Despite living at her father’s inn her entire life, Elizabeth Doyle has always managed to avoid involvement with the smugglers who frequently gather there. Until now. When a handsome smuggler is brought to her with dire injuries, Elizabeth risks everything to hide him - completely unaware that the wounded man is not who he appears to be. When an opportunity arises to infiltrate the notorious smuggling gang he believes caused his father’s death, Jonas Ainsworth, the Viscount Langton, pretends to be one of them.

When Charlotte's grandmother invites her to accompany her to Norfolk, Charlotte jumps at the chance to visit the sea and escape the fuss surrounding her sister's wedding preparations in London. Lord William Cheston, on the other hand, is most unhappy when his mother informs him that her old friend and a granddaughter are coming to stay. Not only is it lambing season, but he's also dealing with the mysterious loss of several sheep. The last thing he needs is a child underfoot.

On the eve of her betrothal to a nobleman she’s never met, Rhiannon seeks comfort on the shores of the sea she loves so well. But instead of offering peace to her uneasy heart, the ocean heralds doom with the arrival of dreaded Viking ships. A vicious raid leads to the death of her beloved father and leaves Rhiannon’s life in tatters. Heartbroken, she travels to Ynys Môn, where she takes up residence at the royal court of Owain Gwynedd.

For 18 years, Lord Gilbert has been tortured over a grievous lapse in judgment. Bitterness has tainted his interactions with the people of Moreland and his relationship with his only daughter, Lady Joanna. With a wolfhound guarding her around the clock and no freedom to leave the castle grounds unattended, the only time Lady Joanna can be alone is when she sneaks out through an old castle tunnel to visit the healer Agnes in her cottage by the sea. One morning as Lady Joanna approaches the cliffs, she discovers an injured man.

After years spent fighting alongside King Richard in the crusades, Lord Edmund of Hawksford is finally returning to his ancestral home. But far from a joyful reunion, what awaits him is devastation. His elder brother is dead, killed in a tragic fire at Hawksford Castle - and the title of duke now falls to Edmund.

As jewelry designer for one of the most prestigious jewelers in the world, Gracie Miller completed a particularly stunning piece: a custom setting for a large diamond. But when her billionaire client Mrs. Katsaros comes to have a minor issue with the setting repaired, Gracie is horrified to realize it is not the ring she created. Someone has forged her design, and the priceless diamond is gone. Mrs. Katsaros has no desire to bring media attention to the jewelry heist, so she recruits her nephew, Quinn, and his FBI agent friend, Steve, to do some sleuthing off the record.

Hidden away in rural Devonshire, Phyllida Satterthwaite has always been considered more odd than beautiful. But in London, her oddity has made her a sensation. Far worse, it’s caught the eye of the sinister Duke of Moreland - a notorious art collector obsessed with acquiring one-of-a-kind treasures. To escape the duke’s clutches, she’s going to need a little help. Captain Arthur Heywood’s days of heroism are long past. Grievously injured in the Peninsular War, he can no longer walk unaided, let alone shoot a pistol. What use can he possibly be to a damsel in distress?

Sowerby, England, 1802. Miss Genevieve Wilde—a magistrate’s daughter and independent heiress—is determined to meet life’s challenges all on her own, just as her late-father had taught her. So when her father’s pocket watch is stolen, she will do anything to get it back, especially when the local authorities prove incompetent. Upon reading an advertisement in the paper, she takes a chance and contacts a thief-taker to find the watch. It’s a choice Ginny regrets when former Bow Street officer Jack Travers arrives on her doorstep.

In the eyes of London Society, Gillian Phelps is suitable enough. Though the ton whispers about her change of residence, any speculation remains just that: ballroom gossip. No one—not even the other Huntresses, the group of ladies she calls her dearest friends—knows that she is harboring a devastating family secret. Gillian has become adept at hiding the reality of her circumstances, but the close quarters of a house party will test her ability to conceal the crushing truth. And with so many people to deceive, the late arrival of another guest is a most unwelcome surprise.

Julia Cummings has long been acquainted with loss - her mother, her brother, her sister, her friend, all gone too soon. But the loss that pushed her grief to the limit as a young girl was that of her best friend, Lucas Jonquil, who abandoned her without looking back. Now, eight years later, Lucas has returned to Lampton Park, and Julia has steeled herself - she will never forgive the man who broke her heart.

