Gina Shaw is a servant in his uncle’s house. Clearly out of place in the position in which she has been discovered, she becomes a source of fascination . . . and curiosity. A girl with a blighted past and a fortune she deems a curse, Gina has lowered herself in order to find escape from her family and their scheming designs. But when she is found, the stakes suddenly become dire. All Gina wants is the freedom to live her life as she would wish. All her aunts want is the money that comes with her. But there is more than one way to trap an insect. An arranged marriage might turn out profitable for more parties than one. Mr. Hamilton is about to make the acquisition of a lifetime. But will the price be worth it? Can a woman captured and acquired learn to love the man who has bought her?

    But the noise in the fair’s Machinery Hall makes it impossible to communicate with potential buyers. In an act of desperation, he hires Della Wentworth, a teacher of the deaf, to tutor him in the art of lip-reading.The young teacher is reluctant to participate, and Cullen has trouble keeping his mind on his lessons while intently watching her lips. Like the newly invented Ferris wheel, he is caught in a whirl between his girl back home, his dreams as an inventor, and his unexpected attraction to his new tutor. Can he keep his feet on the ground, or will he be carried away?

    Wounded in a foiled robbery attempt and thoroughly drenched from a storm, the dreaded Scot bandit seemed harmless enough. Or so Prudence thought—until the infamous rogue stole her breath and her will with his honeyed kisses, until she felt the rapier-sharp edge of his sensuous charm.Who haunted a highwayman's dreams...She was everything Sebastian Kerr had ever wanted, but could never have: an impish beauty with amethyst eyes and wine-sweet lips he longed to plunder. But even as he drew Prudence into his embrace, he knew he must leave her. For the gray-eyed highwayman was leading a dangerous double life—one that left no room for love.In a land of heather and velvet...The courageous beauty and her sensuous outlaw ignite fires of passion that blaze from the storm-swept English countryside to the wild moors of Scotland...forging unbreakable bonds of love.

    BUT THE ONE WHO KNOWS THEM BEST MAY HAVE OTHER PLANS ...Abigail Stanton's whole life was rooted in her faith, a faith she now clings to solely to survive. In the wake of losing her husband and young son, Abby sets out alone, bereft and heartsick, to discover what God wants her to do. When he leads her to Conor MacKay's doorstep, though, the very foundation of her beliefs starts to shift.As the volatile rancher's new housekeeper, Abby is supposed to keep his affairs --- and his equally capricious little girl --- in order. Why, then, does she feel confusion, passion, desire, and anything but order every time they are together? Conor tries to hide his own seething emotions beneath a cold facade, but there is something about his prim new housekeeper that sets him on edge. And the more ruthlessly he attacks Abby's faith, the more his defenses crack.As Abby and Conor draw closer to the flame of their attraction, they must grapple with their deepest beliefs and fears. In opening their hearts again, both risk even greater loss for a chance at the greatest love of all.

    Living alone in her father's house in a dying Oregon mining town, she had put away her girlish dreams and prayed for something more practical: that someone would answer her ad for a blacksmith to run the shop that was her father's legacy to her--and her only hope of holding onto her homestead. But the exhausted stranger who collapsed in her front yard looked as dangerous as the devil himself... and he was far more dangerous than Chloe could imagine....along comes a strangerTravis McGuire was a man who seemed to have no past and no future. He was doomed to the life of a wanderer and knew that his desire for Chloe had to be contained. But he hadn't anticipated finding a woman like Chloe--a woman willing to look his past in the face, to risk everything she had for the one true love she'd never thought she could find.

    He is the enemy…and he is married. Yet Styr harbors a secret that just might set them both free… Forbidden Vikings Resist them if you can!

    Bride #1 is the outspoken Portia....It's bad enough that seventeen-year-old Portia Worth is taken in by her uncle, the marquis of Granville, after her father dies. As the bastard niece, Portia knows she can expect little beyond a roof over her head and a place at the table.But it truly adds insult to injury when the Granvilles' archenemy, the outlaw Rufus Decatur, hatches a scheme to abduct the marquis's daughter--only to kidnap Portia by accident.Portia, who possesses more than a streak of independence as well as a talent for resistance, does not take kindly to being abducted--mistakenly or otherwise.Decatur will soon find himself facing the challenge of his life, both on the battlefield and in the bedroom, as he contends with this misfit of a girl who has the audacity to believe herself the equal of any man....Warmest wishes,Jane FeatherP.S. Phoebe, the "awkward" one, will be next, in The Accidental Bride. Watch for it in early 1999.

