""Do you play?" he asked.

She touched the keys and pressed lightly on them. "A little." Her fingers spread out naturally and she closed her eyes as the instrument echoed softly.

Demetrius recognized the composition and brought his arm around her so that his fingers rested above hers, gliding them along as she played. Then she suddenly paused and turned to look at him. How confused and lost she looked, but not anymore than he was. Their attraction grew stronger each time they encountered and no matter the dilemma making them take opposition, the animosity couldn't subdue the burning in their hearts.

He leaned forward to kiss her when she turned her head downward. Caressing her chin, he raised it so that their lips lightly touched. Then he slowly brought his mouth to hers, prolonging the intense throb in her heart. The softness of her lips lured him in and he pulled her closer. He kissed her softly at first and when he found her tongue, his kiss intensified. Jen wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back harder. Then they withdrew and looked into each other's eyes without an understanding of where they were leading themselves."

In The Thundering Path of Spirit, young teenage Amanda Blair is the sole survivor of an attack by a small band of Crow Indians while traveling west by wagon train with her parents. Adopted by the Crow, Amanda becomes Spotted Deer and grows to young womanhood with her Crow family in the Montana Territory. Mysterious circumstances after a vision quest lead her to run away to the town of Helena, where her troubled memories of the brutal attack are finally healed.

Content to live with her own people again, she hears rumors of war breaking out near the Little Bighorn River. With the unfortunate discovery that her adopted Crow brother has become a scout for the US Cavalry at Fort Laramie, Amanda journeys back to the Crow in the hopes of saving him from certain death. Her decisive actions fill her with ambivalence as she must again face the intimidating Crow spiritual mentor she once loved and seek his help in saving the brother she also loves. The Thundering Path of Spirit is a riveting love story about following God's will in harrowing times.

"Some people are born storytellers, and when you add to that careful historical research, you get a fascinating tale. M. B. Tosi's new novel is a compelling love story and spiritual journey told against the background of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It's a page turner." -Jim Langford, Director Emeritus of University of Notre Dame Press

After years of schooling on the East Coast, Constance Browning returns to Oregon and the reservation where she grew up with her missionary parents. She is accompanied by Thomas Lowell, her best friend and colleague, and together they embark on a project to catalogue the native peoples of Oregon for the Bureau of American Ethnology. But Connie and Tom have another purpose--to prove her parents are not involved in a secret conspiracy to goad the oppressed tribes into a doomed war. Connie finds life on the reservation much bleaker than she remembered, and she is glad to have Tom by her side. But she also becomes reacquainted with Clint Singleton, the government agent on whom she had a crush as a girl. Now that she's back, Clint finally seems interested in her, but Connie is no longer sure of her feelings. As tensions on the reservation rise and war looms ever closer, Connie and Tom search for whoever is truly behind the uprising. With danger unfolding amid shocking revelations, Connie will also have a revelation of the heart.

HEYERWOOD: A Novel is a romantic historical novel, set in the Georgian/Regency period in England. The story of a woman learning to cope with power and control at a time when women traditionally had little power at all, this book will appeal to readers of history, fans of historical novels, and admirers of Jane Austen alike.

Babe Gordon, the star of this brilliant, sophisticated novel of modern New York's racy set, is a strange woman. She uses her beauty and her sexual allure as a soldier uses his weapons-without mercy or scruples. Her basic appeal attracts all types of men, from bruisers of the prize ring to the more refined sons of the city's aristocracy. From her experiences with men, she is canny, worldly wise, quick thinking. But all her art, her wisdom, and her actions are devoted to love. When her passion for one man cools, she is quick to kindle it in another. Men and their rages over her transient affection do not move her. Through a situation that costs one man his life, another man his career, and the disgrace of a third lover, Babe Gordon moves deftly, coolly, the goal of all men's eyes, the ultimate femme fatale.

There were three things that Steve Greene wanted to do, and they were, in order of importance: 1. Get away from his Great Mistake (her name was Vivian). 2. Write the last movement of his symphony and relieve his mind of an unfinished concerto or two. 3. Whip the waters of some unspoiled mountain lake for record-breaking bass and pike. And so he bought a trailer. When he took to the open road, his house on wheels was replete with gadgets and improvements, but he was hardly prepared to find a breathtakingly pretty girl and a snarling, suspicious black dog hiding in the depths of his folding bed when he parked the first night, fifty miles from civilization. Little did Steve know, the pretty girl was actually Gloria Newcombe of Hollywood, running away from a new contract and an expensive and utterly unwanted husband. Her disappearance had been ballooned into a sensational kidnapping. While State Troopers and assorted county sheriffs comb the trails for Gloria, affairs inside the trailer grow ever more complicated, intimate, and tempestuous in this romantic tale of two worlds colliding against the backdrop of America in the 1930s.

