He’s claustrophobic. She’s agoraphobic. He doesn’t own a pair of pyjamas. That’s all she wears. A bird and a fish may love each other but where will they make a home together. From the author of Tied to the Tracks comes a charming new novel set in Lambert's Corner, South Carolina-a beautiful town where no one's secrets remain secret for very long. For John Dodge, moving to new places and reviving ailing businesses is a way of life. So when he sees an ad for Scriveners, a stationery shop in a small town in South Carolina, he decides to take the plunge. As soon as he arrives in Lambert's Corner, Dodge falls happily into the whirl of gossip, gifts and quintessential Southern hospitality. Link Kay, one of his employees, warms up to him after Dodge admires his expertise on pens. Bean Hurt-a feisty and outspoken ten-year-old-becomes a fast friend. And Maude Golden, the mayor, supplies him with indispensable information. But the one person who really catches Dodge's eye is Julia Darrow-the beautiful but aloof pyjama wearing-owner of the Cocoon, a popular store specializing in luxury linens. Dodge tries to befriend her, but she remains elusive and mysterious. Everyone knows that she is a widow, but no one seems to know why she came to town or why she never leaves Lambert Square - or does she? Like Dodge, Chicago-born Julia is fleeing a tumultuous past. But with the help of a hilarious and endearing cast of characters, Julia and Dodge learn that, sometimes, you don't need to go far to find home.

Julia Darrow runs a thriving business in South Carolina, has a houseful of foster dogs-and she wears designer pajamas all day, every day. John Dodge makes a living moving around the country, fixing up small businesses on the brink of disaster. His newest venture takes him to South Carolina, where he's greeted by an odd sight: Julia Darrow, walking across Lambert Square, in pajamas. Intrigued, Dodge asks Julia out to dinner only to be refused. The townsfolk warn him that Julia is an unsolvable mystery, but Dodge likes mysteries, and he's really good at fixing things...

It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they’d hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe. To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family that has the baby. The Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, totally without scruple. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans and taken the child she now claims as her great-grandson with her. New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, a city where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times. Sure that all is lost, and sick unto death, Hannah finds herself in the care of a family and a friend from her past, Dr. Paul de Guise Savard dit Saint-d’Uzet. It is Dr. Savard and his wife who save Hannah’s life, but Dr. Savard’s half brother who offers her real hope. Jean-Benoit Savard, the great-grandson of French settlers, slaves, and Choctaw and Seminole Indians, is the one man who knows the city well enough to engineer the miracle that will reunite the Bonners and send them home to Lake in the Clouds. With Ben Savard’s guidance, allies are drawn from every segment of New Orleans’s population and from Andrew Jackson’s army, now pouring into the city in preparation for what will be the last major battle of the War of 1812.

Haunted by childhood losses in spite of successful medical careers in 1883 New York City, surgeon Anna Savard and her obstetrician cousin, Sophie, consider taking in a child and helping a desperate young mother, while avoiding dangerous anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock.

Weaving a tapestry of fact and fiction, Sara Donati’s epic novel sweeps us into another time and place . . . and into a breathtaking story of love and survival in a land of savage beauty. It is December of 1792. Elizabeth Middleton leaves her comfortable English estate to join her family in a remote New York mountain village. It is a place unlike any she has ever experienced. And she meets a man unlike any she has ever encountered—a white man dressed like a Native American: Nathaniel Bonner, known to the Mohawk people as Between-Two-Lives. Determined to provide schooling for all the children of the village, Elizabeth soon finds herself locked in conflict with the local slave owners as well as with her own family. Interweaving the fate of the Mohawk Nation with the destiny of two lovers, Sara Donati’s compelling novel creates a complex, profound, passionate portait of an emerging America. Praise for Into the Wilderness “My favorite kind of book is the sort you live in, rather than read. Into the Wilderness is one of those rare stories that let you breathe the air of another time, and leave your footprints on the snow of a wild, strange place. I can think of no better adventure than to explore the wilderness in the company of such engaging and independent lovers as Elizabeth and her Nathaniel.”—Diana Gabaldon “Each time you open a book you hope to discover a story that will make your spirit of adventure and romance sing. This book delivers on that promise.”—Amanda Quick “A beautiful tale of both romance and survival…Here is the beauty as well as the savagery of the wilderness and, at the core of it all, the compelling story of the love of a man and a woman, both for the untamed land and for one another.”—Allan W. Eckert “Lushly written . . . Exemplary historical fiction.”—Kirkus Reviews “Epic in scope, emotionally intense.”—BookPage

