An MPM Celebration

  Amelia Peabody #4 Higher Love The Emersons return once more to their beloved Egypt, and this time to one of the most exciting archaeological sites in the entire country--Dahshur. But before Amelia can wholly give herself up to her beloved pyramids she must straighten out the tangled love affair of a young English couple, ensure Ramses' survival despite his many escapades, solve a murder, and evade the peculiar attentions of the Master Criminal, who certainly seems to carry a grudge from last season...for surely, it is a grudge...?

  Shout When med student Julie Newcomb is summoned to the crumbling family estate to tend her malicious, dying grandmother, all she expects is an unpleasant trip down memory lane. But Maidenwood, she finds, has recently made the news with the gruesome discovery of a skeleton on the grounds. With her cousin Matt desperately trying to make political capital out of it, an archaeological team working nearby headed by the man who broke her heart, and the returning memories of her childhood, she finds it harder than she expected. And anyway, who was the mysterious woman discovered, with her dead baby cradled in her arms? Is it in fact, as some claim, the fabled Lady Jocelyn, a seventeenth century figure of romance come to live in the New World? Or is it someone more recent...someone a little closer to home...?

  Amelia Peabody #3 Everybody Wants to Rule the World Thanks to Emerson's poor relationship with the French Director of Antiquities, this seasons finds the Emersons relegated to the dullest excavation site in Egypt...Mazgunah. But, with their catastrophically precocious son Ramses along for his first foray into archaeology, a footman on hand with a propensity for falling in love with unsuitable maidens, a mummy case that appears and disappears with alarming regularity in their storage room, and a Master Criminal on the loose, this season is shaping up to be anything but!

  Somebody's Watching Me After the death of her young Italian husband Bart in a car accident, American Kathy Malone seeks closure by visiting his grandmother at the ancient Florentine estate of the Morandinis. At first, the elegant, aristocratic Francesca is forbidding, but when Kathy accidentally gives the impression that she is pregnant, she suddenly finds herself welcome for an extended stay at the decaying villa. There, she befriends the visiting American professor David Brown, and the lonely ten year old count, Pietro. But some things at the estate don't quite add up--the vicious dog, the forbidden wing, and the purported 'madness' of Pete. And are the visions of Bart Kathy's having just nightmares? Or something more sinister?

  What's Love Got To Do With It Desperate to get out of the small Midwestern college town she's now living in, Jacqueline Kirby signs up for the first east coast conference Coldwater College will underwrite expenses for...but when she arrives at the Historical Romance Writers' Convention, she realizes it's not just Prisoner of the Zenda anymore. The absurdity of her surroundings appeals to Jake's zany's sense of humor, and she quickly makes friends and enemies alike. But when a reporter who has been threatening to unveil dirt on the biggest agent in the business drops dead, murder and mayhem aren't just threatening the lives of the attendees, they're interrupting Jake's new book. And she won't stand for that...

      A Total Eclipse of the Heart Andrea Torgesen is used to life being a battle. The death of their parents in an accident left her the sole guardian of her little brother Jimmie at nineteen. And now twelve years later, her much adored Jimmie has been in a life-altering near-death car wreck, which has left him almost catatonic with depression. The only thing that catches his interest is the prospect of turning an old house left to them by a distant relative into a bed-and-breakfast. As the house and grounds blossom under their hands and they find a place in the nearby community, it seems like a good decision. When Jimmie develops an overwhelming fascination with the private graveyard on their property and an obsession with the abandoned tower room, their long-term guest Martin starts to get alarmed, though. But Andy refuses to see anything ominous in the history of the old house, or believe it might be reaching long fingers out of the past to her brother...

  Vicky Bliss #2 Every Breath You Take When Vicky Bliss, historian and amateur sleuth, gets a plane ticket to Sweden from her sometimes lover, sometimes nemesis John Smythe, she uses it...if only to get the chance to thwart whatever scheme he's up to. But when it becomes apparent to them both they're not the only players in the game, and the new participants have a dangerous streak, what's at stake isn't just an ancient buried treasure...it's their lives.

  Tainted Love For Megan O'Neill, the black rainbow she arrives at Grayhaven under as a governess seems an auspicious omen. Here there is kindness, comfort and dreams of the handsome Edmund Mandeville. For his sister Jane, it seems more questionable. With the return of her beloved brother, things seem to start going awry in the house and village in ways they never have before. Events escalate as years pass and conflict between the residents becomes a dangerous, toxic brew that might lead down a dark road there's no turning back from...

  Every Little Thing She Does is Magic Elizabeth Jones' long awaited holiday in Denmark starts off with a promising bang--not only does she meet her literary idol, historian and novelist Margaret Rosenberg, but the Nobel prize winner even takes her on as secretary when an unfortunate accident deprives her of the one she has. But things take a puzzling turn when Margaret disappears. Her pompous son Christian insists she might be in danger, and so he and Elizabeth team up to scour the Danish streets and landmarks. When mysterious messages start arriving and bullets start flying, it looks like he might be right. But why would anyone be demanding Margaret's bathrobe???

  I Love a Rainy Night With Anne's boyfriend Joe off in Europe on a grant, it seems like the perfect time for she and her colleague Kevin to finally write that English textbook they've been thinking about. The old mansion his parents recently bough in Pennsylvania seems like the perfect place. And at first, Grayhaven does seem like the perfect place. With his recently divorced Aunt Bea playing housekeeper for them, and her new boyfriend Roger O'Neill picking intellectual fights, they have a friendly quartet in residence. But soon Bea and Anne are puzzled by the strange noises echoing from Kevin's room at night...and then by what they see at his door...Everyone has their own theory about what's happening, from ghosts to psychic forces but the truth is far stranger than anything any of them could conjecture...

