Rosalind Laker

Working in the high fashion world of early twentieth-century Paris, lovely Juliette Cladel falls in love with a young Russian count and sculptor, Nikolai Karsavin, but the young lovers soon find themselves separated by family duties, war, and revolution. In the last opulent, extravagant years in Paris before the First World War, Juliette Cladel, a young French woman working in haute couture, and Nikolai Karasvin, a Russian diplomat, are brought together through their shared interest in the theatre work of the Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny. The chance discovery by Juliette of one of Fortuny's uniquely pleated, figure-hugging gowns, revolutionary at a time when women wore corsets and petticoats, provides a further bond between her and Nikolai when she wears it to their first dinner and it creates a scandal. Their turbulent love affair is shortlived, and circumstances separate Juliette and Nikolai when he returns to Russia. Juliette moves to Italy and marries another man.

Sophie Delcourt, the enchanting talented daughter of a Parisian confectioner, is forced to flee the country in the midst of revolution and bloodshed with a four-year-old aristocrat and elderly Marquis in her charge. Bereft and abandoned in the Sussex countryside, she is saved from highwaymen by the intriguing Tom Foxhill, art collector to the Prince of Wales. Soon, Sophie finds herself forming a passionate bond with him, a bond which even her love for another cannot sever… After settling in Regency Brighton, at first she does not realise that threats of vengeance have followed her from France. But soon her worries are settled by a new home, local work and friends for her young charge Antoine. Sophie strives to build her own confectionery business and eventually finds her path leading to the glorious Sugar Pavilion of the Prince Regent himself. Her life becomes more exciting and challenging than she had ever expected, but danger also creeps near in the form of smugglers and the distressing threat of French revolutionaries… The Sugar Pavilion is a powerful Regency novel, rich with period detail.

Enduring friendships and long-held vendettas come alive against the splendor and decadence of eighteenth-century Venice.In 1775 Venice--known to outsiders as "the brothel of Europe"--the tradition of mask-wearing has allowed adultery and debauchery to flourish. But Marietta and Elena, two dear friends at the Ospedale della Pieta, a world-famous orphanage and music school for girls, know little of that milieu--until they come of age. Elena is forced to wed the head of the Celano clan, a jealous, brutal man, while Marietta marries Domenico Torrisi, whose family vendetta with the Celanos is centuries old. Tradition dictates that the friends should never speak again, but their bond is too strong to break. As the French Revolution unsettles all of Europe, Elena's husband frames Domenico and he becomes a political prisoner. Marietta and Elena plot to save him, and the women discover that Venetian masks have noble purposes, too--but will their efforts put their own lives at risk?Embodying the glitter and the treachery of the city it portrays, The Venetian Mask will keep you turning pages long into the night.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Julia Pallister, a daughter of a staunchly Royalist family, grows to womanhood during the turbulent days of the Civil War, Puritan rule, the plague and the Great Fire of London.

The animosity and rivalry between Warwycks and Radcliffes was as legendary as their wealth was immense. But when Nicolette Radcliffe discovered Tom Warwyck hiding in the conservatory of her home, the event kindled a love that would rock the stately mansions and proud pavilions of Easthampton. -- Tom and Nicolette reached out toward each other across a chasm of family hatred--a chasm more perilous than any nature could provide. He, scorned by his mother, banished and disinherited by his father, is intent on making his own future against all odds. She, always under the watchful eye of Olivia Radcliffe, the vindictive matriarch of Radcliffe Hall, will love whom she chooses at any price. Finally, a New Year's Eve ball brings Tom and Nicolette publicly together, where, dancing to the music of their hearts, they unleash the fury of three generations of rivalry and jealousy that will put the ancestral loyalties of Warwycks and Radcliffes alike to a test they have never known before.

The Bought Beauty Young Kate Farringdon was the firl-for-sale on the auction block in an English market town, when she first saw Daniel Warwyck. According to popular law, Kate went to the highest bidder-and Warwyck, England's most brilliant prizefighter, claimed her as the wife he needed to regain his lost legacy. Kate was now the property of this handsome, powerful, hot-blooded man, but neither of them dreamed of what lay before them-as danger and intrigue in the form of a dazzling young heiress threatened to bridle a woman's burning desire and a man's driving ambition...