harry fights to keep Charlotte safe, but World War I erupts and Harry enlists. Left to face a world of new responsibilities, and Harry’s difficult sister, Charlotte must run the gauntlet of family disputes, McBride's constant harassment, and the possibility of the man she loves being killed.Can Charlotte find the happiness that always seems under threat, and will Harry return home to her?

The Devil You Know


Josephine Cox - 1996
    But for Sonny, the affair that has promised a future of hope and happiness must end in desperate fear. Late one evening, Sonny overhears a private conversation between Tony Bridgeman and his wife. Only then does she realise she is in great danger. Pregnant and afraid, Sonny flees her home to make a new life in the north of England, where she meets a gregarious and motherly new friend, Ellie Kenny. When the mysterious and handsome David Langham seems drawn to her, Sonny almost dares to believe that she could be happy again. But never far away is the one person who wants to destroy everything that she now holds dear...

A Long Fatal Love Chase


Louisa May Alcott - 1995
    A brooding stranger seduces her from the remote island onto his yacht. Trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit, she flees to Italy, France, Germany, from Paris garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau - stalked by obsessed Phillip Tempest.Two years before Little Women, serialized in a magazine under the alias A.M. Barnard in 1866, this was buried among the author's papers over a century.

Bebe's By Golly Wow!


Yolanda Joe - 1998
    A big, strapping "steak-colored" man who is as strong as he is sensitive, Isaac is the man of Bebe's dreams. But he's also a father dealing with the challenges of raising a thirteen-year-old daughter on his own.Much to Bebe's surprise, Isaac's whip-smart daughter, Dashay, turns out to be the "other woman" who threatens to keep them apart. Meanwhile Sandy, Bebe's best friend, who is struggling in the workplace as she clashes with the new owners of the radio station, continues on her adventure in search of true love, refusing to give up. Set in Chicago and told in alternating voices, Bebe's By Golly Wow sparkles with Yolanda Joe's deft storytelling, in-your-face dialogue, and marvelous insight as she paints a sensitive and funny tale of modern romance, family transitions, and heartfelt friendships.

A Touch of Silver


Lynne Connolly - 2019
    He was happier living in seclusion with his sisters. About to become betrothed to the icy daughter of a duke, he meets the vibrant, alluring Annie, who captivates his heart. But if he gives in to his desires, he risks a happy ending for his sisters, and they deserve their chances.Annie Cathcart is a widow from the City of London. Finally, she has the chance to achieve her dream of creating silverware for the table. But she needs Gerald's old Shoreditch home to do it. Expecting a stuffy, pompous aristocrat, she meets a man who sees right through her practical exterior to the passionate woman beneath. She wants him more than the house, her respectability, and her independence.Annie and Gerald are faced with stark choices when her landlord tries to blackmail her into marriage. Either they give in to the pressures forcing them into unhappy respectability apart... or they boldly defy convention in the name of love.

River Oaks Plantation


B.J. Robinson - 2013
    J. Robinson comes a family saga amidst the backdrop of the Civil War and a deadly hurricane, rising floodwaters in the Big Easy, or Crescent City, as a plantation on River Road in Vacherie, Louisiana, is threatened. Will Hurricane Katrina destroy what the Civil War spared? Margaret Jane Turnrow first laid eyes on River Oaks Plantation amid lush foliage and oak trees dripping with Spanish moss when she returned from her honeymoon as a petite hazel-eyed fifteen-year-old bride to the antebellum mansion. She immediately fell in love with the house and grounds and beautifying the garden with plants. Her first task involved lining the oak drive with azaleas. Determined to have the best plantation gardens, she soon recreated formal ones designed from precious memories of France, Italy, and England she'd toured on her honeymoon. Before the Civil War, she imported plants, and gardening became her passion. During the war, it was her only one. The fertile Louisiana soil loved and nursed her plants as much as she did, and they grew like the cotton and sugarcane. Pale as a magnolia blossom, she sparkled like the sun reflecting off Lake Pontchartrain when she flashed pearly white teeth with her camellia red smile, but small white hands tucked demurely into the folds of her gown as she sat quietly during elegant dinners, concealed her true vivacious spirit. The war would change the shy woman-child as it ravaged through her life and took its toll on the home and family life she came to know and love with all of her heart. Before the Civil War, dashing Danny Paul Turnrow stood six-foot-two-inches, as tall and elegant as the white-columned plantation home he'd purchased on the banks of the Mississippi River. He led a charmed life as a charismatic cotton baron known as one of the richest men on River Road. River Oaks boasted over thirty-five-hundred acres of fertile Louisiana soil, mostly planted in cotton with the exception of some sugarcane along the Mississippi River banks and his wife's gardens. He returned from the war a different man, as broken as the pillared splendor of the South. Surrounded by cypress swamps and sugarcane fields on the river's end and white blankets of cotton edging the dirt roads, River Oaks Plantation still stood, but the grand life he'd led turned to one of backbreaking toil. He no longer stood so tall and proud with an aching back hunched over Louisiana cotton fields. With the future uncertain, fear lurks in his heart and soul and clouds his mind. What will sustain his marriage through the loss? Can they defend what's most precious to them and maintain River Oaks as a working plantation? The manor home is the only legacy he has left and the only life he has ever known. Will he lose it? Years later, Amaryllis Camilla O'Brien is stranded alone with two dogs on the top floor of an antebellum plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana, as a deadly hurricane rips and roars through the city and raging floodwaters threaten to devour the old home. She discovers a yellowed diary. Will family secrets drown in the flood with her? Will the diary matter? She's determined to save it and the dogs, or die trying. Has her grandmother left her a sinking ship? Noah Gautreaux, the plantation manager, took vehicles to higher ground and is supposed to return, but will he make it in time to save Amaryllis and his pet girls? The old house withstood the floods of 1973, 1983, and 1993. He doesn't think he has to worry about it floating off down the Mississippi River, but as excessive rain and wind continue to batter the area and the water continues to rise when the levee breaches, he realizes there's a first time for everything and this could be it for the white-columned beauty of ages past.

