A SECRET LISTTo protect his loved ones and escape the dark fate of his brothers, a noted warrior abandons his identity. Hiding from relentless soldiers who want him dead, Brody MacCaulay vows to protect the woman he loves more than life, more than freedom, more than Scotland. But his presence throws her into danger. A VOW HONOREDTo escape an arranged marriage to an abusive noble, a Lowland Lady weds a stranger to save his life. But vows spoken do not make a marriage, especially when Megan MacMurry holds a different love inside her heart.A SACRIFICE MADEOutlawed, and with a price on his head, Brody condemns himself to a life of heartbreak without Megan. Wanting her desperately, knowing he can't have her, he heads alone to certain death...

Taylor Braxton needs to get married, then divorced, with no strings attached. Taylor, a physical trainer, has just inherited her grandfather’s B&B on Maui, but there’s a catch. She can’t have the deed until the day after her one-year wedding anniversary. She’d rather stick a fork in her eye than get hitched, but the B&B is a dream come true. So all she has to do is find a woman who will agree to fake a marriage. How hard can it be? Jayden Wheaton could use a year in paradise to help her recovery. After a crippling accident, she hires Taylor in the hope of gaining back some mobility. When Taylor casually mentions her dilemma, Jayden jumps at the chance, hoping the warm island temperatures will help with her chronic pain. A marriage masquerade in exchange for a year in Paradise? Yes, please. After all, it’s not like either of them are looking for romance, so there’s zero chance of their feelings complicating the arrangement. Right?

Pregnant and abandoned, Emily Collins plans to leave her life behind and start over–until her Greek billionaire boss, Nikos Drakos, offers her a marriage of convenience to solve both their problems. As they live under the same roof, Emily’s feelings for Nikos deepen, and she starts to believe he might feel the same. But a visit to Greece uncovers unexpected complications, leaving her questioning their future. Can their convenient arrangement turn into the love of a lifetime?

In the eighteenth century, when the definition of marriage was shifting from one based on an hierarchical model to one based on notions of love and mutuality, marital life came under a more intense cultural scrutiny. This led to paradoxical forms of representation of marriage as simultaneously ideal and unlivable. Chris Roulston analyzes how, as representations of married life increased, they challenged the traditional courtship model, offering narratives based on repetition rather than progression. Beginning with English and French marital advice literature, which appropriated novelistic conventions at the same time that it cautioned readers about the dangers of novel reading, she looks at representations of ideal marriages in Pamela II and The New Heloise. Moving on from these ideal domestic spaces, bourgeois marriage is then problematized by the discourse of empire in Sir George Ellison and Letters of Mistress Henley, by troublesome wives in works by Richardson and Samuel de Constant, and by abusive husbands in works by Haywood, Edgeworth, Genlis and Restif de la Bretonne. Finally, the alternative marriage narrative, in which the adultery motif is incorporated into the marriage itself, redefines the function of heteronormativity. In exploring the theoretical issues that arise during this transitional period for married life and the marriage plot, Roulston expands the debates around the evolution of the modern couple.

Why should anyone think of fighting battles in the area of marriage?...Is there anything spiritual about marriage?...Is marriage not a mere union between a man and a woman? Good questions! Marriage is more than a union. There is more that meets the eye when a man who comes from his own background decides to be joined in wedlock with a lady who comes from another background. Beloved, your marriage rises or falls on your ancestry. Unknown to many people, the extent they will go in the area of marriage has been predetermined by their ancestors. And no matter what you have achieved today, there was a day when you came to this world as a helpless infant. Though your navel, which today, has been separated from your umbilical cord may be seen as an ordinary part of the body. It should actually remind you that it was formerly the rope that tied you to your parents and by extension, your ancestors who lived hundreds of years ago. This is a deep spiritual understanding you must not ignore. Just as there is no human being without a navel, there is no man or a woman who was not formerly linked to his or her parents through the umbilical cord.