Margaret Easton needs a husband, and she needs one now. Her parents are convinced that only a European will do, but Margaret wants nothing more than to stay in England. The trouble is that there is only one man Margaret can think of, or rather, one she cannot forget, and he wouldn’t do as a husband at all. Then she finds herself in his care unexpectedly, and her hunt becomes even more complicated than she could have ever imagined.

The Civil War left its mark on Dr. John Turner. He turns his back on medicine and sees his unexpected inheritance in England as an opportunity to start over. But he never imagines how God intends to use his new role as lord of Ashford Hall or the beautiful woman he finds there to ease his troubled soul. A tragic loss led Penelope Howard to bury her heart and dreams in her work for the Hall and the village of Woodley. But the arrival of the new heir stirs not only her discarded longings but her compassion as well.

Rebecca Jennings’s first London Season has been absolutely ruined, and one person alone is responsible: Mr. Ben Fortescue. If her new neighbor hadn’t startled her, she would never have broken her ankle, leaving her bored and frustrated at home in the country while her sister enters the London Season alone. Although, it was rather gallant of him to carry her home....

This collector’s anthology compiles all the penny dreadful short stories from Sarah M. Eden’s five-book Victorian romance series. Included in this edition are three new never-before-released stories. Each short story is written in the style of the Victorian fiction that became so popular during that time period. From ghost stories to adventures to mysteries, Sarah weaves these gothic tales among her romantic storylines, making it the perfect way to celebrate the Dread Penny Society series.

Hannah Kent and Oliver Jennings pledged their hearts to each other as children. Now, years later, Hannah is thrilled to receive an invitation to spend the summer at Oliver’s family’s country estate. The path to wedded bliss is clear - so long as Oliver’s highbrow older brother, Damon, has ceased his juvenile antics, Hannah’s future looks bright indeed. But from the moment Hannah arrives at Summerhaven, nothing is as she expected. Oliver seems disinterested in renewing their acquaintance, and Damon is not the brutish boy she remembers but a man intent on avoiding marriage.

Despite living at her father’s inn her entire life, Elizabeth Doyle has always managed to avoid involvement with the smugglers who frequently gather there. Until now. When a handsome smuggler is brought to her with dire injuries, Elizabeth risks everything to hide him - completely unaware that the wounded man is not who he appears to be. When an opportunity arises to infiltrate the notorious smuggling gang he believes caused his father’s death, Jonas Ainsworth, the Viscount Langton, pretends to be one of them.

Lady Elizabeth Spaulding’s world has fallen apart. Despite living her entire life to please her demanding parents, the Duke and Duchess of Marwood, she has little to show for it. After Elizabeth’s second failed betrothal, her father’s debts and appalling acts of retaliation force him to flee the country, consigning Elizabeth and her bitter mother to a life of poverty and exile. But Elizabeth’s fortunes change one day when an elderly acquaintance makes her an offer she can’t refuse.

As nursemaid to the eight-year-old Duke of Kielder, Robbie will spend her holidays with her young charge as a guest of Lord and Lady Jonquil. While the couple makes the child’s holiday magical, the handsome gardener works his own magic on Nurse Robbie’s heart. A Christmas house party offers two members of the ton an irresistible weekend of anonymity. But their charade comes with unexpected romantic consequences. Alice Hunt is searching for a Christmas miracle: a husband of her choosing. With the threat of an arranged marriage looming, she looks to an unlikely matchmaker for help.

The course of true love never did run smooth.... When Fitzwilliam Darcy departs Hunsford after his disastrous proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, he does not expect their paths to cross again. Indeed, knowing the lady's true feelings for him, he makes every effort to see that they do not. But when a chance encounter leaves him stranded in an abandoned cottage with the one woman he can never have, Darcy quickly realizes there is more at risk than just Elizabeth's reputation.