  Amelia Peabody #2 (Just Like) Starting Over Amelia and her beloved Emerson seem to have settled into dull routine. The birth of their son Ramses has forced them into English domesticity, and the weight of ordinary life far away from their Egyptian calling is taking its toll. It is then that Lady Baskerville, a friend of Emerson's from long ago, appeals to them to take on the dig site whose curse was apparently responsible for her husband's death. As the bodies mount up, it's up to Amelia and Emerson to engage in a little friendly rivalry to discover whether it's a flesh-and-blood murderer or an ancient curse devastating the little company...

  Daydream Believer Left penniless by her father's death, Marianna Ransom must make her own way in life. Beautiful and kind, but hopelessly naive, her attempts at independence lead to disaster. At her lowest ebb, the Dowager Duchess of Devenbrook steps in. Wealthy, beautiful and kind, the Dowager claims Marianne is actually the long-lost daughter of the famed, murdered spiritualist David Holmes, whom she loved as a son. But the privileges suddenly showered on Marianne come at a cost--she is expected to present the spirit of her purported father to the grieving woman. As if that were not bad enough, ghostly visitations do seem to grace her attempts. As the anniversary of the man's death approaches, something dangerous seems to stalk the halls of Marianne's new home...and it seems to be stalking the woman she has come to love as a mother...

Listening: Magic    Laurie Carlson has the winter-in-Chicago blues, with a recent breakup under her belt and a dissertation still to write. So the plea to visit the family home in Maryland, the lovely Idlewood, is easy enough to acquiesce to. The letter's concerns about her great-aunt Lizzie and her worrying behavior aren't really alarming, after all--Lizzie has always been eccentric. But Laurie sees mysterious lights and hears haunting music in the forest surrounding Idlewood, and Lizzie has taken to sleepwalking in the snow. Are there really fairies in the woods, or is a more human malice at work?  Spoilers below:

                                                            Listening: I Was Made for Lovin' You Recently widowed Pat Robbins and her teenage son Mark are intrigued by the neighbors who move in to the house next door--a twin to their own beloved mid-nineteenth century American Gothic. Their relationship starts roughly when Mark's interest in lovely young Kathy is repulsed by her stern father. But when something ghostly takes a malevolent interest in Kathy, the families draw together to try and unravel whatever grudge the two old houses have been brooding over for centuries...

                                            Listening: Mama Can't Buy You Love Caught between spending the summer with her lovable but aggravating family or taking on a vaguely-described job with a billionaire in Arizona, fledgling anthropologist D.J. Abbott chooses the latter. But gentle, benevolent Hank Hunnicutt has a propensity for wild conspiracy theories, a pack of conmen living in his luxurious mansion, and a mysterious discovery out in the desert he won't talk about. And when he disappears, it's only D.J., Hank's sarcastic secretary Mike, and one or two others who take it seriously enough to be alarmed...What is it, exactly, out there in the desert that someone would resort to such lengths to hide?

                                                                             Listening: Come Sail Away When American Carla Tregallas unexpectedly inherits a manor house in Cornwall, her first intention is just to sell it and move on with her well-planned life. But one glance at a photograph pulls her across the sea to spend the summer exploring her ancestral home and the stories it holds. Not least is the legend of the aquatic demon, who returns every two hundred years to claim a bride from the Tregellas family. And with the two hundred year mark approaching, and seaweed mysteriously appearing in her room, it looks like Carla might be the next intended victim. Unless, of course, there's something a little more earthly going on...

                                                                                                                                                               Vicky Bliss #2 Commissioned by her boss to track down a ring of antiquities forgers, academic bombshell Dr. Vicky Bliss finds herself investigating in that most mysterious city of all--Rome. Her curiosity leads her to the luxurious villa of a local nobleman where his family circle hints at mystery...as well as into the path of the suspiciously, slickly charming Englishman Sir John Smythe. As murder rocks the villa, the question presents i...

                                                                          Listening: Carry On Wayward Son When Francesca Fairborn is left suddenly unprotected and impoverished by her father's death, it is the long-estranged family of her mother who offers her welcome and shelter at their princely estate in Tuscany. However, she finds plenty of oddities in her new home--her grandfather's overwhelming obsession with the Etruscan princess whose tomb he recently excavated, the mysterious local  revolutionary known only as the Falcon who is viciously hunted by papal troops, and the rising number of near fatal accidents that dog her steps....Will it be her bluff, handsome cousin Andrea who protects her from these troubles? Or is it his cynical, infirm twin Stefano who has her best interests at heart?

                                                                                                                                                   Listening: Southern Nights When Ellie takes on the job of housesitting for her beloved Aunt Kate in her massive Virginian mansion, it simply seems like getting some quiet time that she might use to reassess her engagement. What she gets are a series of increasingly eerie ghostly incidents, an impudent yard boy, and a host of irritating neighbors who all seem intent on protecting their family legacies from the old rumors her 'ghosts' are stirring up. When things take a violent tur...

Listening: Nights in White Satin Orphaned young heiress Lucy Cartwright finds herself maneuvered into marriage with the mysterious  Baron Clare before she has time to think. Spirited off to his Yorkshire estate, ominously called Greygallows by his oppressed villagers, she finds his distant attitude towards her puzzling...but not more than the family ghost who has begun to stalk her steps. Fearful, Lucy must marshal her wits and defy the strictures of society she has tamely followed until now, for it's not just her sanity that's at risk...it might be her life.