When Annabel's mother tells her that, instead of becoming a nun, she must marry Scottish laird Ross MacKay, who was betrothed to her runaway sister, both Annabel and Ross struggle to adjust to their unexpected new life together.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
Scotland, 1766. Sentenced to a life of misery in the brutal coal mines, twenty-one-year-old Mack McAsh hungers for escape. His only ally: the beautiful, highborn Lizzie Hallim, who is trapped in her own kind of hell. Though separated by politics and position, these two restless young people are bound by their passionate search for a place called freedom.
 
From the teeming streets...

"John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff...

Driven by his grief over the loss of his family and by his longing for adventure, Bruce MacLennan sets out from Scotland for China, where he buys a young girl, who tries to ease his pain but instead is caught up in his desire for vengeance.