Determined to seek out the villain who destroyed her family, Rosalie Rowland masquerades as a courtesan at London's infamous Temple of Beauty. But when she revels in her alter ego a little too willingly, Captain Alec Stewart's potent masculinity proves impossible to resist ...

When Sam Keller left the military, she ran to the far end of the galaxy. Now she captains the Bonnie Belle, a spaceship full of courtesans who bring a little pleasure to hard-up men and women on distant mining colonies. When one of the women turns up dead, it’s Sam’s job to find out who killed her, and fast—time is money, as far as the Guild is concerned. Marshal Daniel LeClair is as tough as steel, and quick on the draw. But when his vacation gets replaced by an assignment to help find the killer, he can’t help angling for a little action with the hard-charging captain. She’s got brains, attitude, and a body he wouldn’t mind investigating. Sam, six months lonely, might just indulge him. But the Guild wants the case closed yesterday—no matter what the truth might be. With pressure coming from all quadrants, Sam and Daniel clash over false leads, and who’s going to be on top. But when the killer threatens the Belle again, romance will have to wait. It’s a captain’s job to save her crew, no matter what the cost—and Sam's not going to let anything happen to those under her command. Not again. Even if it threatens her chance at happiness with Daniel…

Maude Whitlock is consigned to a life of servitude in Barbados after the death of her mother, a notorious courtesan. As she plans her escape to London, a chance encounter awakens hope for a different life. Henry Crane, gentleman spy, wealthy widower, handsome charmer, places his mission above all other concerns—until he meets Maude, a frazzled chaperone at his niece's engagement ball. Cross purposes will soon put an ocean between them. She refuses to follow her mother's path into the oldest profession, and he is duty bound to see his mission through. How will they find a path to the future before circumstances pull them apart?

Harlot or Holy Woman? presents an exhaustive study of qedešah, a Hebrew word meaning “consecrated woman” but rendered “prostitute” or “sacred prostitute” in Bible translations. Reexamining biblical and extrabiblical texts, Phyllis A. Bird questions how qedešah came to be associated with prostitution and offers an alternative explanation of the term, one that suggests a wider participation for women as religious specialists in Israel’s early cultic practice. Bird’s study reviews all the texts from classical antiquity cited as sources for an institution of “sacred prostitution,” alongside a comprehensive analysis of the cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia containing the cognate qadištu and Ugaritic texts containing the masculine cognate qdš. Through these texts, Bird presents a portrait of women dedicated to a deity, engaged in a variety of activities from cultic ritual to wet-nursing, and sharing a common generic name with the qedešah of ancient Israel. In the final chapter she returns to biblical texts, reexamining them in light of the new evidence from the ancient Near East. Considering alternative models for constructing women’s religious roles in ancient Israel, this wholly original study offers new interpretations of key texts and raises questions about the nature of Israelite religion as practiced outside the royal cult and central sanctuary.