As a fussy baby, Anne de Bourgh was prescribed laudanum to quiet her, and now the young woman must take the opium-heavy tincture every day. Growing up sheltered and confined, removed from sunshine and fresh air, the pale and overly slender Anne grew up with few companions except her cousins, including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Throughout their childhoods, it was understood that Darcy and Anne would marry and combine their vast estates of Pemberley and Rosings. But Darcy does not love Anne or want her.

Elizabeth Bennet has just experienced one of the most difficult years of her entire life. The loss of a beloved sister, a failed harvest, and the threat of freezing to death from a bitterly cold winter cause the inhabitants of Longbourn to do the unthinkable. Meanwhile, Fitzwilliam Darcy is desperate to keep his family and his tenants alive. The scarcity of food due to a freezing summer has him taking extreme measures. His radical idea takes him, along with his friend Charles Bingley, to Netherfield, where his drastic experiment has the potential to save them all - or ruin his life forever.

Christmas at Falstone Castle - Sarah M. Eden - The Dowager Duchess of Kielder eagerly anticipates spending Christmas with her son and his family. Though their relationship has been strained, the duchess is determined to heal the chasm. Even with the help of the widowed local vicar, her plan will take a Christmas miracle. But during this magical season, anything is possible...even two second chances for love.

What begins as a pleasant holiday with a new friend in Brighton quickly turns to devastation for Anabelle Milton when she receives the tragic news: her parents are dead. Turned out of the only home she’s ever known, Anabelle is sent to live with an aunt and uncle who are strangers to her. Heartbroken, she arrives at Bellingham Cottage, a cozy home on the sprawling grounds of the Bellingham estate, to find an unexpectedly warm welcome - not only from her own family but also from the family of their aristocratic neighbors, Lord and Lady Bellingham.

Katherine Cartwright knows through bitter experience that true love is fiction and trust should not be bestowed easily. Now, after two unsuccessful London Seasons, her atrocious father has decided to marry her off to the highest bidder to pay for his gambling debts, ridding himself of the daughter he never wanted. A profitable deal is struck, and Kate is packed off to the home of her betrothed, an earl she has never met. Or so she believes.

Constantly stifled by the rules of Society, spirited Rebecca Rowley enjoys finding ways to quietly - or not so quietly - rebel. But riding bareback and avoiding nosy neighbors are nothing compared to the thrilling secret she is keeping from her family. When Rebecca’s quick thinking saves the life of a young girl, she unwittingly attracts the attention of the child’s dashing brother, Lieutenant Nicholas Avery. As that attention turns flirtatious, Rebecca is forced to tell him the truth: She is secretly engaged - to the one man her family would never approve of.

After thinking long and hard, I have come to the conclusion that - although it may not be the kind of love my sister and I once had in mind - marrying Mr Darcy would be marrying for a love of the deepest kind. Recovering from their parents' deaths, Elizabeth and Jane Bennet have held their family together, leaning on the support of their uncle, Edward Gardiner, to help them survive. Thus, when Mr. Gardiner is threatened with scandal and ruin, Elizabeth vows to help him.

Olivia Moreland prides herself on discrediting charlatans, particularly the false mediums that flock to London. But when Lord Stephen St. Leger requests her help in investigating an alleged psychic's claims, she can't deny the ominous feeling she has within the walls of his ancient estate - or the intimately familiar connection she has with Stephen himself. The last time he'd called Blackhope Hall home, Stephen had watched as his elder brother claimed both the family title and the woman he loved.

Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. These ominous words, slashed from the pages of a book of Psalms, are the last threat that the darling of London society, Sir Edward Grey, receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, Sir Edward collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests.

Desperate times call for daring measures as Honor Cabot, the eldest stepdaughter of the wealthy Earl of Beckington, awaits her family's ruin. Upon the earl's death she and her sisters stand to lose the luxury of their grand home - and their place on the pedestal of society - to their stepbrother and his social-climbing fiancée. Forced to act quickly, Honor makes a devil's bargain with the only rogue in London who can seduce her stepbrother's fiancée out of the Cabots' lives for good.

In the aftermath of WWI, Grace Abernathy is determined to reunite with her family, crossing an ocean to convince her widowed sister to return home to England. But Toronto holds more tragedy and her nephew, Christian, is now in the custody of his paternal relatives, the formidable Easton family, who rejected Grace's sister because of her low social status. Unconvinced that the Eastons can be fitting caretakers, Grace jumps at the chance to become Christian's nanny and to observe the family up close. But she is shocked to discover herself falling for Andrew Easton, the boy's guardian.

