National Network for Equitable Library Service

Country mouse Lady Honora Banfield arrives in London with one mission: to catch a husband. A perpetual wallflower, she's going to do whatever it takes to win a proposal from London's most eligible bachelor, including teaming up with the most popular (and least proper) woman in London. Miss Jacqueline Lockhart is having too much fun in her sixth season to ever consider settling down, even though she's been unsuccessful at mingling with the upper echelons of London society.

On a night when the whole city is looking for love, two foreigners find it in the last place they expected. The riotous Psobion festival is about to begin in the city of Boukos, and the ambassador from the straightlaced kingdom of Zash has gone missing. Ex-soldier Marzana, captain of the embassy guard, and the ambassador's secretary, the shrewd and urbane eunuch Bedar, are the only two who know. Marzana still nurses the pain of an old heartbreak, and Bedar has too much on his plate to think of romance. Neither of them could imagine finding love in this strange, foreign city.

They met on a battlefield and saved each other's lives. It's not the way enemies-to-lovers usually works. Adares comes from a civilization of democracy and indoor plumbing. Rus belongs to a tribe of tattooed, semi-nomadic horse-breeders. They meet in the aftermath of battle, when Rus saves Adares's life, and Adares returns the favour. As they shelter in an abandoned temple, a friendship neither of them could have imagined grows into a mutual attraction.

Miss Grace Linfield has resigned herself to life as a lady's companion as the only path to respectable security. At least it allows her to visit the beautiful seaside town of Inverley with her charge, Lady Edith. Passions flare when botanist Miss Thea Martin whirls into town-and into Grace's bed for a scandalous night of passion. Disaster looms when Lady Edith elopes with Thea's brother. Prim-and-proper Grace and wildly outrageous Thea each wish it was anyone else by their side as they race after them to Gretna Green.

In the quiet seaside town of Inverley, nothing exciting ever happens to gently bred spinsters like Miss Arabella Seton. Content with her watercolor paintings and her cats, she is confident that no one suspects her forbidden and unrequited passion for her best friend, Caroline. The eldest in a family of six children, Miss Caroline Reeve has the unenviable task of shepherding her siblings into adulthood with little coin and even less patience. The only benefit to being an eternal chaperone is that no one ever expects her to marry.

They strip her naked, of everything, undo her whalebone corset, hook by hook. Locked away in Wildthorn Halla madhousethey take her identity. She is now called Lucy Childs. She has no one; she has nothing. But, she is still seventeenstill Louisa Cosgrove, isn't she? Who has done this unthinkable deed? Louisa must free herself, in more ways than one, and muster up the courage to be her true self, all the while solving her own twisted mystery and falling into an unconventional love . . .

Newly freed from enslavement, Nikias is making a life for himself in the bustling city of Pheme, working at a snack stand, drinking with a group of anti-slavery radicals, and pining for the beautiful law clerk next door. When he sees his crush attacked in the street by an outraged ex-client, it seems it's finally Nikias's chance to be the hero. Kallion doesn't need a rescue. What he really needs is a skewer of octopus fritters (with extra sauce) and a friend.

A month ago, eunuch sword-dancer and spy Varazda collided with ex-soldier Damiskos at a seaside villa during a dizzying week of intrigue, assassinations, and a fake love affair that-maybe-turned real. Now Varazda is back home in Boukos, at the centre of a family and community he dearly loves, and Damiskos is coming to visit. Things aren't going according to plan. Varazda's family members suspect Damiskos's motives. Varazda grapples with his own desires.

Retired soldier Damiskos and his lover Varazda have been living together in Boukos for a month, and their future is beginning to look bright. Then Damiskos receives a letter summoning him home to Pheme-where his parents are deeply in debt, his brother is being hunted by loan sharks, and an unwanted arranged marriage looms. And that's before Damiskos is charged with murder. Fortunately, he's not alone. Old friends are back in Pheme. And Varazda-eunuch, sword-dancer, and spy-has solved mysteries before.

Five years ago, Damiskos's brilliant military career was cut short, leaving him with a permanent disability and scars that are not all physical. Adrift and still grieving, he tries to find meaning in an unsatisfying job. Work takes him to the remote seaside villa of an old friend, where, among an odd assortment of guests, he meets the eunuch sword-dancer Varazda. Enigmatic and beautiful but distinctly prickly, Varazda is the antithesis of the straightforward and serious Damiskos.