    and an adversary.Ace Keegan has returned to No Name, too late to enact a rightful vengeance on his most hated enemy. The man who put a hole in Ace's life is dead, leaving a daughter behind to run the family enterprise. Though proud and strong as well as beautiful, Caitlin is caught off guard when Ace's calculated anger inadvertently destroys her good name. But Ace Keegan is a man of honor, determined to make amends by marrying the enchanting lady he wronged—and to nurture patience and love the light she guards in her damage heart until it blazes with the power of a thousand suns.

    Part Apache brave and part Mexican grandee, Cade has a past and a secret. But he possesses the power and passion to command all in his path.Lily welcomes Cade into her struggle against treachery and terror—and discovers a love worth risking everything to keep.

    Trapped in the middle is Winter Fawn, a half-breed Arapaho woman torn between loyalty to her white father and her mother's native people. When she comes to the aid of Carson Dulaney, injured in a savage rage, she is swept up by the forces of her own fate.

    She's seen enough of the world to believe in passion, and won't accept a marriage without it.The Wallflower Makes a Dangerous Bargain...Bastard son of a duke and king of London's dark streets, Devil has spent a lifetime wielding power and seizing opportunity, and the spinster wallflower is everything he needs to exact a revenge years in the making. All he must do is turn the plain little mouse into an irresistible temptress, set his trap, and destroy his enemy.For the Promise of Passion...But there's nothing plain about Felicity Faircloth, who quickly decides she'd rather have Devil than another. Soon, Devil's carefully laid plans are in chaos, and he must choose between everything he's ever wanted...and the only thing he's ever desired.

    Her life is forever changed one horrifying night when she is forced to flee England for the safety of the Scottish Highlands. Rescued by a fierce band of highland warriors, Aishlinn soon learns that honorable men do exist. She finds a strength she never knew she possessed and it will be tested to the limits when she is forced to make a heart-wrenching decision…allow the English to kill those she loves, or surrender for the crime she committed. She is everything he never knew he wanted in a woman.As a fierce highland warrior, Duncan McEwan has survived numerous battles, bed countless women, and survived a horrific storm at sea. He has scaled mountains and even survived hand-to-claw battle with a cat-o’mountain. But none of that could have prepared him for how his life forever changed one fateful spring day when he rescued a lass from a freezing stream. He will do anything to keep her as his own and will risk everything to keep her out of the hands of the English.

    With this, the first in a dazzling new quartet of novels, Balogh invites us into a special world—a select academy for young ladies—a world of innocence and temptation. Drawing us into the lives of four women, teachers at Miss Martin’s School for Girls, Balogh introduces this novel’s marvelous heroine: music teacher Frances Allard—and the man who seduces her with a passion no woman could possibly forget.…They meet in a ferocious snowstorm. She is a young teacher with a secret past. He is the cool, black-caped stranger who unexpectedly comes to her rescue. Between these two unlikely strangers, desire is instantaneous…and utterly impossible to resist. Stranded together in a rustic country inn, Lucius Marshall, who is the Viscount Sinclair, and Frances Allard share a night of glorious, unforgettable passion. But Frances knows her place—and it is far from the privileged world of the sensual aristocrat. Due to begin her teaching position at Miss Martin’s School in Bath, Frances must try to forget that one extraordinary night—and the man who touched her with such exquisite tenderness and abandon.But Frances cannot hide forever. And when fate once again throws them together, Lucius refuses to take no for an answer. If Frances will not be his wife, he will make her his mistress. So begins an odyssey fraught with intrigue, one that defies propriety and shocks the straitlaced ton. For Lucius’s passionate, single-minded pursuit is about to force Frances to give up all her secrets—except one—to win the heart of the man she already loves.Once again this incomparable storyteller captures a time and a place like no other. And in Lucius and Frances, Mary Balogh gives us her most unlikely lovers yet—a nobleman in search of the perfect wife and an unconventional woman willing to risk everything for an unforgettable love.

    A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.But Fiona's life is shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man take from her nearly everything-and everyone-she holds dear. Fearing her own death, she is forced to flee London for New York. There, her indomitable spirit propels her rise from a modest West Side shop-front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade. But Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future.

    Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?