By the Light of Embers
Lucia Lafleur has always wanted is to follow in her father’s footsteps. While sock hops and poodle skirts occupy her classmates, she dreams of bacteria and broken bones—and the day she’ll finally fix them.
Then a letter arrives, and Lucia reads the words she’s labored a lifetime to earn—we are pleased to offer you a position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. But in the midst of her triumph, her fiancé delivers a crushing ultimatum: forego medical school, or forego marriage.
With fractured hopes, she returns home to Louisiana, expecting nothing of the summer of ’54 but sweet tea and gumbo while she agonizes over her impending choice. There, she unexpectedly befriends Nicholas, a dark-skinned poet whose dignity and intellect are a salve to her aching heart. Their bond, initially forged from a shared love of literature, soon blossoms into something as bewitching as it is forbidden.
Yet her predicament deepens when a trivial misunderstanding between a local white woman and a black man results in a brutal lynching, and the peril of love across the color lines becomes chillingly real. Now, fulfilling her lifelong dream means relinquishing her heart—and escaping Louisiana alive.
The Wildflowers at the
Edge of the World
Yukon Territories, 1898. When circus sharpshooter Sophia Bellerose flees from heartbreak in search of a new life, she doesn’t intend to join a brothel. But she can't refuse that kind of cash—or the freedom that comes with it.
For Sophia, the remote wilds of Canada’s Far North are the perfect place to bury old heartbreaks: memories are short, days are long, and gold dust flows freely for women bold enough to make the trip. Even better? She can keep her guns.
Yet when the warmth of her newfound sisterhood begins to thaw her icy heart, Sophia wonders if she’s stumbled into the perfect life—until she clashes with the local Reverend, whose angel face hides a dangerously devious mind. Not only is he conning the whole town, he’s after both the brothel and her, though she can't tell whether his interest is genuine or just another clever ploy to gain control of her earnings.
Determined to preserve her newfound freedom—and ignore the Reverend’s devastating kissing in the process—Sophia unholsters her pistols and takes aim, ready to do whatever it takes to keep her new life in one piece.