With epic sweep and breathtaking adventure, Sara Donati’s bestselling saga of an Early American family’s struggle for survival in the Northeast wilderness continues with the story of an indomitable woman and an unforgettable journey of redemption across a young nation threatened by the flames of war. The year is 1812 and Hannah Bonner has returned to her family’s mountain cabin in Paradise. But Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner can see that Hannah is not the same woman as when she left. For their daughter has come home without her husband and without her son…and with a story of loss and tragedy that she can’t bear to tell. Yet as Hannah resumes her duties as a gifted healer among the sick and needy, she finds that she is also slowly healing herself. Little does she realize that she is about to be called away to face her greatest challenge ever. As autumn approaches, news of the latest conflict with Britain finds the young men of Paradise—including eighteen-year-old Daniel Bonner—eager to take up arms. Against their better judgment, Nathaniel and Elizabeth must let him go, just as they must let his twin sister Lily, a stubborn beauty, pursue her independence in Montreal. But on the eve of the War of 1812, an unexpected guest arrives from Scotland: It is the Bonners’ distant cousin, the newly widowed Jennet Scott of Carryckcastle. Far from home, Lily and Jennet will each learn the price of pursuing their dreams and the possibility of true love. But it’s Hannah herself who must risk everything once more—this time to save Daniel, who’s been taken prisoner by the British. As the distant thunder of war threatens Paradise, Hannah may learn to live—and maybe love—again in one final act of courage, duty, and sacrifice. A gifted writer, a master storyteller, and a first-rate historian, Sara Donati has written a powerful, poignant, and movingly romantic novel that chronicles the lives and adventures of a family as compelling and unforgettable as any in American fiction.

In her extraordinary novels Into the Wilderness and Dawn on a Distant Shore, award-winning writer Sara Donati deftly captured the vast, untamed wilderness of late-eighteenth-century New York and the trials and triumphs of the Bonner family. Now Donati takes on a new and often overlooked chapter in our nation’s past--and in the life of the spirited Bonners--as their oldest daughter, the brave and beautiful Hannah, comes of age with a challenge that will change her forever. Masterfully told, this passionate story is a moving tribute to a resilient, adventurous family and a people poised at the brink of a new century. It is the spring of 1802, and the village of Paradise is still reeling from the typhoid epidemic of the previous summer. Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have lost their two-year-old son, Hannah’s half brother Robbie, but they struggle on as always: the men in the forests, the twins Lily and Daniel in Elizabeth’s school, and Hannah as a doctor in training, apprenticed to Richard Todd. Hannah is descended from healers on both sides--one Scots grandmother and one Mohawk--and her reputation as a skilled healer in her own right is growing. After a long night spent attending to a birth, Elizabeth and Hannah encounter an escaped slave hiding on the mountain. She calls herself Selah Voyager, and she is looking for Curiosity Freeman--a former slave herself, one of the village’s wisest women and Elizabeth’s closest friend. The Bonners take Selah, desperately ill, to Lake in the Clouds to care for her, and with that simple act they are drawn into the secret life that Curiosity and Galileo Freeman and their grown children have been leading for almost ten years. The Bonners will do what they must to protect the Freemans, just as Hannah will protect her patient, who presents more than one kind of challenge. For a bounty hunter is afoot--Hannah’s childhood friend and first love, Liam Kirby. While Elizabeth and Nathaniel undertake a treacherous journey through the endless forests to bring Selah to safety in the north, Hannah embarks on a very different journey to New-York City, with two goals: to learn the secrets of vaccination against smallpox, a disease that threatens Paradise, and to find out what she can about Liam’s immediate past and what caused him to change so drastically from the boy she once loved. The obstacles she faces as a woman and a Mohawk make her confront questions long avoided about her place in the world. Those questions follow her back to Paradise, where she finds that the medical miracle she brings with her will not cure prejudice or superstition, nor can it solve the problem of slavery. No sooner have the Bonners begun to rebound from their losses--old and new--than they find themselves confronted by more than one old enemy in a battle that will test the strength of their love for one another. Hannah faces the decision she has always dreaded: will she make a life for herself in a white world, or among her mother’s people?

