A sweeping, breathtaking story of love and betrayal from the internationally bestselling author of The Tea Planter's Wife Ceylon, 1935. Louisa Reeve, the daughter of a successful British gem trader, and her husband Elliot, a charming, thrill-seeking businessman, seem like the couple who have it all. Except what they long for more than anything: a child. While Louisa struggles with miscarriages, Elliot is increasingly absent, spending much of his time at a nearby cinnamon plantation, overlooking the Indian ocean. After his sudden death, Louisa is left alone to solve the mystery he left behind. Revisiting the plantation at Cinnamon Hills, she finds herself unexpectedly drawn towards the owner, Leo, a rugged outdoors man with a checkered past. The plantation casts a spell, but all is not as it seems. And when Elliot's shocking betrayal is revealed, Louisa has only Leo to turn to . . .

Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper is newly married to a rich and charming widower, eager to join him on his tea plantation, determined to be the perfect wife and mother. But life in Ceylon is not what Gwen expected. The plantation workers are resentful, the neighbors are treacherous. And there are clues to the past - a dusty trunk of dresses, an overgrown gravestone in the grounds - that her husband refuses to discuss. Just as Gwen finds her feet, disaster strikes. She faces a terrible choice, hiding the truth from almost everyone, but a secret this big can't stay buried forever ...

Biblical narratives are not simply sacred stories for religious communities: They are stories that provide transformative insight into cultural biases. By putting historical criticism and reception history into dialogue with womanist biblical hermeneutics, Luke, Widows, Judges, and Stereotypes offers a provocative reading of Jesus’ parable about a widow who confronts a judge and obtains what she seeks by means of physical threat. Rather than simply reading the widow as the model for “one who prays always and does not lose heart” (Luke 18:1), Dickerson shows that read in the context of Luke’s wider narrative, the widow, domesticated and robbed both of her agency and moral ambiguity, is more likely demanding vengeance instead of justice. Likewise, rather than simply reading the judge as one "who neither feared God nor had respect for people" (Luke 18:2), Dickerson argues that the judge is both an ideal man and one who compromises standards of ancient masculinity. Then, reading both the widow and judge through African American stereotypes (Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, Cool Black Male, Master-Pastor, and Foolish Judge) that are used to degrade, debase, and control, and reading them into and in light of the parable, Dickerson demonstrates how the parable calls into question these stereotypes thereby producing new liberative readings.

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE TEA PLANTER'S WIFE Discover a stunning novel is a gripping, unforgettable tale of a woman torn between two worlds... 1952, French Indochina. Since her mother's death, eighteen-year-old half-French, half-Vietnamese Nicole has been living in the shadow of her beautiful older sister, Sylvie. When Sylvie is handed control of the family silk business, Nicole is given an abandoned silk shop in the Vietnamese quarter of Hanoi. But the area is teeming with militant rebels who want to end French rule, by any means possible. For the first time, Nicole is awakened to the corruption of colonial rule - and her own family's involvement shocks her to the core... Tran, a notorious Vietnamese insurgent, seems to offer the perfect escape from her troubles, while Mark, a charming American trader, is the man she's always dreamed of. But who can she trust in this world where no one is what they seem? The Silk Merchant's Daughter is a captivating tale of dark secrets, sisterly rivalry and love against the odds, enchantingly set in colonial era Vietnam.

In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart. Banished from Drakopolis to the desolate frontier town of Glassblower’s Gulch, Abel and his family must face a harsh new reality: life without dragons. Far from the lights and lizards of the megacity, Abel's new home effectively bans the great beasts. Anyone caught smuggling dragons is hauled away by the ruthless sheriff and her fearsome deputies. They have the only dragons in town, and they run the dreaded dragon rodeo, which pits those who fall afoul of the sheriff’s “justice” against a wild dragon in a competition for their freedom. It's dragon versus human and only one can win. Cut off from his friends and desperate to keep his fractious family together, Abel is determined not to break a single rule, even though the sheriff has it out for him. He's going to be a model citizen. Then he discovers the baby wyvern. It’s a tiny, defenseless thing—and it definitely won’t survive without his help. Abel has made it his mission to aid any dragon that needs him. But what is he willing to risk for a baby wyvern in a town without mercy?