Books
Pearls & Steel
Award-winning Finalist in the Romance: Historical category of the 2021 American Fiction Contest!
Is love really worth any price?
After being driven from his home in Vermont by a mother perched on the edge of insanity and a money-grubbing old woman who won’t let him marry the woman he loves, Sheridan Baird seeks his fortune in the steel mills in Pittsburgh. But when his worst fears come true and his love marries another, he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better to have perished in the Civil War, like his brothers. Then, he meets the attractive and sophisticated Elinor Taylor from Manhattan. Encouraged by the death wish of a good friend and in a reckless bid to seize control of his fortunes, Sheridan moves to Brooklyn, New York, to try to win her heart. Things rarely go according to plan, and he ends up fighting, not only for Elinor’s love but also for his very life.
Elinor Taylor, the daughter of a wealthy financier from Manhattan, chafes under the constraints of upper class society. When her parents take it upon themselves to find her a husband from among the snobby, self-important New York elite, she rebels by providing her own bachelor to court. Things veer off course when he falls in love with her, and Elinor and her parents spend Christmas in Pittsburgh, where she meets Sheridan Baird, a steelworker from Vermont. Now, she must determine if she should settle for a safe marriage to a good man from a Knickerbocker family or chase her dream of marrying a man she can both love and respect.
Ninety-Nine White Horses
2021 New England Book Festival Regional Literature Category Winner!
Why settle for fate when you can create your own destiny?
Molly Baird is a wealthy debutante in 1887 New York City, searching for love in a society riddled with hypocrisy and contradiction. After a series of social faux pas, her mother laments that Molly may be too awkward and lackluster to find a suitable husband. In desperation, Molly relies on an old wives’ tale, which states that if she counts ninety-nine white horses, the next unmarried man to tip his hat to her will be her love for life.
But when fate delivers on the promise of the ninety-nine white horses and a young man tips his hat, she loses him in the crowds of a New York City street and supposes he is gone forever. However, her father’s financial ruin takes her to live on a Vermont horse farm where she finds that fate has not deserted her, after all—only the man it has delivered is not the one she wants.
Now, she must decide whether to accept fate’s cruelly-dealt hand or to toss her cards to the wind and set out to forge her own destiny.
Ninety-Nine White Horses is an eastern Western—without the guns.
Little Eden
2023 New England Book Festival Regional Literature Category Runner-Up!
WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN OUR MISTAKES
On April 1st, 1898, Naomi Manwaring finds herself booted to the curb outside the East Manhattan boarding school she has called home for the last six years. With nowhere else to go, she joins her aunt and uncle, who are “cottagers” in Newport, Rhode Island, and attempts to make her home amongst the upper crust of Gilded Age society. It doesn’t take long for Naomi to find herself on the wrong side of normal where the cottagers are concerned, and life goes downhill fast. She must choose between helping a new friend or gaining acceptance from the crème de la crème of Gilded Age America.
Ezra Dawson has rejected his inheritance and left home to write for The New York Register, a New York newspaper. His dream of covering the Klondike Gold Rush is dashed to pieces when his editor banishes him to Newport to report on the social doings of the cottagers. Naomi Manwaring, sprightly and headstrong, immediately draws his attention. Ezra uses his journalistic skills to find out more about her, only to uncover troubling facts—facts which Naomi refuses to explain.
Naomi and Ezra both have things to hide. If Ezra discovers her secret, Naomi might lose her already precarious footing in society. And if Naomi unearths Ezra’s involvement in her disgrace, she may never forgive him.
Angelica's Tale
When doing right can break your heart...
Angelica Faust is a poor governess to the spoiled daughter of a new-money family near Hamburg, Germany. She is caught in a world where money and ancestry matter more than honor and dignity.
When she becomes the object of forbidden desire and her father’s murderer stalks her, bent on revenge, she finds herself alone and undefended. She must choose between her desire to be loved and protected and her need to be true to herself. She can’t have it both ways–but if her father’s murderer finds her first, she may not get the chance to choose.