Legacy of Love

He seethes with raw power the first time I see him--pure menace and rippling muscles in shackles. He’s dangerous. He’s wild. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. So I hide behind my prim glasses and my book like I always do, because I have secrets too. Then he shows up in the prison writing class I have to teach, and he blows me away with his honesty. He tells me secrets in his stories, and it’s getting harder to hide mine. I shiver when he gets too close, with only the cuffs and the bars and the guards holding him back. At night I can’t stop thinking about him in his cell. But that’s the thing about an animal in a cage--you never know when he’ll bite. He might use you to escape. He might even pull you into a forest and hold a hand over your mouth so you can’t call for the cops. He might make you come so hard, you can’t think. And you might crave him more than your next breath.

After twenty-one years Micah (Mike) Winship is making the big move--she's going home for a visit. She hasn't been back since 1963, when her father threw her out, but now he is dying and asking for her. And although she is armed with her succesful journalism career and the strength found after her divorce, she is nearing forty and her sophisticated urban lifestyle is falling apart.Heading home, Mike is unprepared for a past that has lain in wait for her--one that includes an old love, a spoiled sister, and a plot to seize her family's land. And in trying to understand her long-forgotten self, she learns at last those lessons best learned early about love and loss, family and forgiveness, and the undeniable need for a place called home.

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton arrive from Boston in the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire. Serena is new to the mountains - but she soon shows herself the equal of any worker, overseeing crews, hunting rattlesnakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Yet she also learns that she will never bear a child. Serena's discovery will set in motion a course of events that will change the lives of everyone in this remote community. As the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel, this riveting story of love, passion and revenge moves toward its shocking reckoning.

U.S. Attorney General Allison Leahy is the nation's top law enforcement officer and the Democrats' best chance for holding on to the Oval Office. But she has powerful competition in Republican Lincoln Howe, a retired four star general and bona fide African-American hero. They are running neck and neck, and seemingly nothing can break the deadlock.Then, just days before the election, disaster strikes. Twelve-year-old Kristen Howe, the general's granddaughter, is kidnapped. As attorney general, Allison launched a nationwide manhunt, but her motives come under fire from her opponent. For Allison, though, finding Kristen isn't about politics. Here is a personal crusade that taps into terrifying secrets buried deep within the past--secrets that can shatter all Allison's hopes, twisting them into a nightmare of lies and the ultimate betrayal.

FORCED TO WED! Corinna Webster had no desire to marry the man she'd been promised to since childhood. Sir Lionel Summers would not sway her affections to his favor -- not when she'd pledged her love to Oliver Hunt. But when family secrets came forth, forbidding a match with Oliver, Corinna allowed herself to become Lionel's wife. Little did she expect to fall so deeply in love with her new husband, or witness his bravery--all in the attempt to make her happy and ease her conscience. And it almost took a fatal turn for Lionel to see that he would forever be Corinna's cause.

A case of mistaken attraction. To prevent her niece, Caroline, from marrying the notorious Duke of Salterne, Aurelia Carrington took the girl away to Brighton. As a means of escape, it was a failure, for Salterne followed them. Deeply, if unwillingly, attracted to him, Aurelia suspected he preferred her company to Caroline's, so what had made him offer marriage? By the time she found out, more was at risk than Aurelia's heart. (less)

Prim and Improper Adventure! The Seattle air crackled with it, making Emily Kendall's blood race. Coming west as a mail-order bride had been the most outrageous thing she'd ever dared. Until she was faced with the deliciously shocking possibilities posed by Austin Matthews--the one man in town not shopping for a wife! Austin Matthews, saloon keeper and frontier businessman extraordinaire, reveled in the bold and bawdy life of the West. A life about to be upended by a seemingly prim New England miss with eyes of springtime green. For Emily Kendall had enough improper ideas to keep the West wild for the rest of their lives

The Honorable Hero Langage was informed one 1818 morning that her father, Baron Polhembury, had arranged a marriage between her and Drew Calloner, Earl of Calverstock, to pay his debts. Hero has heard nothing good about the Earl; he is known to be a former felon returned from Australia, but her alcoholic father, generally a weak man, insists that she will be wed to him and her hopes for love in her marriage are irrelevant. Hero is unwilling not least because she had met a pleasant gentleman in the village that morning who helped her retrieve a basket of plums. To her surprise, the former felon and the charming gentleman are one and the same, but his attitude has changed enormously. Hero does not know it, but Drew overheard a conversation between her and her maid Matty in which she said that marrying a convict who was the son of a common woman was beneath her. Unfortunately he did not hear Matty set her straight immediately afterwards. Once married, their relationship becomes an emotional seesaw; each has fallen in love with the other but neither will admit it and both have much to learn.