Originally published in 1949, Matthew Smith writes with the brilliance of an Arlen and the sophistication of a Maugham in this vintage tale of high-fashioned passion that bares the souls and appetites of mid-century old money. Nestled in rolling fields on the eastern Connecticut shore stands Cragie, the sumptuous estate of George Ridgley. Passersby admire its sprawling luxury and envy its owner his many acres with their tenant farms, luxurious buildings, and natural beauty. Here Eros launches five arrows that find their mark at once, filling five cultivated and refined people with passions that even the expansive rooms of Cragie can t contain. First George Ridgley falls in love with Lesley, a beautiful guest much his junior. Then Reggie, the playboy forgets his selfishness to lose his heart to Audrey, a wealthy and sensuous vixen. When Peter Drake, our tale s hero, flies back from Europe and enters the scene, scandal erupts. These people woo in the same sophisticated, pleasure guided way they live. They play at passion as they play at backgammon to win."

The first title in Elizabeth Ogilvies' Lover's Trilogy, The Dawning of the Day follows war widow Philippa Marshall as she carves a life out for herself as a school teacher on rugged Bennett's Island. Underneath the sleepy exterior of the island, Philippa discovers latent family feuds, the perils of living on an island and a kindling love for handsome Steve Bennett. As she grapples with her sense of loyalty to her deceased husband. Philippa must weigh the balance of her heart and mind and plot the course of her destiny.

Vanessa Barton steps onto Bennett's Island for the first time as if she is stepping into a prison cell. She feels trapped by her marriage, she carries the emotional shackles of a childhood spent as a ward of the state, and she wants nothing to do with the island community. A chance encounter with Owen Bennett sparks off an attraction that brings Vanessa to life, as she discovers something real that eclipses the fantasies of the novels she reads. Owen leads her on a path of self-discovery that forces her to confront long buried feelings and begin healing old emotional scars. Island life shakes Vanessa out of her self-pity but when misfortune knocks once again at her door, she must decide once and for all whether to succumb to the fugue of her earlier days or whether to seize her independence and happiness.

Rosa Fleming motors her way to Bennett's Island in the dark of the night, fleeing her divorce, her philandering husband and the gossipmongers of her hometown. On the Island she discovers not only a refuge to heal her emotional wounds, but also a community that nurtures her battered confidence and a man who teaches her to love and be loved as an equal. When a fight breaks out between the island's lobstermen and the invading fishermen who disregard the island's longstanding customs, Rosa steps into the struggle and saves a man's life. She flourishes amid the crisis, but her growth may be at the expense of her fledgling romance. Strawberries in the Sea is a story of self-discovery and rejuvenation, as a sad insecure woman realizes her own inner beauty and personal strengths.

Liverpool, 1924. Racing to meet her fiance in her father's new-fangled motor car, Penny Forshaw knocks over a little girl and - much to her fiance's disapproval - feels it her duty to take in six-year-old Kelly while she recovers. But little did Penny anticipate the challenges and responsibilities of looking after a child from the slums, and Kelly's miserable, poverty-stricken existence opens Penny's eyes to a world she never knew existed. Her relationship with her fiance Arnold under strain, Penny's decision to take in young Kelly will change her life in ways she could never have expected. She wanted to give Kelly a better chance in life - but it may be Kelly who changes Penny's life for the better.

In the exclusive world of New York Society, Darcy Snow Statton's wealth and bloodline place her at the very top of the city's elite. Yet, for all her jewelry and dazzling ballroom gowns, Darcy has no freedom. While their husbands quadruple their fortunes, proper ladies engage in polite parlor chatter and stringent etiquette. Darcy's husband, Claude Statton, us a man of uncertain birth but enormous wealth, a man whose polished exterior belies his dark habits and the unspeakable plans he ahs for his wife. Darcy is a prisoner off Claude's Fifth Avenue mansion and she has sworn to escape or die trying. One snowy night, former Pinkerton agent Tavish Finn discovers Darcy attempting to flee. Though he is an acquaintance of Claude Statton, he has a way of extracting the truth from the gilded lies of the rich and he knows shocking secrets about Darcy's husband. He knows that Darcy is suffocating in her rarefied prison and in Tavish's eyes, Darcy sees a glimmer of hope...and a blessed promise of freedom.The excitement and grandeur of America at the turn of the century provide a glittering backdrop for Blind Trust, a story of passage and growth, of cool danger and heated greed, and of the passionate struggle waged by one woman determined to break free of the chains of convention.

Sonja Haraldsen, a young Norwegian seamstress who works in her family's clothing store, has never dreamed of being famous for anything besides fashion design. Yet one summer evening in 1959, she meets Crown Prince Harald at a party. She's shocked when he wants to see her again, but they quickly fall in love, and Harald proposes marriage less than a year later.

Yet King Olav, who expects his son to marry royal, is firmly opposed to the idea of a common-born seamstress as the next Crown Princess. As His Majesty's approval is legally necessary for the marriage of the heir, Harald and Sonja are left waiting and hoping for the King to change his mind.

Soon, the secret relationship finds its way into the papers, and the Crown Prince's romance with a shopkeeper's daughter becomes the scandal of the century. Journalists, politicians, and ordinary Norwegians declare that a common marriage would destroy the monarchy, and a furious King repeatedly insists that the relationship must end.

Set against the romantic backdrop of royal Europe, A Shopkeeper's Daughter is based on a true story of a love worth fighting for.