In her innocence, Kathleen Colby trusted a man no woman should ever have believed. She dreamed he would take care of her, and would help her care for her helpless sister. Instead, in a drunken rampage, he assaulted her and left her shattered on the muddy streets of an Alaskan boomtown.Kathleen does not let him stop her. She escapes Skagway with her paralyzed sister Josie, in spite of her attacker. Just before winter closes in, on the last ship of 1899, they sail away to the south. Their dangerous journey is only beginning. They travel across America at the turn of the twentieth century, by train, on horseback, and on foot. One man, a man of many secrets, travels as Kathleen’s companion, but she cannot allow him into her heart. She knows that she cannot trust another supposed rescuer, that she alone must rescue herself. She is sure that she must learn to stand on her own legs before she can build a relationship with any man. Yet, Kathleen is drawn to this strange and passionate man, but perhaps the brutal assault she endured in Skagway has closed off her heart to the possibility of faith in someone else. She carries a gun, and is willing to shoot to kill or to take what she is owed. She trains herself to survive at any cost. For her unspeaking sister’s sake and her own, she learns to live in a savage world. Whether or not she reaches the great city of New York, she has been on a harsh road too long. Will she ever learn to live as a woman again, and to open her heart to love?

    Stealing the delicate beauty on her wedding day, he vows to keep her safe—and untouched—for she is a hostage to be bartered for the freedom of his beloved Scotland. But soon he discovers that his lovely captive has unexpected strength, fire—and plans of her own. From a besieged French castle to the untamed Scottish Highlands, Darach and Laurien are swept up in wild adventure, dangerous secrets…and forbidden love that puts their honor and their lives at risk.An RWA Golden Heart Award Finalist: Best Historical Romance of the Year“A compelling, memorable romance. HIS STOLEN BRIDE joins the ranks of the finest medieval captive/captor stories along with those by Elizabeth Stuart and Johanna Lindsey. 4 1/2 stars (highest rating)." -RT Book ReviewsAn earlier edition of this novel was originally published by Avon Books under the title Falcon on the Wind. This extensively revised Author's Preferred Edition includes new scenes never before published.The Stolen Brides SeriesThese regal brides are about to discover that falling in love with a warrior is the most dangerous adventure of all. Each book is a stand-alone, steamy historical romance:Book 1: HIS STOLEN BRIDE (Darach and Laurien)Book 2: FOREVER HIS (Gaston and Celine)Book 3: HIS FORBIDDEN TOUCH (Royce and Princess Ciara)Book 4: HIS CAPTIVE BRIDE (Hauk and Avril)Book 5: HIS SCOTTISH BRIDE (Henri and Aileen)

    Author, Mark Asher experienced losing his German Shepherd/Chow mix in the worst of ways: while out of his care, at a boarding facility. At the time, Mark had just finished work on his first book, Old Friends, a loving tribute to senior dogs, and his dog, Humphrey, had been the inspiration. The sudden and devastating loss sent Mark into a debilitating state of anger, grief, and guilt, wondering what he could have done to prevent the incident. Lost and empty without his four-legged companion, who had seen him through a divorce, relocation to a new city, and a new job, Mark decided to go to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, to volunteer and find his way through the pain. Humphrey Was Here is about how one carries on after the death of a pet that means the world to them. It is an emotional and cathartic story of grieving and recovery that will deeply touch any dog lover.

    Olivia assumed that bigotry was the product of her mother's loyalty to long-dead relatives, an allegiance to maintain the family's white blood line. After Emma's death though, Olivia finds a letter and an old journal among her belongings. Soon she discovers the secret that prompted Emma to irrationally blame an entire race -- a secret that had nothing to do with family history, although it strongly paralleled another tragic event from the past. 1846, Marianne Witherell's journal: Before Lincoln and the American Civil War, slavery is at its peak in South Carolina. A young slave girl named Willa suddenly arrives at Heavenly Plantation with her mother Heddie, destined to serve the wealthy plantation family as house servants. Right away, two of the Master's children-Marianne and Seth-forge a bond with Willa, in spite of their older brother Foster's warnings about the evils of mixing with the "darkies." Although she grows up in the "big house" treated like family by her pair of white friends, Willa cannot forget that she is still a slave. Never is that fact made clearer than when Foster cruelly taunts and threatens her in secret. As it threads through the lives of its diverse characters, this novel captures the complicated and often violent nature of life in the antebellum South. As Willa's story is told, a dramatic tapestry is woven, binding the Witherell family to a web of secrets that include forbidden love and faithful friendships alongside dangerous obsessions, mental instability, and even murder.

