historical
-
Hot Prairie Nights by Anita Philmar @anitaphilmar
It’s a hard life living on the western plains. Elizabeth Murphy knows she lives it every day.
Then just like some medieval knight in shining armor, a stranger arrives at her door. He claims to be a friend, who is down on his luck and looking for work.
Just looking at him sets her body on fire, and with them sharing a small log cabin, the nights are bound to heat up. Can she resist the chance to take a ride with the cowboy? Or should she trust him at all?
After all, he thinks wearing a shirt is an optional item and he knows way too many facts about her dead gun slinging husband?
My Gift To You by Faye Hall
Rush Mullens saw her parents, Joseph and Carmen, being murdered before her eyes as an 8 year old child– ten cloaked figures destroying her once peaceful life. She did not know the men responsible, but she would find them. She wanted revenge…she needed it.
When Lord Justin Maston came to take her in to his care, she vowed she would use this opportunity to find the murderer’s she chased. She did not think she would also find a boy she could love more than her own life.
Bailey Maston had never supposed to mean any more to her than a friend, one who could protect her from the new lifestyle she had been forced into. What he had become though was a young man who could take her breath away, and steal her heart.
Rush knew Bailey knew nothing of her family, or the life she was raised to live. She doubted should he learn the truth that he would understand. She could not let him endanger the revenge she so craved to seek. Nor could she ignore that she was willing to risk all – her past, her life, her reputation – just to sample an ounce of passion from this man.
Bailey Maston wanted to find a woman – the perfect woman – to give his heart to. He wanted to trust that such a person could exist that would never betray him. Everything he had seen in his young life, both at home and in society, told him what a foolish dream this was. Such a woman could never exist. Even if she did, he doubted she would ever willingly give her heart to a love-starved boy like him.
Foolish though his dream was, Bailey could not help being drawn to the young orphaned girl his parents had taken in.
He wanted her friendship and the attention she so willingly offered to him.
He craved to feel the passion he knew was hidden deep inside her.
What he did not want was to fall in love with her.
When Bailey finally discovers the truth of Rush’s life, and the revenge she was enacting, he feels betrayed. Foolish though it was, he hopes that beyond this betrayal may yet lay the woman he has always yearned to find…a woman he craved to give his well-guarded heart to.
The Scent of Roses by Charlene Raddon
Rosalyn Delaney tracks down her missing husband, only to learn he’s been murdered. His business partner, Whip Kincaid, is the suspected killer, but he has disappeared. Too broke to leave, Rosalyn stays at her husband’s home, Rose House, even after she starts receiving nightly visits from a charming “ghost”. Rosalyn has secrets and a darn good reason for not going back home. Whip Kincaid hoped to start over in Whiskey Ridge, Arizona by going into business with his partner, Josiah Bullock. Now, wanted for murder and hiding in his own home, Rose House, his only choice is to clear his name by finding the real killer. But how, with Rosalyn in the house and a posse stationed outside? He begins by trying to scare Rosalyn away, but she doesn’t frighten easily. Soon, he’s no longer sure he wants her to go, since she would take his heart with her
Threads of Betrayal by Monica Koldyke Miller
Reagan Burnsfield has no interest in finding himself a wife. But that’s exactly what he must do when a lumber contract falls through and threatens the family business. Marrying the beautiful debutante Amanda Bruester for her dowry will solve his short term need as well as give him the wife of his dreams.
His courtship is hindered until they are arrested after stumbling upon bounty hunters hotly pursuing runaway slaves. In the ensuing scandal, Amanda chooses marriage over betraying her Aunt Gabriella’s illegal activities in the Underground Railroad.
Yet, despite being properly wed, another suitor, Derrick Banning, is determined to break apart their hasty marriage. He fancies it is he, not “that arrogant lumberman,” who should be enjoying Amanda’s wealth. While snowed in at his lumber camp, Amanda discovers papers that imply Reagan’s offer of marriage wasn’t the sacrifice she thought it to be. Despite his assurances that he acted to protect her, Amanda begins to doubt everything about him.
To complicate matters, mysterious scratches on Reagan’s back seem to point to infidelity, further proving he’s the untrustworthy knave Derrick claims him to be. When a prostitute’s body is found in his office and Reagan is arrested for murder, Amanda flees to her aunt’s house until the mystery can be solved.
Bride of Dunloch (Highland Loyalties Trilogy, Volume 1) by Veronica Bale @VeronicaBale1
Author Veronica Bale’s debut novel, Bride of Dunloch, is a gripping story of love and conflict in the time of the first Scottish War of Independence, and of one young girl’s struggle to determine for herself what is right and what is wrong.
In the watery grey light of a late spring dawn, two forces meet to oppose one another at the main gate of Dunloch Castle, an imposing structure nestled deep in the Scottish Highlands. On the attacking side are the MacGillivrays—a clan dispossessed of its ancestral lands and home because its members would not swear loyalty to the English King Edward the First. Dunloch is theirs, and they will take it back—by any means necessary.
So is the world in which Jane Sewell, a young and naive English girl of noble birth whose hand has been given away in marriage, finds herself. It is a land that is as bloody and brutal as it is beautiful. But when she stumbles upon a wounded Scottish warrior from the enemy MacGillivray clan, her compassionate nature will not allow her to abandon him. Against her better judgement, she resolves to help him in secret.
As tensions at Dunloch intensify, however, Jane finds herself torn between her duty—and her heart. For in these Scottish Highlands, loyalties can change as quickly as the weather …
