Madeleine, a beautiful peasant girl, cannot resist the charms of Jean, a handsome champion of the upper class. She surrenders to her heart's desires, and their love sweetens into something amazing. But when her father is murdered, her dreams of marriage collapse before the impenetrable wall of class prejudice. With her grim new prospects restricted to life as a beggar or a whore, Madeleine grasps at the only escape she can: a new life in the New World. She signs a contract to emigrate to Quebec-where she'll marry a stranger and bear many children to help populate the New France colony.

Madeleine's experience quickly turns bitter as she struggles to overcome the frigid Canadian winters, the constant threat of Iroquois attack, wild animals, and the soul-eroding abuse of her husband. Isolation and crushing homesickness set in.

Worse, just as she comes to feel she cannot go on, the real nightmare begins: she discovers that the very man who murdered her father is living on her farm.

Her struggle for survival of body and soul are set against the expansive panorama of colonial Quebec, a place of awesome beauty and lethal danger. As Madeleine's extraordinary love story unfolds, real historical characters and authentic cultural details weave seamlessly into a rich tapestry of courageous pursuit of love and dreams.

Can her spirit resist defeat under extreme tribulation and deprivation of emotional support?

From the internationally bestselling author of Nefertiti and Cleopatra’s Daughter comes the breathtaking story of Queen Lakshmi—India’s Joan of Arc—who against all odds defied the mighty British invasion to defend her beloved kingdom.

When the British Empire sets its sights on India in the mid-nineteenth century, it expects a quick and easy conquest. India is fractured and divided into kingdoms, each independent and wary of one another, seemingly no match for the might of the English. But when they arrive in the Kingdom of Jhansi, the British army is met with a surprising challenge.

Instead of surrendering, Queen Lakshmi raises two armies—one male and one female—and rides into battle, determined to protect her country and her people. Although her soldiers may not appear at first to be formidable against superior British weaponry and training, Lakshmi refuses to back down from the empire determined to take away the land she loves.

Told from the unexpected perspective of Sita—Queen Lakshmi’s most favored companion and most trusted soldier in the all-female army—Rebel Queen shines a light on a time and place rarely explored in historical fiction. In the tradition of her bestselling novel, Nefertiti, and through her strong, independent heroines fighting to make their way in a male dominated world, Michelle Moran brings nineteenth-century India to rich, vibrant life.

Marcellus Hightower, the young boy in the novel, THIS IS ADAM, returns to his hometown as a grown man in DEVIL'S ELBOW. He seeks answers, turning for help to Adam Atwell, his surrogate father. Adam, a black man in the segregated South, shares with Marcellus the haunting memory of David Ransom's murder on the mighty Ocmulgee River. The memories interweave with a quarter century of Marcellus Hightower's quest for love and redemption, through his developing character, economic calamity and the turmoil of war. With Adam's sage guidance, he finds a way to "cleanse his heart" and face life anew. "DEVIL'S ELBOW is a powerful novel indeed. The old verities-a man's troubles with women, with himself, with love and guilt-are all treated as freshly as if Cheney had discovered them." Walker Percy (1969)

"Marion Fay" (1882) by Anthony Trollope is a multi-threaded Victorian novel of social mores, romantic entanglements and occasional heartfelt pathos.

Marion Fay is a Quaker's daughter courted by the idealistic Lord Hampstead. Meanwhile, his best friend, the impoverished George Roden, is in love with the Lord's noble sister. Differences of class and situation create romantic drama in typical Trollope fashion.