    Virginia Loftin knows what she wants most: to become a celebrated novelist despite her gender, and to marry Charlie, her best friend, neighbor and first love. Yet when Charlie proposes to another woman, Ginny is devastated; shutting out her family, she holes up and obsessively rewrites how their story should have gone.Though Ginny works with newfound intensity, success eludes her—until she attends a salon hosted in her brother’s handsome author friend John’s Fifth Avenue mansion. Amongst painters, musicians, actors, and writers, Ginny returns to herself, even blooming under John’s increasingly romantic attentions. Just as she has begun to forget Charlie, however, he throws himself back into her path, and Ginny finds herself torn between a lifetime’s worth of complicated feelings and a budding relationship with a man who seems almost too good to be true.The brightest lights cast the darkest shadows, and as Ginny tentatively navigates the Society’s world, she begins to suspect all is not as it seems in New York’s dazzling “Gay Nineties” scene. When a close friend is found dead in John’s mansion, Ginny must delve into her beloved salon’s secrets to discover her true feelings about art, family, and love.

    But before long, Eleanor realizes that her beloved Uncle Edward is not the mighty ruler his kingdom-or his queen-expected.Hugh's unbridled ambition and his intimate relationship with Edward arouse widespread resentment, even as Eleanor remains fiercely loyal to her husband and to her king. However, her allegiance may cost her dearly.From the battlefield to the bedchamber and through hope and despair, treachery and fidelity, The Traitor's Wife is a tale of an extraordinary woman living in an extraordinary time.

    Determined to free himself and his men, and clear his besmirched name, Caden does not count on the willful nature of his captor, Lady Gwendolyn Toustain, the daughter of the man who was once his father’s mortal enemy. After several attempts at escape, the lady orders him bound and chained to a wall in her chambers—where he will remain under her personal guard at all times and kept from conspiring with his men. While the lady's high-handedness infuriates him, Caden cannot deny that everything else about her drives him to distraction. Forced into close proximity with her, Caden soon finds it hard to remember his mission of escape. When Lady Gwendolyn of House Toustain first lays eyes on her prisoner, one thing about him is abundantly clear: Sir Caden of Daleraia is a dangerous man. Yet, she must show him no fear. The captured band of knights from Daleraia are her only clue in the mystery surrounding the disappearance of House Toustain’s sons, and it falls to Lady Gwen to seek justice. Is this kidnapping merely the ploy of mercenaries out for a ransom? Or has Sir Caden acted on the order of the High Lord of Daleraia and broken the peace? As she searches for the answers, she never expects the surge of passion that ignites between herself and her prisoner. The longer he remains in her clutches, the more Gwen realizes that though she has him chained, she is the one who has been captured. Book 1 in the Chained Trilogy

    Self-haters. Sellouts. Loan Officer Tammy McDonald has just come out of another failed relationship with a wannabe thug. To break this destructive pattern, she leaves her home city of Dallas for San Diego. As she settles in rainbow California, fantasies of meeting an ebony prince fade, so she eyes Dale Bristol as a potential ivory replacement. Terrell Jackson is San Diego's only black optometrist. Women regularly drop in for more than just eye exams, but he stays true to his girl Tasha until a wet dream unleashes a ridiculous outburst. Fed up with her jealous fits, he denounces the common "dedramanators" in his life-black women. Even though Penelope Miller was raised in the South by a racist father once affiliated with the KKK, she can't ignore her attraction to black men. But she never expected to fall in love with one...nor did she expect her "interracial felony" to threaten their lives. SELLOUT follows these three individuals and the consequences of dating outside their race. In the quest to find what they think is missing in their lives, they encounter guilt, fear and mess they never anticipated...including murder.

    Dare she ask Cooper Jerome, recently returned from the War of the States, if he would put his life on hold for, say, five months to drive her wagon; and that doesn't include his return trip. At this point, she's out of options.

    If she survived Uncle Jackson, she can survive anyone.When Sky Jordan hears that his nefarious cousin has sent for a mail-order bride, he knows he has to prevent the marriage. No woman deserves to be left to that fate. Still, he’s as surprised as anyone to find himself standing next to her before the minister.Brooke’s new husband turns out to be kinder than any man has ever been. But then the unthinkable happens and she holds the key that might save innocent lives but destroy Sky all in one fell swoop. It’s a choice too unbearable to contemplate…but a choice that must be made.A thirsty soul. Alluring hope. An Oasis of love.Step into a day when outlaws ran free, the land was wild, and guns blazed at the drop of a hat.

