Tamar by Deborah Challinor

When Tamar Deane is orphaned at seventeen in a small Cornish Village, she seizes the chance for a new life and emigrates to New Zealand.

Isle of Tears by Deborah Challinor

Deborah Challinor is a best-selling author who writes novels set in New Zealand's past, and this particular book is set in the 1860's. It discusses Māori traditions, adoption, prejudice by both Māori and Pakeha, loss, and the Māori/European land wars.

First Lines Friday #1

First Lines Friday is a weekly book meme originally hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

A Most Determined Woman by Emma Blair

For Sarah Hawke, daughter of an impoverished miner, life offered little beyond the grime of Glasgow in the 1890s and the eternal drudgery of back-breaking work. Until a mysterious stranger entered her life. A stranger who turned out to be her real father – and the owner of a vast and prosperous shipping empire… Catapulted into a world of luxury, of servants and stately homes, Sarah begins a new and glittering life. As sole heiress to a fortune, she has much to gain – and everything to lose. For she takes over the business, and with it the risk and rivalry, deceit and intrigue – and the prospect of undying love…

And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander

Emily agreed to wed Philip, the Viscount Ashton, primarily to escape her overbearing mother. Philip’s death while on safari soon after their wedding left Emily feeling little grief, for she barely knew the dashing stranger. But her discovery of his journals nearly two years later reveals a far different man than she imagined – a gentleman scholar and antiquities collector who apparently loved his new wife deeply. Emily’s desire to learn more of her late husband leads her through the quiet corners of the British Museum and into a dangerous mystery involving rare stolen artifacts. To complicate matters, she’s juggling two very prominent and wealthy suitors, one of whose intentions may go beyond matrimony into darker realms…