The Rake's Challenge


Beth Elliott - 2011
    Anna Lawrence, nineteen and inspired by Lord Byron’s poems, is determined to seek a life of travel and adventure. Both decide to flee society. They meet when Giles rescues Anna from her first escapade. Anna is resolute in demonstrating her independence but, somehow, she always ends up in trouble. His own pleasures forgotten, Giles rescues her from one potential disaster after another. He knows he cannot live without her, but he meets an unexpected obstacle, for Anna has a secret that means she can never be more than a friend to the man she has come to love with all her heart... Is there any way for their love to prevail? Beth Elliott was born in Lancashire, but fell in love with books during many childhood visits to her Welsh grandparents, whose bookshelves were always well stocked. Her greatest discovery was the novels of Jane Austen, which have fascinated her ever since. Having first taught languages in various countries across the globe, Beth eventually decided to write her own novels. Her previous books The Wild Card, In All Honour and April and May were also published by Robert Hale and you can learn more about her on her website: www.bethelliott.webs.com.

The Cynfell Brothers


Samantha Holt - 2018
    The Cynfell brothers are the very embodiment of a sinful existence. But could the right woman change that? Meet all the Cynfell brothers in this limited edition boxset!

The Other Side Of The Table


Madhumita Mukherjee - 2013
    A bond punctuated by absence and distance...Two continents. Two cities. Two people.And letters. Hundreds of them.Over years. Across oceans. Between hearts.Between Abhi, who is training to be a neurosurgeon in London, and Uma, who is just stepping into the world of medicine in Kolkata. As they ink their emotions onto paper, their lives get chronicled in this subtly nuanced conversation through letters ... letters about dreams, desires, heartbreaks, and longings... about a proverbial good life falling apart, about a failed marriage, a visceral loss, and about a dream that threatens social expectations...Letters that talk. And don't. Letters about this and that. Letters about everything...Letters with a story you would never expect.

A Match for Lady Constance


Judith Lown - 2005
    She has beauty, a generous dowry, and an impressive family name to recommend her. Her mother fears Constance will soon--gasp!--be relegated to the shelf. However, Lady Constance is in no hurry to wed. She has exacting requirements for a husband and intends to marry only when she finds the perfect gentleman-one that is worthy. She delights in her ability to control her own destiny. Until an encounter with a shadowy emigre, that is.Constance is certain that she can gracefully extricate herself from an unwanted engagement, while at the same time find a suitable mate for her friend and protect her innocent maid from the wiles of a sophisticated Frenchman. But can she protect her own heart from the attractions of her mysterious fiancé?

Fallen Grace


Mary Hooper - 2010
    Having given birth to an illegitimate child, she has travelled to the famed Brookwood Cemetery to place her small infant's body in a rich lady's coffin. Following the advice of a kindly midwife, this is the only way that Grace can think of to give something at least to the little baby who died at birth, and to avoid the ignominy of a pauper's grave. Distraught and weeping, Grace meets two people at the cemetery: Mrs Emmeline Unwin and Mr James Solent. These two characters will have a profound affect upon Grace's life. But Grace doesn't know that yet. For now, she has to suppress her grief and get on with the business of living: scraping together enough pennies selling watercress for rent and food; looking after her older sister, who is incapable of caring for herself; thwarting the manipulative and conscience-free Unwin family, who are as capable of running a lucrative funeral business as they are of defrauding a young woman of her fortune. A stunning evocation of life in Victorian London, with vivid and accurate depictions, ranging from the deprivation that the truly poor suffered to the unthinking luxuries enjoyed by the rich: all bound up with a pacy and thrilling plot, as Grace races to unravel the fraud about to be perpetrated against her and her sister.Watch the video trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esw86O...

The Mistletoe Marquess


Sahara Kelly - 2016
    His family is responsible for the ale reputed to be the best in England and Reid’s heart lies in brewing not wooing. Until one wintery night when his world is turned upside down by a snow-laden branch and a woman who smells of spring. Lady Prudence Eldridge has come to Chillendale Village with her cousin, and really didn’t expect to find astounding passion flat on his back at her feet. She’s ready, willing and intrigued by this kind man who is so much more than he might appear. His clothes mark him as a gentleman – when he removes them he’s anything but!There are Christmas Fêtes for the children and a Mistletoe Ball for the adults. There will be carols sung, there will be naked frolicking in the snow, and there will be surprise romances. There will most likely be a Christmas pudding or two for good measure. Reid and Prudence may have found each other, but keeping each other may be a bit more of a Christmas challenge…

The Madcap Masquerade


Nadine Miller - 1998
    He offers to pay her to impersonate her long-lost twin sister, who has mysteriously disappeared in Scotland. But she never counted on falling for her sister's rakish fiancee, the handsome Earl of Linley. And what would happen if he found out that the spirited, passionate object of his love was no more than a stand-in bride?