    Young Patricio flees impoverished Spain and steps into the sultry island paradise of Havana with only the clothes on his back and half-baked dreams of a better life. Blessed with good looks and natural charm, he lands a job as a runner at El Encanto—one of the most luxurious department stores in the world.Famous for its exquisite offerings from French haute couture to Arabian silks, El Encanto indulges the senses in opulent extravagance. It caters to visiting Hollywood stars, rising politicos, and prerevolutionary Cuba’s wealthiest power players, including the notorious mobster César Valdés.Falling in love with the mobster’s young wife, Gloria, is suicide. But Patricio is irresistibly drawn to the beautiful girl with sad eyes, a razor-sharp intellect, and a penchant for both Christian Dior’s clothes and Einstein’s theories. Within the walls of El Encanto, anything seems possible, even a love that promises to heal them and a desire that thrums with the mambo beat of the city itself.In a reckless love affair that spans half a century, Patricio’s and Gloria’s lives entwine time and again, challenged by every twist of fate—for in a world of murder, betrayal, and revolution, those who dare to reach for paradise seldom survive unscathed.

    But for the men on the ground below they were a puzzlement. And no wonder: the year was 1863 and the men were Confederate soldiers marching toward the most significant battle of the American Civil War.Thousands of miles away and 105 years later, Navy pilot Nathaniel Booth and his navigator complete their air mission over Laos and are headed back to the deck of the USS Enterprise when their aircraft mysteriously vanishes. Our hero Booth is declared Missing In Action. Years later when Rose Booth, the family matriarch, learns that her son may not have been a casualty of the war as previously believed, she enlists a prominent history professor and his protégé to uncover the truth.In this carefully researched historical novel with a cosmic twist, the author traces the convoluted struggle to weave together the threads of a lost airman's life and bring solace to a grief-stricken mother. 352 pages, 88,000 words, 73 Chapters.

    Boyle has spun an even more dazzling tale that will delight both his longtime devotees and a legion of new fans. Boyle’s tenth novel, The Inner Circle has it all: fabulous characters, a rollicking plot, and more sex than pioneering researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey ever dreamed of documenting . . . well, almost. A love story, The Inner Circle is narrated by John Milk, a virginal young man who in 1940 accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, an extraordinarily charming professor of zoology at Indiana University who has just discovered his life’s true calling: sex. As a member of Kinsey’s “inner circle” of researchers, Milk (and his beautiful new wife) is called on to participate in sexual experiments that become increasingly uninhibited—and problematic for his marriage. For in his later years Kinsey (who behind closed doors is a sexual enthusiast of the first order) ever more recklessly pushed the boundaries both personally and professionally. While Boyle doesn’t resist making the most of this delicious material, The Inner Circle is at heart a very moving and very loving look at sex, marriage, and jealousy that will have readers everywhere reassessing their own relationships—because, in the end, “love is all there is.”

    Fate brings her to work for a wealthy recluse, General Alexander Sterling. Despite many daunting events and a meddling housekeeper with dark secrets of her own, Florence and the General find themselves falling deeply in love.What she doesn’t know is that General Sterling has left his native country escaping a painful past, one he yearns to forget. Destiny won’t allow it as he meets Florence, whose resemblance to his deceased wife is unbearable. Could Florence actually be the same woman who still owns his heart and haunts his dreams?When their blossoming romance is shattered by an explosive truth, a mysterious stranger gives her an opportunity to go back in time to unlock the secret to her existence. Florence must strive to return to the present time to save their relationship from the imminent danger that awaits them. Awaken: Shadows of a Forgotten Past is the first book in a duology. Alive: Shadows of a Living Past is the second.

    Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family's three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry in pursuit of his military ambitions. Tensions with the British, and with the Spanish in Florida, just a short way down the coast, are rising, and slaves are starting to become restless. Her mother wants nothing more than for their South Carolina endeavor to fail so they can go back to England. Soon her family is in danger of losing everything.Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it's the key to their salvation. But everyone tells her it's impossible, and no one will share the secret to making it. Thwarted at nearly every turn, even by her own family, Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return -- against the laws of the day -- she will teach the slaves to read.So begins an incredible story of love, dangerous and hidden friendships, ambition, betrayal, and sacrifice.Based on historical documents, including Eliza's letters, this is a historical fiction account of how a teenage girl produced indigo dye, which became one of the largest exports out of South Carolina, an export that laid the foundation for the incredible wealth of several Southern families who still live on today. Although largely overlooked by historians, the accomplishments of Eliza Lucas influenced the course of US history. When she passed away in 1793, President George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral.This book is set between 1739 and 1744, with romance, intrigue, forbidden friendships, and political and financial threats weaving together to form the story of a remarkable young woman whose actions were before their time: the story of the indigo girl.