Frank Schaefer – författare

To avenge her brother, a Gypsy girl will travel the world Adriana was only a child when she watched her parents die. As hateful villagers attacked her family’s camp, Adriana’s brother Giuseppe carried her into the woods. He told her to close her eyes, but she watched the carnage, and the memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a young woman, she is on the verge of choosing a husband when her life is again turned upside down. At a quiet English village fair, Adriana is telling fortunes when one of the local nobility attempts to have his way with her. Giuseppe is killed while defending her honor, and Adriana vows revenge. England offers no justice for Gypsies, and so Adriana must take her vengeance in blood. When her plot against her brother’s killer fails, she is forced to flee to the New World, where she will encounter a passion greater than any she has ever known.

From the shores of the Potomac, a society girl begins an epic journey Karen Hampton comes to Washington, DC, from New York City to celebrate the end of the Civil War. For weeks she dances, dines, and drinks, until all the parties and receptions have blurred together. By the end of the season, she has accomplished what every debutante is after: betrothal to an up-and-coming politician. But Karen is not satisfied with her prize. She intends to marry for love, and there is but one man in Washington who can move her heart. She first meets him under the dome of the Capitol, and then sees him again while bathing on the banks of the river. He is Vance Paxton, an upstart Texas representative whose copper skin and frontier clothes mark him as more than a creature of the Beltway. His love will carry her away from Washington to one of the last great battles of the American West, where Karen Hampton will learn what it means to live.

As the British armies march on Charleston, a young girl dreams of love For two years, General Washington and his rebels have outfoxed the British army, humiliating them so soundly that the redcoats have been forced to change strategy. Let Washington have the Northern colonies, they decide—we will attack the South. And the prime target, the jewel of the Southern states, is Charleston. In this cosmopolitan port city where war is about to erupt, Colleen McClagan watches the sea and waits for her lover’s return. It has been four years since Jason Paxton crossed the Atlantic to study music in Europe, and Colleen has counted every day. When he finally returns to the colonies, the two find they are united not only by love, but also by a thirst for liberty. As Colleen writes revolutionary pamphlets, Jason joins the patriots as a secret agent, staking his life on the hope that the land of his birth will one day be free.

In an untamed land, a young woman will meet a man who wins her heart For twenty-two years, Elizabeth’s father has battled the Pennsylvania soil. Each year, his farm gives up a little less, until finally he is forced to admit that it has beaten him. With the last of his savings, he buys a plot in far-off Texas, where settlers have just begun to flood the endless plains. Elizabeth’s mother and big sister are aghast at the move, which will take them even farther from the urban society of the East, but Elizabeth cannot wait to set foot in Texas, where she will discover adventure, beauty, and the burning passion of true love. Joining them on the trail is True Paxton, a son of Charleston who has grown tired of his easy life racing horses and managing the family shipping business. With his brothers, True sets out for the plains, to fight the battles that will make him a man—and change his country forever. 

On a lonely Caribbean island, a teenage girl begins the adventure of a lifetime Raised on the tiny isle of Mysteré, Marie Ravenne has spent her youth swimming in crystal-blue water, eating fresh fish, and listening to stories of the days when her home was a haven for pirates. In her seventeenth year, that all comes to an end. The Spanish sack Mysteré, slaughtering Marie’s family and burning their crops. She and the other survivors are cast out in a rickety boat to take their chances on the high seas. For her companions, it is the end, but for Marie, the adventure is just beginning. Rescued by an English lord, she is taken to London, where she tries to make sense of a country whose customs are entirely foreign to her. Here she meets Jason Paxton, a daring rake who will lead her back to the ocean, to take her place upon the waves.

A forgotten gunslinger battles modern-day gangsters At seventy-one, the Wind River Kid is a kid no longer. In the last days of the Old West, he was feared in gambling halls across the country, a hard-nosed card shark who didn’t mind killing to prove a point. When he had gotten his fill of violence, he moved back to Elkhorn, a lonely mountain town that died bit by bit, its population dwindling until he was the only one left. It’s 1927 now, but to the aged Kid, it may as well be 1875. He’s been alone for decades, comforted only by the ghosts of a vanished West—until the modern world comes to visit, guns blazing. A dangerous young couple comes to Elkhorn looking for a place to hide out from the killers on their tail. Wild River just wanted to be left alone, but he will have to take up the gun again if he is ever to rest in peace.

To win his freedom, a slave becomes a gladiator Rafe is well over six feet of muscle, with a warrior’s body marred by only one scar. Long ago, this slave’s owner promised him that if he won fifty fights in the pit—fights to the death against men of all colors—he would be granted his freedom. In his first fight, Rafe slipped, and his opponent cut his side. The pain showed him his true purpose. Since then, he has never lost a fight, and he has never again been cut. Rafe has only eight fights left before he can claim his reward, but Ezra Clayton is not certain he wants to free the greatest gladiator the South has ever known. As the deadline draws near and the blood continues to flow, Rafe knows that if his freedom is denied, he will have to take it, as he has taken so many lives: with his two bare hands.

After a kidnapping goes awry, an heiress lands in the clutches of a San Francisco brigand Angelica Liberty is on a tour of the Far East when she learns that her father is dying. None of her family’s vessels are in port, so she takes passage on a shabby old bark, the Lorraine Marie. The ship is passing through the San Francisco fog when pirates come over the side. They swarm the ship, killing the crew in an attempt to kidnap Angelica. But before she can be captured, she slips into the salty water below. Angelica is found by Jeremy Drake, owner of the Lorraine Marie, which the pirates left to burn in the harbor. Drake is ruined, but all is not lost. In the rough-and-tumble world of the Barbary Coast—the most notorious red-light district in the country—fortunes can be won and lost in an instant. With Angelica at his side, Drake still has a chance to rule this city.

At the dawn of Reconstruction, a freed slave comes home to enforce the law For two weeks, Titus has been running. He is so tired and so hungry that part of him yearns to stop and throw himself on the mercy of the dogs. But he knows what happens to runaway slaves, so he presses on until he reaches a Union army camp. He sneaks into the cook tent and is about to help himself to some soup when the cook catches him. Soup is only for soldiers, he tells Titus—so Titus joins up. Four years later, the war is over and Titus is a corporal, with calloused hands and a heart toughened by battle. He gets a commission to return to Shannon, the county where he was born a slave, to act as the lawman for the reconstructed South. But the people of the plantation will accept no rule from a black man—which means that Titus Gamble’s war is not over yet.

A Texas bride crosses Mexico in search of the man who stole her heart His name is Maguire. Half Mexican, half Irish, he is equally at home at a society ball, at a cockfight, and on the driest plains of the Southern desert. Once he was an orphan, taken in by a Texas family that raised him until he was old enough to make his way in the world. He became a mercenary, battling his way across the South Pacific until disease and injury forced him home. There he reconnected with the lady of the house, Corinne, beginning an affair that destroyed her husband and forced Maguire back into the wilderness. Twelve years later, he is a notorious adventurer, known as one of the most dangerous men in Mexico, and Corinne cannot get him off her mind. Accompanied by an American reporter, she ventures south to find the man she loved—a quest that will sweep her off her feet all over again.