Historical Romance Novels
Horsemanship and historical accuracy are the hallmarks of Judith’s five commercially-published historical romances, which occupy such diverse locales as 18th-century London, Moravian North Carolina, and the post-Civil War American West.
Under a Prairie Moon
Civil War surgeon Micah Workman lost everything—wife, daughter, a reason to live. When beautiful young outsider Belle Burdette risks all to get him to save her dying mother, can she salvage his war-torn soul? Can he transform her lost and lonely heart?
In spite of all his losses and his despair, Micah never can resist helping someone who needs his medical skills—neither Belle’s mother nor her little brother with his crippled hand. Nor, to Micah’s dismay, can he resist his growing attraction to Belle in spite of her obvious Indian heritage. Bit by bit, he is won over by her devotion to family and her sheer love of life.
But a lifetime of being shunned as a half-breed has left her scarred and untrusting. Can Micah, wretch that he has become, transform her lost and lonely heart? When he is finally accused of murder and taken back to the Pawnee village where he first served the Indians, Belle sets out to defend him, even if it means that she might meet the very man who raped her mother.
Coming soon!
The Mad Marquis
Unconventional horsewoman Lady Julia Westfall is forced to marry Harry Pelham, Marquis of Raine, her fiercest rival on the race track, to retain the beloved horses she has bred and trained. Harry is her secret love since girlhood, and he is still her secret dream. But what the widowed Marquis proposes is a nightmare for her—a loveless marriage with no children. But a woman who races her own stallions for the challenge and the thrill can hardly be expected to rein in her passion.
Julia’s new husband sees his dotty Aunt Augusta, loopy Uncle Bertie and lonely daughter Isabeau (who takes her imaginary friend everywhere she goes) as proof that madness runs in his family, proof that siring more children would destroy his estate. Behind his back, Aunt Augusta helps Julia plot his seduction, Uncle Bertie teaches her to dance for the estate’s annual ball, and Julia goes against Harry’s orders to help his lonely daughter come out of her shell and learn to ride.
When Harry still spurns Julia’s advances, she challenges him to a match race—her on her best mare against him on his best stallion. If he wins, she’ll stop trying to seduce him, but if she wins, he’ll let her have her way. But the race is sabotaged, and Isabeau goes missing. Only Julia might know how to save her, and truly win her husband’s love.
The Kissing Gate
The new Earl of Wraxham, Lionel Westfall, reluctantly leaves a London life of entertainments and dissipation to assume the quiet duties of his late father’s country estate. He doesn’t expect to find Sophie Bowerbank, the bookish rector’s daughter he once embraced passionately in the kissing gate, installed to manage his father’s library and papers.
Sophie was his first and only love, but he doesn’t need her love now. With six trouble sons from his first marriage, he needs help. And the studious Sophie seems the perfect choice to tutor his three sons still at home—his rapscallion twins Maxim and Alexander, and his youngest, Simon, who is tormented by night terrors. As mishaps and nightmares unfold, she becomes their staunch ally. Then Graeme, Lionel’s oldest son and heir is sent down from Oxford, and Andrew and Marcus are expelled from boarding school. Sophie boldly defends them too, but Lionel has yet to learn how bold she truly is.
For the spinster Sophie has mastered the erotic texts in his father’s library and wants nothing more than for Lionel to liberate her from her troublesome virginity—if he will just give love a chance. Then they could explore the passion discovered in the kissing gate when they were young and find the ultimate in sensual fulfillment.
Wild Indigo
To the Cherokee who raised her, she was “Wanders Lost,” a white orphan in a land ravaged by revolution. To the Moravians of Salem, North Carolina, she is Mary Margaretha, a spirited young woman barely civilized by her years among their prim sisters. To the widower Jacob Blum, she is not just his last hope to save his children, she is Retha, his new bride, a blazing beauty who stirs his blood.
Drawn by a passion that matches Jacob’s own, Retha wants nothing more than to be a loving wife. Yet before she can completely give herself to Jacob, she has to overcome the ghosts of her mysterious past, a past whose memories make her tremble at the very touch she so deeply craves.
His Stolen Bride
Determined to succeed, Nicholas Blum leaves his beloved family to work for a shopkeeper in Pennsylvania. He won’t stay long though, for once he proves himself he plans to return to his beloved North Carolina Moravian community to marry the golden sweetheart he’s entrusted to his younger brother’s care.
The last thing Nicholas wants is a female taskmaster who bosses him by day and invades his dreams at night—no matter how lovely petite Abbigail Till might be. And Abbigail, the shop owner’s spinster daughter, certainly doesn’t need a big, attractive man like Nicholas upsetting her shop and wreaking havoc with her heart.
Then Nicholas gets some shocking news—back home, his intended bride is to marry someone else. As he races to Salem to stop the wedding, Nicholas is haunted by thoughts of the sweet, stubborn wren he’s left behind. Abbigail too feels an aching despair over losing the man she belatedly realizes she loves. Will the strength of their love survive, or has their only chance at happiness been stolen forever?