An unwed mother decides it's time for the father to look after his daughter and sends her to him. The father, a Silicon Valley tycoon with a girlfriend, gives the daughter and the mother a bungalow. The novel traces the daughter's influence on the tycoon.

"Jon Burwell, Viscount Kendall, knows what the gossips say about him. They claim he's been a dejected, half-mad recluse ever since he was jilted at the altar. The simple truth is that Jon has thrown all the passion he once had for his fiancée into his latest mechanical invention. But his single-minded existence has lately been shattered by repeated encounters with Miss Emma Ellingham, his neighbor's intriguing sister-in-law . . . Painting and sketching...

On the banks of the River Seine in 1899, a young woman takes her final breath before plunging into the icy water. Although she does not know it, her decision will set in motion an astonishing chain of events. It will lead to 1950s Norway, where a grieving toy-maker is on the cusp of a transformative invention, all the way to present-day Ottawa Valley in Canada, where a journalist, battling a terrible disease, risks everything for one last chance to...

"When their sister is plucked from the shores of the Bloodsmoor River by an eerie black-silk hot air balloon that sails in through a clear blue sky, the lives of the already extraordinary Zinn sisters are radically altered. The monstrous tragedy splinters the family, who must not only grapple with the mysterious and shameful loss of their sister and daughter but also seek their way forward in the dawn of a new era -- one that includes time machines,...

An inventor's daughter falls in love with an investor who has bet his fortune on the success of her father's last design. Lord Randolph Cavanaugh is loyal and devoted-but only to family. To the rest of the world, he's aloof and untouchable, a respected and driven entrepreneur. But Rand yearns for more in life, and when he travels to Buckinghamshire to review a recent investment, he discovers a passionate woman who will challenge his rigid self-control......