Vanessa Riley

"The mainstream breakout book for acclaimed African-American romance novelist Vanessa Riley: A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom - and that of her sister and her...

"Surviving a shipwreck en route to London from Jamaica was just the start of Jemina St. Maur's nightmare. Suffering from amnesia, she was separated from anyone who might know her, and imprisoned in Bedlam. She was freed only because barrister Daniel Thackery, Lord Ashbrook, was convinced to betray the one thing he holds dear: the law. Desperate to unearth her true identity, Jemina's only chance is to purloin dangerous secrets with help from The Widow's...

"For Cecilia Charity Thomas, marrying David Felton Lance, the Viscount of Gantry, to save him from danger and herself from mercenary suitors was a mistake. Instead of a passionate life together, she's stranded at his mansion with his unaccepting family. Worse, she finds he is actually a spy dedicated to duty over wedlock. When she hears her sister has been driven to her death, Cecilia is determined to expose the man responsible. But when her pursuit...

"Pressed into a union of convenience, Lady Abigail Worthing knew better than to expect love. Her marriage to an absent lord does at least provide some comforts, including a box at the Drury Lane theater, owned by the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Abigail has always found respite at the theater, away from the town's judgmental stares and the risks of her own secret work to help the cause of abolition--and her fears that someone from her past...

Widow Theodosia Cecil is determined to protect her young son. If that means advertising in the newspaper for a husband to make sure her child's newfound inheritance stays safe, well, that's what she's going to do. What she didn't count on was Ewan Fitzwilliam coming back into her life at the worst possible time.
Ewan has been at war for six years, and while he tries to fight his attraction to Theo, the woman he believed betrayed him, he can't

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A friend's newspaper advertisement for a groom nets the most famous actor in London, Arthur Bex. Shy heiress Ester Croome proposes to elope with the handsome man, who she's secretly loved for two years, in order to escape an impending engagement arranged by her overbearing family.
Trying to outlive the shadow of his villainous uncle, Bex needs to marry quickly—to a woman of good character. And smart, beautiful Ester fits the bill. But

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Discovering a body on her property presents Lady Abigail Worthing with more than one pressing problem. The victim is Juliet, the wife of her neighbor, Stapleton Henderson. Although Abigail has little connection with the lady in question, she expects to be under suspicion. Abigail{u2019}s skin color and her mother{u2019}s notorious past have earned her a certain reputation among the ton, and no amount of wealth or status will eclipse it. Abigail can{u2019}t...