Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming...

The year is 1861. The American Civil War has just begun, and London arms dealer Daniel Alberton is becoming a very wealthy man. The quiet dinner party held by Alberton and his wife seems remote indeed from the passions rending America. Yet investigator William Monk and his bride, Hester, sense growing tensions and barely concealed violence in this well-appointed mansion. For two of the guests are Americans, each vying to buy Alberton's armaments....

Frances Wynn, widow to the late Earl of Harleigh, has no sooner sent her mother and daughter off on a shopping trip to Paris than she and her fiancé, George Hazelton, are socializing with visiting members of the Russian royal family. Scandal also comes calling: Inspector Delaney turns up outside Frances's house with a young French woman claiming she is Mrs. George Hazelton. Mrs. Hazelton, aka Irena, also insists that she is the illegitimate daughter...

When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it's a joke. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to sort through the house-with the help of her cousin Natasha and sexy antiques dealer Nicholas-bits of memory start coming back. And then she discovers...

A teacher in a school for wealthy young ladies, Sheridan Bromleigh is hired to accompany one of her students, heiress Charise Lancaster, to England to meet her fiancé. When her charge elopes with a stranger, Sheridan wonders how she will ever explain it to Charise's intended, Lord Burleton. Standing on the pier, Stephen Westmoreland, the Earl of Langford, assumes the young woman coming toward him is Charise Lancaster -- and informs her of his inadvertent...