It doesn’t spoil the main story.

    But the darkly handsome Mr. Edward Sharpe is no run-of-the-mill London merchant. He’s grim and silent. A man of little emotion—or perhaps no emotion at all. After two months of courtship, she’s ready to put an end to things. A Last Chance for Love But severing ties with her taciturn suitor isn’t as straightforward as Sophie envisioned. Her parents are outraged. And then there’s Charles Darwin, Prince Albert, and that dratted gaslight. What’s a girl to do except invite Mr. Sharpe to Appersett House for Christmas and give him one last chance to win her? Only this time there’ll be no false formality. This time they’ll get to know each other for who they really are.

    Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and reimagines the multigenerational novel through the fractures of immigrant family experience.Inhabiting four lives—a railroad baron’s valet who unwittingly ignites an explosion in Chinese labor, Hollywood's first Chinese movie star, a hate-crime victim whose death mobilizes Asian Americans, and a biracial writer visiting China for an adoption—this novel captures and capsizes over a century of our history, showing that even as family bonds are denied and broken, a community can survive—as much through love as blood.Building fact into fiction, spinning fiction around fact, Davies uses each of these stories—three inspired by real historical characters—to examine the process of becoming not only Chinese American, but American.

    But that plan falls into tatters when his mother sponsors his sister's friend and enlists him to dance with her at Almack's. The beautiful vixen he meets that night bears little resemblance to the shy, gangly girl who used to follow him around. Now, instead of avoiding Charlotte, he finds himself frustrated when she seems to notice everyone but him.

    All he wants is one night to feel like a man again. But when he’s paired with Miss Topaz Gold, he’s stunned by how deeply she makes him feel.Former mail-order bride Millie Townsend came to the Jeweled Ladies and gave up her name because she thought it was the key to her salvation after her husband died. It doesn’t take long to realize she isn’t Topaz Gold. She only wants to be a wife and mother, not a whore. But when Matthew offers to take her away from the Jeweled Ladies, will Millie be allowed to leave?

    As the spare, he has no obligation to provide an heir and he rather enjoys spending his days and nights in play with the demimonde. But more and more of late, he finds himself wanting to play naughty games with the American heiress, Gina Hammersley.After her scandalous older sister marries a marquess, Gina Hammersley suddenly finds herself the darling of London with beaux a plenty calling on her, sending flowers, and filling her dance cards. Unfortunately, the one she desires most is the one who has no wish to be caught in the marriage trap: Lord Andrew Mabry.But when they are discovered in a compromising situation, this unlikely pair must decide whether to face scandal or discover if the passion they’ve always felt is strong enough to lead them into love.

    And the handsome, clever duke Chloe has long admired proves to be her worst enemy…An unscrupulous boarding school is exploiting orphans in a secret workhouse. Baron Vanderbean plots a daring rescue. When illness befalls him, Chloe must take the reins. But how can a lifelong wallflower lead the charge to save the children?

      Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.   With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.Lulu --Hotline girl --New fruit --Field notes on a marriage --Flying machine --On the street where you live --Shanghai murmur --Land of big numbers --Beautiful country --Gubeikou spirit

    But when her lightkeeper father rescues a young man from the lake, her sheltered world is turned upside down.Bestselling author Jody Hedlund's Out of the Storm is her first ever novella and introduces readers to Beacons of Hope, a new series set in the 1800s amid the romance, history, and danger surrounding the Great Lakes lighthouses of Michigan.

    . . Beautiful . . . Romantic . . .12 novels by 12 bestselling authorsReleased once a month in 2016Read the matchmaker’s story to find out where it all starts . . .Mae Li has been in love with Chen Zhu for years, and he with her. But when the matchmaker arrives at the Zhu family home, she recommends another village girl for Chen.Heartbroken, Mae Li watches as Chen does his duty by marrying another. Mae flees her village with the clothes on her back and her only possession—a pearl embedded comb, given to her as a goodbye gift from Chen Zhu. Upon Mae’s arrival in Shanghai, she quickly learns that she’ll starve within days unless she sells her prized comb or joins a courtesan house. She goes to the Huangpu River and promises the River God that she’ll always be selfless if he will save her from becoming a prostitute . . . Her wish is granted when Ms. Tan, the matchmaker of Shanghai, finds Mae. But Mae must completely change her future and her name if she is to become the next matchmaker.

    Brought together again by fate and an arranged marriage, she must try and win the trust of LeVeq--the man she truly loves.

    In an innovative new twist for anthologies, each author is reintroducing a secondary character from a previous book to star in his own story!A resourceful beauty's determination to locate the true father of a poor foundling sets off a society scandal—and ignites a fire in handsome Reggie Carmarthen's world-weary, aristocratic heart in Stephanie Lauren's unforgettable Lost and Found Captivated by the fetching, marriage-wary noblewoman he finds concealed in his shrubbery, Harry Chamberlain, the roguish Earl of Granville, agrees to help the delightful lady escape...while hatching a plan to woo and win her himself in Christina Dodd's smoldering The Third Suitor A wounded hero, James Reyburn has no expectations of romance—until a storm-tossed beauty with a secret blows into his life in Elizabeth Boyle's enchanting The Matchmaker's Bargain

    On the night of the Harwoods' Spring Solstice Ball, in an underwater ballroom full of sparkling fey lights and danger, Amy will have to fight the greatest political battle of her life to win a family and a future that she could never have imagined.It will take an entirely unexpected kind of magic to keep everything from crashing down around her.Warning: this novella contains forbidden romance, dangerous magic, and political intrigue in an underwater ballroom. What could possibly go wrong?

    and here it is!

     But Cait Grant is hardly dreaming of wedded bliss. For political reasons, she must marry Adam Cameron, laird of Bonniebroch. And then, as a duty to her clan, she must murder him... If only her new husband weren't so devilishly handsome. If only she didn't have to play the loving wife for one long, languorous month. If only she didn't surrender to his softly sensual touch, she would be able to fulfill her duty. If only she didn't fall in love...