Spoiled debutante Abby Anderson is looking forward to her upcoming wedding to Jeffrey Browning, Savannahs most sought-after bachelor. But when a jealous adversary publicly confronts her with allegations of her illegitimate birth, she realizes her reputation is ruined. Mortified, the debutante decides to immediately leave her Savannah home for destinations unknown. Joseph Jordan was headed to California, never expecting to run into the mysterious flaming-red-haired beauty. Her rudeness toward him challenges the handsome Texan. He soon finds himself becoming alarmingly interested in the beautiful debutante. A romantic alliance with this woman could be the ruin of his gold rush dreams. Jeffrey Browning was not about to give up on the love he and Abigail shared. He knew his strong political aspirations would help him silence the gossipers of Savannah. He wastes no time trying to find her and bring her back to Savannah to marry him as originally planned. Will Abby choose a new life with Joseph, the exciting handsome Texan? Will she choose to return home to marry Jeffrey and live the life shes always known and loved? Or will fate intervene and make the choice for her?

In this inspirational romantic suspense, a woman accepts the protection of a local lawman as she unravels family secrets in order to stop a killer. Abigail Mayfield hopes her stalker won’t follow her to Texas—until someone breaks into her new home, leaving behind a photo of her late parents with a mysterious child. This time, with her guard dog at her side, the widowed music teacher refuses to hide. She can’t uncover why someone is after her by herself, though, not when the threat escalates from break-ins to attempts on her life. After saving her from a sniper’s bullet, FBI agent turned small-town sheriff Noah Galloway makes Abigail’s safety his personal mission. With the investigation taking them cross-country on the trail of her long-dead parents, the widowed single father can’t risk leaving his son an orphan. But Abigail needs him . . . because somewhere, buried deep in her past, lies a secret worth killing for.

Where do you go when nowhere is safe? From the author of Death Waits for You, which Ann Rule called "a suspense-filled exercise in terror," comes a new novel of a woman facing a menacing danger she cannot escape no matter where she runs. When an attempted rape in her city apartment leaves artist Abby Carter deeply shaken, she flees to the beautiful Victorian house she recently inherited in a tiny town on the upper Hhudson River. But rumors of ghosts from generations past, and an unsolved murder, are unsettling...while handsome local homicide detective Bud Williams investigates a brand-new rash of violent crime. Empathy with a terrified victim leads Abby to use her artistic skills to capture the face of a local serial rapist. But when the portrait leads to an arrest, Abby starts receiving threats and anonymous phone calls, and the house she believed to be a refuge becomes instead a place from her worst nightmare. Bud vows to protect her, but Abby knows she must look into the face of evil herself, because failure could mean her life.

"The study reveals how the female world ultimately defined what constituted a "story" for nineteenth-century women, and presents a way for today's reader to approach these sometimes puzzling works of short fiction."--BOOK JACKET.