The blacksmith's wife

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Barbara Cartland

Perhaps Olinda Selwyn's mother had been right after all. Olinda had accepted a job restoring embroidered tapestries for the Dowager Countess of Kelvedon. The Selwyns certainly needed the money. But Olinda's mother was afraid-afraid that her pretty, innocent daughter would fall victim to advances from worldly gentlemen. Olinda had laughed at her mother's fears. But she was not laughing now. The Dowager Countess's young lover was making no secret of his designs on Olinda's virtue. The girl felt helpless: she certainly could not turn to the Countess. Who would protect her?

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R.D. Blackmore

This work is called a 'romance,' because the incidents, characters, time, and scenery, are alike romantic. And in shaping this old tale, the Writer neither dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty of an historic novel.

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Beatriz Williams

Memorial Day, 1938: New York socialite Lily Dane has just returned with her family to the idyllic oceanfront community of Seaview, Rhode Island, expecting another placid summer season among the familiar traditions and friendships that sustained her after heartbreak. That is, until the Greenwalds take up residence in Seaview. Nick and Budgie Greenwald are an unwelcome specter from Lily's past: her former best friend and her former fiancé, now recently married -- an event that set off a wildfire of gossip among the elite of Seaview, who have summered together for generations. But the ties that bind Lily to Nick are too strong and intricate to ignore, and the two are drawn back into long-buried dreams, despite their uneasy secrets and many emotional obligations. Under the scorching summer sun, the unexpected truth of Budgie and Nick's marriage bubbles to the surface, and as a cataclysmic hurricane barrels unseen up the Atlantic and into New England, Lily and Nick must confront an emotional cyclone of their own, which will change their worlds forever.

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Victoria Holt

Minella Maddox grew up on a great English estate. But as the schoolmistress' daughter, her place was not, and never could be, at beautiful Derringham Manor. And that is where the trouble started, for Derringham's young heir thought he saw in Minella just the kind of wife he wanted. But a dark and cruelly handsome French count, who always got what he wanted, thought she was just the kind of mistress he had to have. Not for nothing was he called the Devil on Horseback. Yet Minella's humble heritage was to prove more precious that titles and riches, for it freed her to follow her heart, leading her into adventures and dangers she had never dreamed of. It put her directly in the path of another woman's hatred, swept her up into the deadly terrors of the French Revolution and, finally, carried her into the arms of the great and powerful man she loved.