Despite living at her father’s inn her entire life, Elizabeth Doyle has always managed to avoid involvement with the smugglers who frequently gather there. Until now. When a handsome smuggler is brought to her with dire injuries, Elizabeth risks everything to hide him - completely unaware that the wounded man is not who he appears to be. When an opportunity arises to infiltrate the notorious smuggling gang he believes caused his father’s death, Jonas Ainsworth, the Viscount Langton, pretends to be one of them.

When Felicity Thurston is caught alone with a man at a ball, she must marry him to avoid a ruined reputation. But what she doesn't know is that he's the brother of the man she loves.

After spending a busy holiday season putting drug smugglers behind bars, CIA operative Cole Bridger is looking forward to spending a quiet Christmas in Vienna with his girlfriend and fellow operative, Isabelle Roberts. But when Isabelle is tasked with investigating a string of suspect financial transactions and redirects a suspicious package to a museum in Amsterdam, she inadvertently places Cole’s cousins in the crosshairs of a drug smuggling ring.

Brighton, England, 1820. Amelia Moore wants only one thing - to secure the future happiness of her younger sister, Clara. With their stepfather’s looming death, the two sisters will soon be on their own - without family, a home, or a penny to their names. When an invitation arrives to join a house party at Lakeshire Park, Amelia grasps at the chance. If she can encourage a match between Clara and their host, Sir Ronald, then at least her sister will be taken care of.

Determined to support her mother and sisters after her father's untimely death, Charlotte Mandeville covertly crafts satirical caricatures of high society. It not only puts money in her family’s bare pockets, but ensures the haut-ton cannot guard all the power and the secrets. Anthony Yorke has a guilty conscience and a brother to exonerate. When the key piece of evidence to clear his brother's name falls into the hands of a headstrong young woman, he is willing to do whatever is required to obtain it from her.

When Persephone Lancaster receives a marriage proposal from the ill-tempered Duke of Kielder, she refuses - and then reconsiders. The obscene sum of money he's offering Persephone would save her family from ruin. With her characteristic optimism, she travels to the far reaches of Northumberland to wed a greatly feared stranger. Lodged deep in a thick forest infested with wild dogs, the Duke's castle is as cold and forbidding as the Duke himself, a man with terrible scars on his body and his soul.

The Nazis have taken control of Austria, and wealthy widower Leopold Lang faces a difficult decision: Join the ranks of the foreign power that has taken over his homeland or flee with his children to safety. Leopold makes his choice — but too late. His family is ripped apart, never to be reunited. But decades later, fate brings together the descendants of this broken dynasty in the place where it all began—Falcon Point.

On the eve of her betrothal to a nobleman she’s never met, Rhiannon seeks comfort on the shores of the sea she loves so well. But instead of offering peace to her uneasy heart, the ocean heralds doom with the arrival of dreaded Viking ships. A vicious raid leads to the death of her beloved father and leaves Rhiannon’s life in tatters. Heartbroken, she travels to Ynys Môn, where she takes up residence at the royal court of Owain Gwynedd.

Lady Charlotte Darrington’s path in life is clearly laid out before her: she will select a suitable husband, marry, and one day inherit her father’s Scottish dukedom. But a growing restlessness has her desperate for a bit of freedom before her all-too-certain future closes in. When the opportunity to travel to America arises, Charlotte leaps at the chance and soon finds herself across the Atlantic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her American hosts and their friends couldn’t be more welcoming—all except one. The insufferable Dr. Galloway captures her eye—and her ire.

Aisley’s young life was changed forever when her father accompanied King Alfred into battle and lost his life in a deadly skirmish with the Vikings. Now, almost seven years later, the Vikings are once again rallying on Wessex’s borders, and Aisley fears that her older brother may have treacherous plans to betray the king by aligning himself with the invading Norsemen. But when Aisley encounters a handsome nobleman in the market, she feels the first stirrings of hope. Though they met only once when Aisley was little more than a child, she recognizes the man immediately.