Showing results by author "Toni V. Sweeney" in All Categories

Rosarita was a sleepy little Texas border town until Lucas Brennan gunned down saloon owner Race Jago one morning. Because he refuses to give a motive or defend himself, the judge has no choice but to find him guilty of murder. While Brennan awaits execution, Kip Wakefield tries to discover a motive for the killing and finally convinces the prisoner to tell why he shot Jago in cold blood. In the last hours before his sentence is carried out, Brennan reluctantly tells the young deputy his story.

When Miranda Wilson is hired to care for Dominic Andrus’ triplets, she has no idea she’s about to have the adventure of a lifetime. At first, it’s like the plot of a gothic novel: young governess, mysterious employer, three motherless children - but there the resemblance ends, for Dominic Andrus is an interplanetary criminal, hiding his children on Earth to prevent their abduction. As she’s thrown into a war between the Andruses and a madman sworn to destroy them, Miranda’s life becomes a wild sci-fi movie. She takes it all in stride until she meets Kit.

Many men came to America to escape their old lives. Baron Karl Augustus Dietrich Wilhelm von Brandt was no different, though he fled his father's crimes and not his own. Easily swindled into buying a Nebraska ranch that's little more than a sand dune, the European tenderfoot is befriended by half-Pawnee Johnny Moon, a ne'er-do-well usually one step ahead of the marshal. Working together, the impoverished nobleman and the half-breed cowboy transform the ruin into a thriving ranch. Through tough times and good, Johnny Moon is there for Will, closer than a friend, trusted like a brother.

Xandr Taluti is dead, and his brother, Zane, has called a halt to the feud with the Andruses. As the two clans attempt to return to peacetime, it appears happily ever after is in store for everyone. Kit openly declares his love for Miranda; Niki and Ardala prepare for their long-wished-for wedding; and other secret romances are now revealed. Nevertheless, Dominic's plans to transform his family into law-abiding citizens are thwarted when the Gataen police invade the House of Andrus and old nemesis Detective Ceran Synubis arrests Dom, Kit, and Niki.

David Morrissey's life is near-perfect. A widower with a teenage daughter, he teaches at an ultraconservative Southern preparatory school, had been voted Teacher of the Year three times, and is engaged to the daughter of the chairman of the school's board. That life comes to a screeching halt when the fact of his previous employment is emblazoned across the headlines of the school newspaper that twenty years before, everyone's favorite teacher was a cover model famous for those hot historical romances called "bodice rippers."