Stories set in our world with no fantastic elements.
Thomasine would do anything to get out from under the thumb of her guardian. Just maybe, this one last caper would do it: steal a book from the private library of Hartsworth House. A very specific book. A very scandalous book. When the Countess of Hartsworth's secretary finds Thomasine in the act, the consequences offer an entirely different escape--an escape to something...and someone.
(This is a short story within a planned series titled Diana's Band, set in Restoration London.)
In Renaissance Italy, stories were told of the deep friendship and love between the Sienese poet Laudomia Forteguerri and Duchess Margaret of Parma, bastard daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. This story pushes past the history books to imagine how their lives intertwined, and dares to imagine a happy ending.
In the turbulent France of 1678, Hortense Mancini, Duchesse Mazarine takes on the disguise of a King’s Musketeer to pursue her love affair with Anne Lennard, Countess of Sussex. She crosses paths with a true Musketeer, and with Aphra Behn, English playwright and spy, both seeking to retrieve letters between the kings of France and England that could prove ruinous. Every disguise and plan is threatened by the arrival of a young woman who seeks to gain fame by besting a Musketeer in a duel—and now she has a chance to challenge two of them!
Antuniet Chazillen lost everything the night her brother was executed. In exile, she swore that treason would not be the final chapter of the Chazillen legacy in Alpennia’s history. A long-hidden book of alchemical secrets provides the first hope of success, but her return to the capital is haunted by an enemy who wants those secrets for himself.
Margerit Sovitre did not expect to inherit Baron Saveze’s fortunes—even less his bodyguard, a ruthlessly efficient swordswoman known only as Barbara. Wealth suddenly makes Margerit a highly eligible heiress and buys her the enmity of the new Baron. He had expected to inherit all, and now eyes her fortune with open envy.
Barbara proudly served as the old Baron’s duelist but she had expected his death to make her a free woman. Bitterness turns to determination when she finds herself the only force that stands between Margerit and the new Baron’s greed.
