Fat Tuesday

Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. By the time her husband Jeff, miffed over a recent argument, reports her missing, the trail has grown cold. Fog and ice encapsulate the mountainous wilderness. While police suspect Jeff of "instant divorce", Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won't even tell her his name. She's determined to escape him and willing to take any risks necessary to survive.

With sensitivity and insight into the human condition, Sandra Brown creates a forceful psychological portrait of a man in moral turmoil, who must make difficult choices betweenn his personal passions and the demands of his conscience.

Aislinn Andrews met Lucas Greywolf under unusual circumstances – she caught the escaped convict raiding her refrigerator. But was he a troublemaker who aroused dissidence among Arizona’s Native Americans…or a hero who’d gone to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed? It didn’t really matter now, since Lucas Greywolf had taken her hostage. He was going home to the reservation of his birth, honor bound to pay last respects to his dying grandfather. And Aislinn was his ticket home.

Carl Herbold enjoys being bad. After all, he is terrifyingly good at it. Stimulated by violence, he and his brother, Cecil, had easily graduated from juvenile delinquents to full-blown killers. And Carl, now serving a life sentence in an Arkansas penitentiary, carries out a daring escape with a fellow inmate and is on his way back to where he began - Blewer County, Texas. Ann Corbett had been widowed right before her son was born. Beset by debt and personal tragedy, she faces the toughest challenge of her life, unaware that she is at the center of Carl Herbold's vengeful plan.

Sunny Chandler always said she'd never go back to the tiny town where she grew up. It was just three years ago that she was at the center of a notorious scandal, and the good folks of Latham Green, Louisiana, made it clear they'd never let her forget it. So Sunny packed up and headed for New Orleans, and now she wouldn't give up city life for the world. But when she's invited to her best friend's wedding, Sunny has no choice but to go home.

The Bodine ranch and resort in western Montana is a family business, an idyllic spot for vacationers. A little over thirty thousand acres and home to four generations, it’s kept running by Bodine Longbow with the help of a large staff, including new hire Callen Skinner. There was another member of the family once: Bodine’s aunt, Alice, who ran off before Bodine was born.

Sela Gordon, shy owner of a Tennessee general store, prefers solitude. If anyone can chip away at her protective shell it’s the handsome, mysterious ex-military man who’s been hiding for two years in the wilds of Cove Mountain. But when he warns her that a catastrophic solar storm with the capability of taking down the power grids is approaching, Sela must come out of her shell and be the leader Wears Valley needs. Living in self-imposed exile, Ben Jernigan has learned the hard way to look out only for number one. 

Beautiful and self-confident businesswoman Rusty Carlson was hurt, terrified and alone with a man she feared. But one thing was certain – she would surely die without his help. Vietnam vet Cooper Landry had a deep-rooted grudge against beautiful women like Rusty. Experience had taught him they were takers. But he’d survived far worse dangers, and this time he’d be damned if he’d let her risk his chance for survival.

From the start, Kerry Bishop anticipated danger: She expected unimaginable fear. In a terrifying race to save nine children, she prepared for the fight of her life. But she wasn’t prepared for a passion almost as dangerous as the mission she had undertaken. At the first, Linc O’Neil appeared to be exactly the kind of man Kerry needed: strong, ruthless and definitely too drunk to care about helping her steal a truck to get past the guards.

Daughter of a cold, controlling mother and an anonymous donor, studious, obedient Elizabeth Fitch finally let loose one night, drinking too much at a nightclub and allowing a strange man’s seductive Russian accent to lure her to a house on Lake Shore Drive. Twelve years later, the woman now known as Abigail Lowery lives alone on the outskirts of a small town in the Ozarks.