AustLit

'Career diplomat Alec Halsey has been elevated to a marquessate he doesn't want and Polite Society believes he doesn't deserve; his lover has decided she won't marry him after all and the suspicion he murdered his brother still lingers in London drawing rooms. So returning to London after seven months' seclusion may have been a mistake.

'Alec's foreboding deepens when a nobody vicar drops dead at a party-political dinner; he witnesses the very public humiliation of an up and coming portrait painter, and his rabble-rousing uncle Plantagenet is bashed and left for dead in a laneway. When the vicar's true identity is revealed, Alec suspects the man was poisoned. But who would want a seemingly harmless man of God murdered, and why?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When the Earl of Salt Hendon marries squire’s daughter Jane Despard, Society is aghast. But Jane and Lord Salt share a secret past of mistrust, heartache and misery. Four years on, they are forced into a marriage neither wants; the Earl to honor a dying man’s wish; Jane to save her stepbrother from financial ruin. Beautiful inside and out, the patient and ever optimistic Jane believes love conquers all; the Earl will take some convincing. Enter Diana St. John, who has been living in a fool’s paradise believing she would be the next Countess of Salt Hendon. She will go to extreme lengths, even murder, to hold the Earl’s attention. Can the newlyweds overcome past prejudices and sinister opposition to fall in love all over again?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'1740s France and England. Abandoned to fend for herself at the court of Versailles, Antonia turns to her distant cousin, the all-powerful Duke of Roxton, to help her escape the attentions of a lecherous nobleman. Roxton is an unlikely savior—arrogant, promiscuous, and sinister. Antonia's unquestioning belief in him may just be his salvation, and her undoing. This award-winning historical pays homage to Georgette Heyer's These Old Shades.' (Publication summary)