Celine Conway

It was unfortunate, but inevitable Tess realized. Since their arrival on the west coast of Canada four years ago, she and her father had dreamed of developing the guest house by the lovely lake at the foot of the Rockies. But now her father was dead and her mother had decided to return to England, leaving Tess with no alternative but to follow as soon everything had been wound up. So the house was put up for sale and all Tess had to do was to wait for a prospective buyer. He materialised - in the form of a coolly domineering wretch of a man who not only wanted to take over the guest house, but apparently organise Tess's life for her as well. In no time at all things had slipped right out of her grasp and into the large strong hands of Mr. Steve Fenner - and there didn't seem to be a thing Tess could do about it. She was quite powerless to defy the man - but, to be honest, did she really want to?

Bret Winthrop was well content with his research work and with his big log house overlooking a pine-fringed Canadian lake. He didn't want any "little woman" fretting herself silly on the edge of his existence, not he! And then he met Loraine Farnley, with her pale English looks and her quiet ways and her determination to carry out an impossible, futile, quixotic task. She infuriated him . . . and yet somehow he was impelled to help her, and to go on helping her despite her own stubborn assertion of independence.

Marcus Durant had suggested to Sally Sheppard that she become “engaged” to him, in an effort to put his beloved grandmother’s mind at rest. It would be purely a temporary measure, he explained, with no real feelings on either side. With anyone but Marcus, Sally would have entered into the spirit of the thing, treated it all as a joke. But, far too late, she realized she had fallen in love with him too hard to take the affair anything but seriously.

Simon Leigh was the centre of a gentle conspiracy on the part of his female relatives — a conspiracy with no more sinister an object than to get him to marry and settle down at his family's lovely old home, Craigwood, instead of wandering about the remoter parts of the globe. And why shouldn't he? Women seemed to like him, after all — except for Pat Gordon, his sister-in-law's secretary. And as luck would have it, it was Pat who was called on to help show him how agreeable English country life could be. But Pat found the task extremely difficult, since she and Simon somehow struck sparks from each other whenever they met!

When physiotherapist Pat Fenley boarded the liner Walhara with her young patient Deva Wadia, she looked forward to a pleasant voyage to Colombo, where she was to return Deva to her family. She certainly didn't expect to find her unpleasant stepmother on board, for Kristin had deserted her family years ago and Pat had accepted that she had seen the last of her. Nor did she anticipate that Deva would be haunted by a premonition of danger - a premonition that was to turn into unpleasant reality. And least of all was Pat prepared for the shattering effect that the ship's surgeon, Bill Norton, was to have on her.

Most girls would be delighted to have the opportunity to visit Africa, but Lisa was not much looking forward to the prospect - to the prospect, at any rate, of meeting her cousin Adrian again. It was seven years since they had met, but she still remembered how she had never been a match for his mocking self-assurance, his disconcerting arrogance. Perhaps, though, she told herself, he had changed, had mellowed since those days. But he hadn't, as Lisa found the moment she arrived in Rhodesia

In her work as assistant to Dr. Ben Vaughan at the tiny town of Port Quentin, Laurette had never encountered any man who remotely stirred her heart — until one stormy day when Charles Heron skilfully sailed his uncle’s yacht into the tricky harbour. When Laurette was bandaging Charles’ injured arm, she decided on the spot that he was an autocrat who thought too much of himself, and for his part it seemed that he could not forgive her the crime of being only nineteen; all of which provoked her into hostile reaction. Unfortunately he got on well with her father, and Laurette found herself unable to avoid or ignore him. Then suddenly she realized she was in love with him—and she meant nothing at all in his life...”

When Mrs Browne read Lisa’s tea leaves, she prophesied two patches of trouble, probably connected with a man. Lisa didn’t worry. For years she has wanted “things to happen”, and now at twenty two, she was setting off on a voyage to South Africa and life seemed exciting and infinitely promising. But before she had even set foot aboard ship, she had attracted the unfavourable notice of the liner’s coldly efficient captain, and from then on she found herself struggling in the tide of new and strange emotions.

The tiny breathtakingly beautiful island of Farando Cay in the Bahamas had been divided between three owners: Bryn Sherard, an uncompromising autocratic Englishman; Madame de Meulen, matriarchal ruler of an aristocratic French family; and Gray Murray, who was dead. When Gray's widow came out with her young sister and brother to see her inheritance, she guessed that the three of them would be regarded with suspicion and that, in so small a white community, this fact could give rise to a good many difficulties. But it hadn't occurred to anyone that three love stories, and a spice of intrigue, would grow out of this quiet invasion.

When Uncle Niall left his Canadian fruit farm equally between his manager and his niece Lucie, with the proviso that Lucie should spend a month there, it seemed obvious that he was hoping to set the scene for romance. It also seemed, though, that there were certain factors he couldn’t have taken into account. There was the character of Lucie herself, not easily rushed into decisions; there was her gay friend Dinah, unrivalled as an upsetter of carefully laid plans; there was Matt Leverson the forceful neighbour, whose supposed designs on the farm caused Lucie some anxiety. It looked as though the old mans’ hopes might be disappointed; or had he after all, foreseen and intended a different ending to the story.

A practised gallant with a thread of iron somewhere — that was how Juliet defined Ramiro de Velasco y Cuevora at their first meeting. It was obvious that he could only marry someone of his own kind, an aristocratic, purebred Spaniard. Juliet was sure that when she returned from Spain to England, the memory of him would haunt her always; but she could not bring herself to wish that they had never met.

Here is a hospital story with a difference, for it is set on an island near the Burma coast where a white doctor and two nurses, with a native staff and few facilities, waged a never-ending war against tropical diseases, parasites and an utterly exhausting climate. Pat, recently out from England, and not very experienced, would have found it hard going in any case; but it was made much tougher by the fact that Dr. Mark Bradlaw seemed to find her intensely irritating, and even sometimes carried his disapproval to the point of reprimanding her in front of the patients. And as if that was not enough to bear, the beautiful widow with whom his name had been linked turned up in Pengola and began to throw her weight about in a ladylike but thoroughly determined way.

The Flower of the Morning grew only on the Malayan island of Numeh, and someone had told Katie that she resembled it. Untouched, the flower was magnificent, but if the petals were bruised the flower wilted. Was Katie like that? She herself did not think so - but that was before she had met, and tried to defy, the arrogant overlord of the island, Simon Forbes.

In her work as assistant to Dr. Ben Vaughan at the tiny town of Port Quentin, Laurette had never encountered any man who remotely stirred her heart — until one stormy day when Charles Heron skilfully sailed his uncle’s yacht into the tricky harbour. When Laurette was bandaging Charles’ injured arm, she decided on the spot that he was an autocrat who thought too much of himself, and for his part it seemed that he could not forgive her the crime of being only nineteen; all of which provoked her into hostile reaction. Unfortunately he got on well with her father, and Laurette found herself unable to avoid or ignore him. Then suddenly she realized she was in love with him—and she meant nothing at all in his life...”