No one is more surprised than Sunny Licht when Noah Whitmore proposes. She's a scarlet woman and an unwed mother—an outcast even in her small Quaker community. But she can't resist Noah's offer of a fresh start in a place where her scandalous past is unknown. In Sunny, the former Union soldier sees a woman whose loneliness matches his own. When they arrive in Wisconsin, he'll see that she and her baby daughter want for nothing…except the love that war burned out of him. Yet Sunny makes him hope once more—for the home they're building, and the family he never hoped to find.

Hannah Forrester's Life Did Not Belong To Her A contract of indenture saw to that. But no one owned her soul, and Ethan Reed knew instinctively that she was the one woman who belonged by his side, for now and forever. Rugged as the frontier he roamed, Ethan had left his mark on Hannah's heart.

If countless books and movies are to be believed, America’s Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men—a man’s world. Here, Chris Enss, in the latest of her popular books to take on this stereotype, tells the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for ladies of the era. Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of Frontier Teachers demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities—and changed America forever.

Complete with actual advertisements from both women seeking husbands and males seeking brides, Hearts West includes twelve stories of courageous mail order brides and their exploits. Some were fortunate enough to marry good men and live happily ever after; still others found themselves in desperate situations that robbed them of their youth and sometimes their lives. Desperate to strike it rich during the Gold Rush, men sacrificed many creature comforts. Only after they arrived did some of them realize how much they missed female companionship. One way for men living on the frontier to meet women was through subscriptions to heart-and-hand clubs. The men received newspapers with information, and sometimes photographs, about women, with whom they corresponded. Eventually, a man might convince a woman to join him in the West, and in matrimony. Social status, political connections, money, companionship, or security were often considered more than love in these arrangements.

When a man comes west, he puts his life on the line to develop a new land; range-riding preacher Joel Scott rides many trails in search of his father and wonders if renewed faith will be the trail that leads to his bride.

Daisy knew that someday, somehow, she would pay for wanting what no proper woman wanted… The ravishing Duchess Daisy vowed to save Severn Manor by marrying Nicholas Calloway, a Texas bounty hunter come to claim his family’s ancestral lands. But the moment they met, the slate eyed barbarian took Daisy’s breath away. She proposed a marriage of convenience. But she hadn’t reckoned on flash-fire passion with the savage new duke… Nicholas Calloway came to England to discover the truth about his bastard birth, then sell his inherited estate—with Duchess Daisy’s help. Her price was marriage. He agreed, determined to have her on his own terms–only to find himself hostage to the fiery redhead he couldn’t leave behind… The highly acclaimed bestselling author of Outlaw’s Bride, Joan Johnston brings to life two extraordinary characters—an outrageous duchess and an unlikely duke—in a love story that enchants and enthralls to the very last page.

The Westward Expansion Was A Time Of radical change in America. The upheaval of moving west and beginning a new life from scratch was difficult for those who made the trip. "Except for love..." said Isabella Bird of Colorado in 1873, "this is a wretched existence." In spite of the rough conditions and frequent shortages of suitable partners in the West, the pioneers met, fell in love and married, but were forced to adapt their courting to a frontier life. The civilized comforts and proprieties of the East yielded to many new ways of finding a mate, from personal ads to rental brides. The West was not all wild, however: Religion still played a strong role in western life, whether lovers were Mormon, Catholic, Baptist or Buddhist; and the traditions of immigrants from Europe, Asia and the Americas all helped to form courtship and marriage rituals on the frontier. Through period photographs, extracts from journals and letters and reminiscences, Cathy Luchetti's subjects tell the true story of romantic life on the American frontier, reminding us of what it was like to fall in love then -- and now. "I sat there in the dark waiting. I had waited only a few minutes. when I heard the longed-for footsteps come to my gate. I went to meet him and would have thrown my arms around him, dust covered and dirty as he was, but he would not allow it. He caught me by the arms, and with he on one side of the low fence and I on the other, he delivered a tirade of accusations and abuse.... "Then he put his hand on my face, pressing gently, and said, 'Now, old lady, if you're going to marry me you've got to say so right now, and we'll get married and camp under a tree, for I haven't a damn cent.What d'ya say?' "I had been waiting all this time for the tirade to be over so I could say yes. Now I said it. "'Good God, old lady! Do you mean it?' And it didn't take him long to jump that low fence. He didn't even stop to open the gate. Then our arms went around each other in one long embrace." -- Sarah Olds "And so I told her girl, that I would come the next Thursday, and bring a horse, bridle, and saddle for her, and she must be ready to go. Her mother declared I shouldn't have her; but I know'd I should, if somebody else didn't get her before Thursday." -- David Crockett

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Interfaith liaisons carried powerful resonances, as such unions could function as a tool of diplomacy, the catalyst for conversion, or potent psychological propaganda. Examining a wide range of source material including legal documents, historical narratives, polemical and hagiographic works, poetry, music, and visual art, Simon Barton presents a nuanced reading of the ways interfaith couplings were perceived, tolerated, or feared, depending upon the precise political and social contexts in which they occurred. Religious boundaries in the Peninsula were complex and actively policed, often shaped by an overriding fear of excessive social interaction or assimilation of the three faiths that coexisted within the region. Barton traces the protective cultural, legal, and mental boundaries that the rival faiths of Iberia erected, and the processes by which women, as legitimate wives or slave concubines, physically traversed those borders. Through a close examination of the realities and the imagination of interfaith relations, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines highlights the extent to which sex, power, and identity were closely bound up with one another.

The book is a unique combination of authentic family stories blended with Americas most memorable historical events starting in 1752 with George Washingtons arrival to western Pennsylvania and Christian Lesnetts landing at Baltimore harbor. The reader will follow the Lesnett family as it participates in the last battle of The French & Indian War through The Whiskey Rebellion, The Revolutionary War, The Battle of 1812, The Civil War, The Great Depression and World War II. Scott Lesnett, the author, personalizes these epic times with passed down stories that alter certain historic events while providing the reader with a fresh perspective on the formation of the United States. Tales and opinions of each lineage character are told from the colorful viewpoint of the authors father, Thomas Dell Lesnett III. This is truly an American story, which spans NINE GENERATIONS of struggle and achievement.

Josephine: Bride of Louisiana is 18th in the unprecedented 50-book American Mail-Order Brides series. Josephine Depardieu grew up in Massachusetts, fairly privileged and educated, speaking French as well as English, but when her father dies, she finds herself working in a factory in as a seamstress. When the factory burns down, she looks for other options…and sees an ad for a French-speaking mail-order bride. She’s always wanted to know more about her French heritage, and heads down to a plantation in Louisiana to find out more. Pierre Bernard has lived and worked on his father’s plantation on the Mississippi River his whole life, but as a first generation American, hasn’t always been as interested in French culture as his father would like. When his father decides to move back to France and leave Pierre the plantation, he is stunned to find out that this will only happen if he is married—to a French woman. But when Josephine learns that Pierre’s father expected a woman from France, is she up to the task? And how long can Pierre keep his father in the dark?