Sara Donati's debut novel, Into the Wilderness, was hailed as "epic in scope, emotionally intense...an enrapturing, grand adventure" (BookPage) and "a captivating saga...definitely the romance of the year when it comes to transcending genre boundaries" (Booklist). Author Diana Gabaldon called it "one of those rare stories that let you breathe the air of another time, and leave your footprints on the snow of a wild, strange place." Now, in her second novel, this award-winning master storyteller once again blends fact and fiction, and re-creates her beloved characters from Into the Wilderness in an eloquent, enthralling tale of romance and adventure. Elizabeth and Nathaniel Bonner have settled into their life together at the edge of the New-York wilderness in the winter of 1794 when Elizabeth gives birth to healthy twins. But soon the events in Canada draw Nathaniel far away from his new family. Word has reached them that Nathaniel's father has been arrested by crown officials in British Canada. Nathaniel reluctantly leaves Hidden Wolf Mountain to set out for the distant city, determined to see his father freed. Instead Nathaniel is imprisoned and finds himself in imminent danger of being hanged as an American spy. In a desperate bid to save her husband, Elizabeth bundles her infants and sets out on the long trek to Montreal. Accompanied by her stepdaughter, Hannah, their wise friend Curiosity Freeman, and Runs-from-Bears, a Mohawk warrior and lifelong friend of Nathaniel's, Elizabeth journeys through the snowy wilderness and across treacherous waterways. But she soon discovers that freeing Nathaniel will take every ounce of her courage and inventiveness. It is a struggle that threatens her with the loss of what she loves most: her children. Torn apart, the Bonners must embark on yet another perilous voyage...this time all the way across the ocean to the heart of Scotland, where a wealthy earl claims kinship with Nathaniel's father, Hawkeye. In his heart, the Mahican tribe of Hawkeye's youth is the truest kin he will ever know, just as Nathaniel will always remain loyal to the Mohawk nation. But with this journey a whole new world opens up to Nathaniel and Elizabeth--and a destiny they could never have imagined awaits them.... A sweeping epic of romance and adventure, Dawn on a Distant Shore establishes Sara Donati as one of today's most gifted storytellers. With well-drawn characters and an evocative love story that is intricately woven into the rich history of our nation's past, this extraordinary novel will enthrall readers like few others--and sweep them away to a whole other time and place. A sweeping epic of romance and adventure, Dawn on a Distant Shore establishes Sara Donati as one of today's most gifted storytellers. With well-drawn characters and an evocative love story that is intricately woven into the history of our nation's past, this extraordinary novel will enthrall readers like few others--and sweep them away to a whole other time and place. -->

Seemingly out of the blue, tiny documentary company Tied to the Tracks is offered the chance of a lifetime- a personal invitation from reclusive literary legend Miss Zula Bragg to make a film about her life. For Angie Mangiamele and her award-winning team, the offer is almost too good to be true - and impossible to pass up. But for Angie, the prospect of filming on location in Miss Zula's home town in the Deep South is a mixed blessing because it means coming face to face with the man she once thought was The One. Having returned home to head up Ogilvie University's literature department, celebrated native son John Grant is now engaged to local beauty Caroline Rose. In a small town rich in tradition and rife with gossip, the sparks that fly when the two former lovers meet again can't escape notice, especially from Caroline's four sisters and the formidable Aunt Patty-Cake, who aren't about to let any interlopers from the city derail their plans for the wedding of the year. Beautifully drawn with a vibrant cast of characters more than ready for their close-ups, Tied to the Tracks is a sharp, witty and grown-up love story.

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title.