Dark gray clouds had swallowed the rising sun, dawn outlining their ominous shapes in gold. And the skyOC crimson red, the color of fresh blood. Nathalie's blood started to pound with excitement. She could almost taste it. Rain was coming. A storm. Physician Nathalie Arnaud is on her way home to San Francisco from Paris. After living on old bread, studying by oil lamps, and swimming through mischievous opinions about unnatural females, she has finally earned a brand new diploma from L'Ecole de Medicin . On the ship she encounters an enigmatic green-eyed Capitin, a most irritating man who causes her to exhibit symptoms she's not used to diagnosing. When The Silhouette reaches port, Nathalie finds that nothing is quite as she remembered. San Francisco has grown up, and the Civil War hasn't stayed as far away as she'd hoped. Her aunt, Catherine Larsson, is running one of the most luxurious bordellos in town; her brother, Claude, has gone missing in connection with a most disturbing disappearance of the Union's gold; and doctoring on the front has taken a toll on her mentor, Doc James Calhoun, who's since closed his Infirmary for Women and Children. To top off her homecoming, Major William Wolfe, the man with unlimited powers over her fate due to a sin committed years ago, now claims to hold her brother's life in the balance. Nathalie is forced once again to secretly work for the Union, only this time as a physician and not as a spy. Don Miguel Samuelle Cabrillo is not only a powerful man, but also a man with many dark secrets. Nathalie's new assignment is to diagnose and cure Don Miguel of a most mysterious illness, even against his will. As one of the few female doctors, she is used to having trouble performing her duties, but when the young doctora finally comes face to face with Don Miguel Samuelle Cabrillo, the stipulations he imposes promise to make this the most challenging and stimulating assignment she has ever faced. She is determined not only to get to the bottom of the Don's illness, but also to unravel the mystery of the Union's gold disappearance, whatever it takes. And it may very well take her life. She doesn't, however, count on society balls and wartime intrigue being part of her job. Nathalie finds herself drawn further into the mysterious world of the Captain, and discovers that he can teach her a few things medical school could not. When in Don Miguel's arms, his kisses burn up all thought, his caresses wash away all reality, and his body obliterates all truth except the one in their hearts. The place they reach when they are together is softer than silk and brighter than lightning, peaceful and cataclysmic, familiar because they belong there, and foreign because they can never stay long enough. Boson Books also offers Kit Black by Monica Danetiu-Pana. For an author bio, photo, and a sample read visit bosonbooks.com."

Nine years into an unhappy marriage, Lucille McKenna Quince disappears, leaving the town of Eclipse and her husband, Ambrose, to believe that she ran off with another man.But, when Lucy returns three years later, in time to save her husband from the hangman, she claims to have no memory of him or their life together.Ambrose is determined to set right the wrongs of the past, and at the same time, reclaim the woman who owns his heart.He may be a stranger to Lucy, but he's determined to be an intimate stranger...

When Bobby Hughes moves to Carter Valley, Kentucky to begin a new life as school principal, she doesn't plan to fall in love, especially with the wife of the most affluent man in town. Her only wish is to shake her past and gain acceptance in the small closed community. Her affair, however, puts more than her acceptance at risk. When she becomes involved in the personal lives of the community through her classes in self-esteem, she becomes entangled in their secrets. Intimate Strangers is the story of people who strive for freedom from their dark pasts, only to be trapped in each other's lives. "A psychotherapist who practiced for thirty years, Jo Conard knows about relationships, love and conflict. Intimate Strangers rings with authenticity, down-home compassion, and gentle humor. It will change your heart." -Chris Coward, author of Stone Perfect, 5 stars, readers' favorite; first place, unpublished science fiction. Florida Writers Association.

When Louis Antoine de Bougainville reached Tahiti in 1768, he was struck by the way in which 'All these people came crying out tayo, which means friend, and gave a thousand signs of friendship; they all asked nails and ear-rings of us.' Reading the archive of early contact in Oceania against European traditions of thinking about intimacy and exchange, Vanessa Smith illuminates the traditions and desires that led Bougainville and other European voyagers to believe that the first word they heard in the Pacific was the word for friend. Her book encompasses forty years of encounters from the arrival of the Dolphin in Tahiti in June 1767, through Cook's and Bligh's voyages, to early missionary and beachcomber settlement in the Marquesas. It unpacks both the political and emotional significances of ideas of friendship for late eighteenth-century European, and particularly British, explorations of Oceania.

Hannah Arendt, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Edward Said each steered major intellectual and political schools of thought in American political discourse after World War II, yet none of them was American, which proved crucial to their ways of arguing and reasoning both in and out of the American context. In an effort to convince their audiences they were American enough, these thinkers deployed deft rhetorical strategies that made their cosmopolitanism feel acceptable, inspiring radical new approaches to longstanding problems in American politics. Speaking like natives, they also exploited their foreignness to entice listeners to embrace alternative modes of thought. Intimate Strangers unpacks this "stranger ethos," a blend of detachment and involvement that manifested in the persona of a prophet for Solzhenitsyn, an impartial observer for Arendt, a mentor for Marcuse, and a victim for Said. Yet despite its many successes, the stranger ethos did alienate many audiences, and critics continue to dismiss these thinkers not for their positions but because of their foreign point of view. This book encourages readers to reject this kind of critical xenophobia, throwing support behind a political discourse that accounts for the ideals of citizens and noncitizens alike.

Swapping houses for an eight-week summer idyll is an equally attractive proposition to two couples, British and American. For Christy and Gabe McCarthy, it's an opportunity to soak up English culture and social life in the wild beauty of Wiltshire. For Oliver and Maggie Callahan, a North Carolina antebellum house and a beach retreat represent a journey into the exotic American South. But life can wreak havoc with the best-laid plans. As their lives begin to change profoundly, two couples defy the limits of love to enter the volatile seas of temptation.

Intimate Strangers is the rich, complex and passionate story of a contested adoption and of the two women who join to save a small boy's life. The book examines the various faces of love: erotic love and romantic love, the love of parent for child and child for parent; and what "really" makes a parent. The book's suspenseful focus is on the child's fate - and on the relationship between the women, law partners with widely divergent and equally traumatic histories; who battle on his behalf. The case strikes at the heart of each. Out of their own shadowy backgrounds, the women make a stunning discovery - and must decide what to do about it, and what to do about the men in their lives. This is a story of loss, of healing and redemption. And at the same time, a heartfelt plea for justice in our courts for the most helpless among us.