{WATTYS 2020 WINNER} {FEATURED BOOK} Paris, 1663. 500 girls selected by King Louis XIV embark on a journey across the seas from their homeland. Each is given a dowry, and the expectation that they are to marry a French settler, in order to increase the population of New France. They are the historic Daughters of the King, or "les filles du roi." Eighteen-year-old Celeste Dubois is a free-spirited, educated and headstrong girl. She comes from a wealthy Parisian family that has squandered their money and is subsequently forced to journey to New France. However, Celeste doesn't plan on marrying a complete stranger. She hopes to use the dowry and the free voyage as a way to escape the poverty and social ranks of Paris. Matters are complicated when against her will, she falls in love. Romantic, kind and stunningly beautiful Lorraine Leblanc is a girl from a large family with children to spare. Unlike Celeste, she happily dreams of the day she will meet her future husband in New France. When she marries a mysterious widower with two young children of his own and still reeling after his broken heart, she realizes that married life isn't all she had hoped it would be, and begins to question her new husband's complicated past. - Wattpad Picks Blast to the Future Past list 2018 - The 50 Best Wattpad Stories of 2018/19 by Design Wizard - 2018 Youngblood Awards Winner (Romance) - 2018 True North Awards 2nd place for Historical Fiction and 2nd place Truly Canadian special category award - Featured by Wattpad Historical Fiction profile under Kings, Courtships and Empires, Young Adult Fiction profile under Love, Actually and Romance profile under Time will Tell *Please be aware that since this book covers the colonial period, it does contain sensitive themes of racism and violence that readers will find disturbing. There are resources at the back of the book that prompt further learning in the Historical Notes section.*

Ray is low on time, luck, and hope; his only chance is an artifact that may not even exist. But upon meeting Landon, Ray is beginning to believe he might find all four. ***** Cambions are doomed to tragedy. They are weak, sickly creatures that rarely live to see their twentieth year. Ray refuses to resign himself to that fate. Upon learning of the Crimson Sheath-an artifact capable of preserving his life-Ray is prepared to fight, steal, and kill to get his hands on it. He is not prepared for Landon. Landon is an orphan with no memories of his parents, the only inheritance left to him a dagger, sleeping in a crimson sheath. Though he has no love of bloodshed and no use for a dagger, Landon isn't about to let Ray take his only link to his forgotten history, even if that means following the cambion past the edge of the world and into the shadow beyond. Content Warnings: Violence, semi-graphic gore, character deaths, profanity, mild drug and alcohol usage, abuse discussed but not shown, and morally-questionable people doing morally-questionable things.

#SurvivalRomance #ForcedProximity #Fast-paced ⁍ Winner of the Wattys2020 Award ⁍ Wattpad brought the rights for it, although it already expired this year. (September, 2025.) If you ever take a headless selfie, pray that you don't live in Bastillio. Because in that city, it is the same as receiving a death sentence. It is proof that you are marked for death-a haunted-one who is targeted by a living shadow of eldritch origin which the citizens call the Shade. But when Vergil Torres found out he was a haunted, he was the opposite of scared. Because he knows that the government has built a shelter that has successfully kept haunteds alive for the past decades. But the gruesome and inexplicable death of one of them during their stay in the supposedly safe house renews the horror of the Shade. Vergil, together with his classmate and fellow haunted, the "traditional morena beauty" Cana Bernardo, decided to get to the bottom of it. The two classmates who were indifferent to each other must now work together if they are to survive through the month.

WATTYS WINNER 2020 Two interconnected murders, 64 years apart. One woman's search for truth and identity. Readers' comments: 'a masterpiece', 'impeccably written', 'amazing', 'superbly crafted page-turner', 'hauntingly beautiful', 'tremendous plot and character development', 'one of a kind', 'fantastic story telling', 'loved this book', 'a wonderful read", 'absolutely beautiful', 'brought tears to my eyes' and many more Wattys judging panel: 'This is VERY good. We were HOOKED from the beginning, and the writing and plot hold up throughout. This is a very unique, polished, well-written and well-researched piece.' Plot Set partly in rural England, partly on the sun-kissed coast of southerm Italy, The Painted Altar is a murder mystery mixed with romantic and historical elements (World War Two). Given away at two days old, Mary Rice has spent her life in the shadows. When discovering the suspicious circumstances surrounding her biological mother's death, she embarks on a journey which will shine a light not only on the truth but also on her own identity. Brief extract Suddenly, the door had inched open, half a wrinkled face visible behind the tautened chain. "Hello. Who is it?" The words I was going to say had of course been well-rehearsed, repeated over and over in my mind like a mantra, but now that the moment had arrived I found myself struggling to remember them. "Mrs Harvey... I think that you might... well, that you might be..." The door closed, then slowly opened once more, the chain this time unlatched. And there she was before me - half a metre away, within arm's reach. Thin lips gradually crooking upwards at each corner like the slow beatific kindling of a summer's dawn. "Oh yes love, I know who you are." Length: 70,000 words About the author: Originally from England but for the last 16 years I've been living in Italy. I hope therefore that the Italian aspects of the novel will have a certain gloss of authenticity.

Striving to secure her future through marriage, an heiress with a dubious pedigree begins to question who she truly is -- and who she wants to be. ***** Edith Shepley looks like a Wyrm. She takes after her father, whoever he was -- she doesn't know, and even if she cared to, it would hardly change things. She is a proper Folk lady, as sure as the sun rises, trained from the cradle to govern as Baroness of Ewert someday. And she knows her duty. A woman, now, at sixteen years old, the time has come for Edith to marry and beget Ewert's next heir. Journeying from country estates to city townhouses, through war-ravaged lands in between, Edith diligently considers suitor after suitor, some sweet, some baffling, some detestable -- and, suddenly, who her father was begins to matter very much. The more she sees of her mother's society, the more Edith questions whether she really is Folk, after all. And the more she's stung by its insults, its injuries and injustices, the more she wonders if she really even wants to be. But what is a proper young lady to do, if not her duty? Book One of The Unfinished Wyrm! Wattys 2017 "The Storysmiths" winner!