She would be a "friend" who would try to protect her from another scandalous involvement--like the one back in France.Alain was a generous and thoughtful employer. Victorine a bright and amusing companion. But Tamaris could not help wondering about the significance of the gold and enamel snake Victorine wore around her neck. Nor could she stop thinking about the fact that someone had been going through her belongings and leaving strange objects among them.Then one day Alain was forced to reveal the true story of Victorine's past. A past, Tamaris suspected, that would soon gain on the future and place everyone at Rancho del Sol under a shadow of constant fear..

    Even if that means literally throwing herself at the Duke and risking her own ruination.No man is arguably more broken and debauched than Timothy Burton, the Duke of Marfront. But, according to his father’s will, he needs to wed and produce an heir. Only, he never sleeps with the same woman twice.When Diana finds herself bound to the same man she wanted to frame, she starts discovering not only his tender, guarded heart, but the big secret surrounding his mother’s death. For, she is about to follow her cold trail...

    She had dreams of Hollywood stardom, not dirty diapers and pigs. But when Robert Smith, a country boy from head to toe, offers her and her daughter a chance at a normal life, reputation intact, Evalyn can’t help but accept. Little does Robert know, Evalyn is keeping a huge secret. While Evalyn’s family members deal with prejudice in 1940s Texas, fertility, changes of the heart, and even a ghost come back from the dead, Evalyn must fight for her family or lose everything she has grown to love.

    Instead she found terror and murder...Isolated in the Gilmartin ancestral home in Herondale, Deborah and young Carreen were left to face a nameless, unseen danger lurking in the frozen village, where only the flick of a curtain at a window or some random footprints in the snow, showed that it was inhabited at all.Alone in a house that had known violence, Deborah turned to Carreen's cousin Jeremy, as attractive as he was cynical and mysterious. But was he really a friend, or was he the enemy? In spite of Jeremy - or because of him? - Deborah found herself fighting for her life in an affair so bizarre as to shatter the silence of Herondale forever.1973 printing, with the "Ace * First in Gothics" banner at the top of the front cover.

    Everyone thought the man was crazy.Shane Alexander was determined to prove to the world that his family wasn't crazy... That HE wasn't crazy.It was working...Until he made one mistake...that would change his life forever...and force him to question his own sanity.Something was missing from Lila Fitzpatrick's life...So doing a friend a favor...and pretending to be someone else for a day seemed like a good idea at the time.Then she finds a warning note...from hundreds of years BEFORE she was born.And then if that wasn't bad enough...She met HIM...TWICE!For centuries a force has kept them apart...But, will Love be enough to finally keep them together...Or will history repeat itself? A Time Travel- A Love Story filled with Suspense-A Mystery that will keep you guessing til the end... Former Georgia Author of the Year Nominee, Tammie Clarke Gibbs has crafted a sweeping new time travel with the old-fashioned appeal of your favorite Gothic Novel. It will keep you guessing. This is one roller-coaster ride you won’t want to miss.

    They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken scratch.Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.

    To some there was an atmosphere of evil about the place, but to innocent young bride Catherine Rockwell, the mansion seemed magnificently romantic. She did not know then of the terrible secrets imprisoned behind its massive walls. Or that at the moment she had entered her new home, she had crossed the threshold of terror . . .

    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...

    The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission. As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves. The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.

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    Once there, Anne found herself fascinated by Edmond, the brooding surly master of Moura.

    But when Ariel vanished, Jenny was no longer needed and retreated to Laurel Mountain. Yet the happiness she sought was overshadowed by ominous voices whispering of guilt and danger....

    Only one old man, Gypsy Deak, sticks by her, but Gypsy alone can’t raise a crew from the depleted population. In desperation, Alice turns to the only source of plentiful workers: the women of Melbourne. In a bold move, she and Gypsy empty a brothel, promising the escaped women a new life. Her all-woman (save one) crew put their backs and hearts into the voyage, but Alice finds training her sailors much harder than she expected. Her faith is tested to the limit. With a cargo to sell, angry brothel and tavern owners in pursuit, pirates to evade, and a mysterious stowaway, will the seafaring women of the Vera B. survive to tell the tale of this daring adventure?

    . . Evie spent her early years left outside on the step. With a drunk for a father and a neglectful mother, all little Evie has ever craved is a safe home and a normal existence. Her young eyes had seen so much but this never tainted her spirit. If it wasn't for her best friend Gary, and friendly dog called Whisky - Evie might never have made it to the sixteenth birthday.At sixteen she meets Ken, a sweet brown-eyed boy, not much older than she is. Perhaps her fortunes have changed? But no sooner does she give over her heart, she is betrayed, not for the first time in her young life... Will Evie ever find the love and warmth she's always craved?

    Beginning in 1905 with ninety-year-old Celia Dunne, it delightfully portrays the bustling life of her heir and grand-nephew, Humphrey Dunne, and his family of five rambunctious children. It follows the family over forty years -- through their youthful antics, merry parties, heartbreaks and loves and marriages, as each in turn comes to maturity and an understanding of the enduring satisfaction Dunnian gives to their lives.