On the historic plains, four women find someone to marry. Will these brides blossom like sunflowers in the prairie heat - or wither under the pressures of marriage? Is it really love when... Sara's trying to escape an abusive stepfather, and her groom marries to please his father? Jane wonders if the marriage proposal she's received is Luke's reaction to the love he just lost - Jane's own sister? Mara collects suitors like some women collect teacups - though not the one man she really wants? Emily says "I do" with the dream of having children but finds her husband has no such desire? Will these marriages ripen to a full harvest of love or will they produce only chaff scattered on the wind? Can these women trust God to orchestrate their lives and loves?

The one suitor Mara Lawton cannot add to her collection is the one she wants most--Clay Stedman. Clay has just arrived in Cedar Springs to work the Stedman ranch. His widowed aunt is leaving to visit family back East, and Clay must find someone to care for his little sister and perform the household chores--like cooking for fourteen cowboys, doing the laundry, and feeding the hogs. Mara offers Clay her services, despite having never cooked a meal, washed a garment, or gone near a hog in her life. Clay is taken with Mara's looks, but a recent heartbreak makes him wary--that and the fact she doesn't share his faith in God. For Mara, whose self-worth is based on her family's wealth and royal lineage, obstacles and reverses create a terrible inner turmoil. Will she cling to her own ways or allow God to move in her life? Fall in love with this inspiring love story and our entire collection of Christian romance novels from Heartsong Presents!

VOTED FAVORITE HISTORICAL BOOK IN 2003 Emily Wagner will be a mail-order bride. This arrangement will answer all of her problems - best buried. But when she arrives in Cedar Bend, Kansas, she finds her world has been turned upside-down. Cade Manning needs a mother for his son Adam. He has no intention of replacing the memory of his beloved wife Ingrid, but he knows he can't make ends meet without help. Marrying Emily just makes sense. Never mind that they'll only be husband and wife in name only. Surely, she won't be disappointed. Can Emily trust God to work things out for the good? Will Cade be able to forgive her for her lies and love her as she has come to love him?

Nathan McClain is backed into a corner. Either he must marry, as dictated by his father's will, or he will lose the ranch that has been in his family for three generations. Angry and bitter about his choices, he seeks a woman who will join herself to him in name only. Desperate to escape her abusive stepfather, Sara Donaldson accepts a long-distance marriage proposal from Nathan. Because of her stepfather's tyranny, Sara finds herself intimidated by her new husband. Added to this are the lies she told in her initial communications with Nathan. Will Sara find the courage to make her marriage work? Will the faith she pretends to have become real in her heart?

Most in the United States likely associate the concept of the child bride with the mores and practices of the distant past. But Nicholas L. Syrett challenges this assumption in his sweeping and sometimes shocking history of youthful marriage in America. Focusing on young women and girls--the most common underage spouses--Syrett tracks the marital history of American minors from the colonial period to the present, chronicling the debates and moral panics related to these unions. Although the frequency of child marriages has declined since the early twentieth century, Syrett reveals that the practice was historically far more widespread in the United States than is commonly thought. It also continues to this day: current estimates indicate that 9 percent of living American women were married before turning eighteen. By examining the legal and social forces that have worked to curtail early marriage in America--including the efforts of women's rights activists, advocates for children's rights, and social workers--Syrett sheds new light on the American public's perceptions of young people marrying and the ways that individuals and communities challenged the complex legalities and cultural norms brought to the fore when underage citizens, by choice or coercion, became husband and wife.

Four novels: Stranger's Bride; Never a Bride; Bittersweet Bride and His Brothers Bride.

College student Ivy Towers has definite plans for her future. But when her great-aunt Bitty is found dead inside her rare bookstore, Ivy must travel back to a place and a past she thought she'd left behind.

Victoria, Bride of Kansas, is the 34th book in the unprecedented 50-book series American Mail-order Brides: Jilted society miss Victoria Lowell travels over a thousand miles to marry an Irish suitor whose romantic letters won her heart. Upon arriving in Kansas, she discovers her betrothed has little enthusiasm for marriage and less Christmas spirit than Scrooge. Divorced shopkeeper David O'Brien wants nothing to do with matters of the heart. However, his young daughter needs a mother, and his meddling sister believes she's done him a favor by corresponding with a mail-order bride. Reluctantly, he holds off on revealing the author of the letters, giving Victoria until Christmas Eve to prove she can manage his troubled child. When the truth finally comes out, it will take more than a miracle to deliver a happily-ever-after in time for Christmas. Buy Victoria for Christmas, and why not purchase the sequel, Santa's Mail-Order Bride.

After learning that Thomas Manning, whom she had planned to marry, had died two days ago, Emily Wagner agrees to marry Thomas' brother, Cade Manning, a widower with a five-year-old son.