Mills & Boon are excited to present The Anne Mather Collection – the complete works by this classic author made available to download for the very first time! These books span six decades of a phenomenal writing career, and every story is available to read unedited and untouched from their original release. A reluctant attraction... Rachel is far from happy at the Marquesa de Mendeo's imposing quinta in Portugal. Despite being there at the Marquesa's invitation, the Marquesa's wife has makes no attempt to disguise that she is not welcome. The Marquesa's son Luis, the deliciously attractive Marques de Mendao, has made his contempt for Rachel crystal clear too... and yet she can't seem to control her unwilling attraction to him. Rachel is already married, and the situation can't continue... but how can it possibly end well?! Views: 59
The last piece of a literary puzzle falls into place in the final novel of Benjamin Markovits's Byron trilogy.When his former colleague Peter Sullivan dies, Ben Markovits inherits unpublished manuscripts about the life of Lord Byron—including the novels Imposture and A Quiet Adjustment. Ben's own literary career is in the doldrums, and he tries to revive it by publishing and writing about his dead friend, whose reimagining of Byron's lost memoirs—titled Childish Loves—may provide a key to Sullivan's own life and tarnished reputation.Acting as a literary sleuth, Ben sorts through boxes of Sullivan's writing; reads between the lines of his scandalous, Byron- inspired stories; meets with the Society for the Publication of the Dead; and tracks down people from Peter's past in an effort to untangle rumor from reality. In the process, he crafts a masterful story-within-a-story that turns on uncomfortable questions about childhood and... Views: 59
"Don't forget to write at once." Young and alone, Rose Galbraith is about to embark on a long voyage from New York to Scotland when she encounters Gordon McCarroll, a former classmate. His generous bon voyage gift gives her connection to her homeland and the courage to go into the unknown. Once on land again, Rose is whisked away to the formidable Warloch Castle. Unimpressed by the wealth of her mother's family, the girl of meager means can't help but feel like her relatives only want to use her for their own gain. When can she get away to seek out her father's side of the family? Will letters from across the ocean renew her faith and give her hope for each new day? Views: 59
"You're safe from those monsters now." It's supposed to be the final confrontation. Philly detective Tate Colton will go under cover to bust the sex trafficking ring targeting young Amish women. He doesn't count on his sting operation falling apart - or being forced to escape with the breathtaking key witness he's sworn to protect. Hiding in New York City with a handsome detective? Amish seamstress Hannah Troyer's more than a little out of her element. The big city - and men like Tate - are part of a world that's nothing like what she's used to. As danger inches closer, he's her only route to safety…and a forbidden attraction she dares to indulge in. Views: 59
Paige Madison returns from World War II ready to get on with life and start a career to support his aging parents, but his new boss has him foreclosing on homes in ways Paige starts to believe are unscrupulous. But distancing himself from the boss is hard when the boss's daughter, Reva, has set her cap for him and won't be rejected. When Paige is thrown together with the minister's daughter, June, to help a family in need, he immediately recognizes how a gentle woman of faith is more attractive than an aggressive, worldly woman like Reva. But which woman is the best for his future? Views: 59
With a wife he loves and an exciting London-based career, architect Charles Waterston's life seems in perfect balance. Nothing in his comfortable existence prepares him for the sudden end to his ten-year marriage—or his unwanted transfer to his firm's New York office. With nothing left to lose, Charlie takes a leave of absence from his job to drive through New England, hoping to make peace with himself.Christmas is approaching when Charlie leaves New York, heading to Vermont to ski. But a sudden, blinding snowstorm strands him in a small Massachusetts town. There, as if by chance, Charlie meets an elderly widow who offers to rent him her most precious possession: a remote, exquisite lakeside chateau. Hidden deep in the woods, it once belonged to a woman who lived and died there two centuries before. Her name was Sarah Ferguson. And from the moment Charlie sets foot inside the chateau's graceful depths, he feels her presence, and longs to know more about the life she led.It is Christmas Eve when Charlie first glimpses her, a beautiful young woman with jet black hair. He thinks it is a neighbor playing a joke on him, until he finds her diaries hidden away in an old trunk. As he begins to turn the brittle, dusty pages, Sarah Ferguson comes alive. Intrigued and unafraid, Charlie immerses himself in the diaries, eager to learn more about the woman for whom the house was built. Sarah's first entry is dated 1789, the year she arrived in America. Without self-pity or sentiment, she writes of her harrowing journey from her native England, having fled the brutality of her aristocratic husband. Settling in Massachusetts, Sarah finds an unfamiliar land seething with the turbulence of the Indian wars. Determined to start a new life in the vast new world, Sarah finds freedom—and danger—as she builds her home in the wilderness and meets a man who will transform her life. His name is François de Pellerin, a French nobleman adopted by Indians and drawn into the battle for the growing nation. Their fateful union is a testament to a love so powerful it reaches across the centuries. And for Charlie Waterston, caught between Sarah's world and his own, their story is a gift—one that gives him the courage to let go of his past, and the freedom to grasp a future that is right before his eyes.Amazon.com ReviewArchitect Charles Waterston has a job he loves, a charming and beautiful wife, and an idyllic life in London. But when everything comes crashing down around him--his wife leaving him for another man and his sudden transfer back to the New York home office--Charles takes a well-deserved ski vacation in Vermont. When an unexpected snowstorm strands Charles in a small town, he takes refuge in a small bed-and-breakfast. The proprietor, an elderly widow, also owns a family home in the woods, which Charles decides to rent. Soon after moving in, Charles senses a ghostly presence. While investigating in the attic one day, Charles discovers the diary of Sarah Ferguson, who left her abusive husband in England for a better life in the New World. Charles soon finds himself drawn to Sarah, and he even visits the local historical society in an attempt to learn more about her. There he meets lovely, timid Francesca Vironnet, the historical society curator and librarian, who has fled France with her young daughter. Through Sarah's journals and Francesca's kindness, Charles is able to heal his heart and learn to love again. Complete with Steel's trademark poignancy but minus the glitz and glamour so evident in many of her novels, The Ghost is an outstanding read. --Maudeen WachsmithFrom Library JournalCharlie Waterston thought he had it all?a beautiful wife, happy marriage, and brilliant architectural career?but a year changes all that completely. London, his job, and the lovely house he and his wife shared all become unbearable after she leaves him for another man. The alternative, working for his firm's main office in New York, turns out to be equally unbearable, so he flees it all, escaping to Vermont ski country. A sudden snowstorm en route, a night's refuge at a bed-and-breakfast owned by a charming old woman, and his discovery of the 200-year-old diary of a brave and beautiful lady teach him to endure his own sufferings, reach out to others, and hope for love and happiness again. Fans expecting Steel's (Malice, LJ 1/96) usual glitz and glamour may be disappointed by this elegiac tribute to mature love hard won the second time around.-?Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 59
An ambitious and far reaching allegorical voyage which, though not exactly a success, was Melville's first attempt at a book on the scale of Moby-Dick. Here is a passage which is reflective of the style, and outlook, of Mardi: So, if after all these fearful, fainting traces, the verdict be, the golden haven was not gained;-yet in bold quest thereof, better to sink in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals: and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.-Herman Melville Views: 59
Prose; fiction, Masculine Views: 59
In God’s Fool Mark Slouka, the acclaimed author of Lost Lake and Other Stories, presents us with an unparalleled novel about Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins. In a masterstroke of creative storytelling, we experience their lives through Chang’s eyes. Despite the incomparable predicament of their physical condition, Chang is wrapped in ordinary grace and suffering, searching for tranquility as he travels from Siam’s marketplace to Parisian salons, to London’s underworld and P.T. Barnum’s side show, all the while improbably connected to a man who becomes his sworn enemy. In a last attempt at a normal life, Chang and Eng retire from the sideshow and move to the American South where they marry two sisters and Chang finds short-lived peace and redemption in his love for his son Christopher. This peace, however, is overtaken as events in their adopted home country force them into a final terrifying battle with fate.From Publishers WeeklySiamese twins Chang and Eng, who caused a sensation 160 years ago, when they were exhibited by P.T. Barnum, still hold a mysterious fascination Slouka's version of their story is the second novel dedicated to their vicissitudes in the last two years (the other being Darin Strauss's Chang and Eng). Chang, at the beginning of the book, is in his declining years. He and Eng have become sworn enemies at one point they even try to kill one another. Their enmity comes after they retire from Barnum's American Museum and buy a plantation, with its complement of slaves, in North Carolina, and Eng, much to Chang's chagrin, becomes a fundamentalist Christian. While Eng approves of Chang's marital relations with his wife, Addy, both brothers remember Chang's first affair: it was in Paris, their first season in Europe, with Sophia Marchant, a famous beauty. Chang's memories move toward her and away, as he trawls his past, going back to his and Eng's first astonishing appearance in the world (at the sight of the two, their mother's midwives fled). From a Siamese notoriety the king of Siam's astrologers took their birth as an evil omen they move to Europe, under the aegis of Robert Hunter, an opium trader and impresario. Slouka, a gifted stylist, eschews much of the freak-show energy that thrust Chang and Eng onto the stage of world history, in favor of an alluring balance between the elegiac and the ironic. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalSlouka's exceptional first novel opens with a description of an apple fight among young Confederate soldiers awaiting orders from General Longstreet to begin the infamous Pickett's charge. Reflecting on this, the narrator (father to one of the boys) asks, "What manner of God ... would turn them, laughing, to blood and bone?" The same God, it turns out, who would cause one of them to eat so many green apples that he ends up sick, pants around his ankles, as his comrades march off to their doom. We are all God's fools, it seems. While this episode lies at the heart of the novel, the narrative is quite wide-ranging. The boy's father happens to be Chang, one of the famous Siamese twins brought to America by Phineas Barnum, and it is his (and, inevitably, his brother Eng's) story that Soulka details. This fascinating tale traces their birth and childhood in Siam, their travels and abandonment in Europe, the Barnum years, and their lives as slaveholding farmers in North Carolina (something of any irony in itself). Part historical novel, part commentary on the human condition, this powerful and often poetic novel belongs on the shelves of all public and most academic libraries. David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Views: 59
