Showing results by author "Susannah Calloway" in All Categories

Bertie Bennett is out of options. After losing her parents and her job, she’s spent six months living under her Aunt Joan’s roof—only to discover Joan plans to marry her off to the most cold-hearted man in Boston. Desperate for escape, Bertie takes a chance and applies to become a Mail Order Bride, trusting that a stranger in the West offers better prospects than her aunt’s schemes.

Isabelle Becker is at a crossroads: stay trapped in Boston’s relentless poverty or take a leap of faith and become a Mail Order Bride. With little to lose, she chooses to start over in the shadow of Colorado’s Bitterroot Mountains, marrying rancher Ethan Callahan.

In the winter of 1880, Rose Berkshire arrives in Glass Lake, Wyoming, brimming with hope for a fresh start and eager to meet her fiancé, Eli Stillwell. Determined to leave the pain of her past behind, Rose is shocked when Eli postpones their wedding until after Christmas, leaving her questioning whether agreeing to a matrimonial agency match was a mistake.

As a servant in a wealthy household, Emelia Brandon is subject to hard work, little food, and great hardship. She has no choice but to become a mail order bride, flee west to Arizona, and marry a man she’s never seen.

After a tragic loss, Penelope Langford feels suffocated by her overprotective parents, who would rather bury her past than let her live again. But at just twenty-three, Penelope knows she can’t spend another Christmas confined to the familiar walls of her Baltimore home. Desperate for a fresh start, she takes a leap of faith, becoming a mail-order bride and heading to the rugged frontier town of Miles Gulch, Wyoming.

Mary Rose Martin is desperate. With seven younger sisters all happily married, her wealthy Virginia family is starting to give up on her, and she faces the dismal fate of being an old maid. Her only choice is to marry Thorton Ellis, 30 years her senior - and completely odious. Mary Rose can’t face the prospect of spending her life with him. Instead, she flees, and gets on the first train West.

Sally Johnson is sick of her life - sick of the upper class, sick of the social gatherings, sick of the dirty, bustling city, and truly sick of never feeling as though she is good enough. When the odious son of a failing steel baron announces they are engaged in order to marry into her rich family, Sally is truly fed up. Taking her life in her hands, she runs away and decides to become a mail-order bride.

Raising his three rambunctious children on a small farm in Shallow Gorge, Colorado, Billy Spence is at his wits’ end. It’s hard enough to eke out a living in such a rough area; it’s even harder caring for three little ones on his own. He’s desperate for a solution and would sure like to have one by Christmas.... After her last living relative succumbs to the Russian flu that cold December, Alice Fletcher wants to leave her nursing job in New York and settle somewhere new and fresh.

Maggie Whitaker has spent most of her life in a Boston orphanage, serving as a surrogate mother to countless children. Now, at twenty-two and too old to stay, she faces an uncertain future. Determined to find a family of her own, she answers a matrimonial advert that leads her to Clearwater, Texas.

Abby McCarthy has a knack for making friends, and a reputation for being one of the most skilled seamstresses in Boston. But times are tough, and work is impossible to find. Desperate, she agrees to travel to Texas to marry a rancher, Will Skinner. But Will Skinner has challenges of his own. In the three years of working his ranch, it’s been one disaster after another. He’s at the end of his rope – and when Abby arrives and voices her disappointment in what she finds, it seems their marriage is destined to be over before it begins.

Charlotte "Lottie" Thomson feels trapped in the stifling confines of her life in Boston, where the only escape seems to be marriage. Desperate for freedom, she decides to become a Mail Order Bride and heads west for a fresh start. Impulsively, Lottie books passage on the first stagecoach to Texas. The journey takes a dangerous turn when notorious outlaw Luke "Hawk" Jackson and his gang ambush the stagecoach, robbing the passengers and killing a young woman named Emily. Lottie discovers that Emily was on her way to Clearwater, Texas, to marry a rancher named Nathan Caldwell.

Angie Bale has reason to be bitter. With a disinterested father determined to marry her off to an unscrupulous, dangerous businessman, she feels entirely alone in the world. But it was the tragic loss of her mother years before that caused her to turn from her faith. Desperate for a new start in life, Angie responds to a letter in the Matrimonial Times. A marriage of convenience is all she expects from the union. But things suddenly get complicated when she falls for the man she’s agreed to marry—and even more complicated when her past tracks her down.

Her husband is dead. She's pregnant. And her odious brother-in-law is forcing her hand in marriage. Betty Rochester can't abide the thought of Garrett having anything to do with her child. Or her. She has to escape and fast. Her only hope is to get as far away from Boston—and Garrett—as she can. But Betty has run out of options. Except one. Her sister became a mail-order bride, so why can't she? But Betty doesn't count on her mail-order husband rejecting her when he discovers she's with child. Now she's thousands of miles from home with a man who can barely look her in the face.

Jenny Jansen has always served at Thompson Manor. As the head cook, life is steady, but she wants something more, and she dreams of moving out West to pursue her freedom. There is just one problem—Roy Olson. They grew up together at the manor, and he fell in love with her long ago. One morning at the market, Jenny stumbles across a new matrimonial agency. This gives Jenny the break she’s looking for—the chance to become a mail order bride. But can she truly muster the courage to leave Roy and all she’s ever known and risk everything for an unknown groom?

Nellie Williams is tired of the mundane, everyday sort of life she leads in Middleburg, Virginia. She longs for adventure, excitement, and true love—but she stands little chance of finding any of it if she stays put at home. When her cousin tells her about matrimonial agencies, her imagination takes flight at once. She can just see it now—being matched with a handsome cowboy in the Wild West, raising children, fighting off outlaws. But as she starts her journey toward the future, the fulfillment of her dreams is far more than she bargained for.

With both parents working all hours and four younger brothers at home, the care and keeping of the household is squarely on her shoulders. When her father forces her to find a job in addition to everything else, it proves to be too much. Desperate for a way out, Mandy agrees to become a mail-order bride and marry a man she’s never met—a ranch hand named Matthew Bostwick, in Mine’s Place, Colorado. But traveling from Boston to Colorado is just the beginning of Mandy’s journey.

Mallory Stewart’s father arranges a marriage between her and the town’s mayor. The mayor is an odious man, and Mallory wants nothing to do with him. She escapes the marriage when he is arrested for stealing from the town’s treasury. Frank Griffin needs a wife. But in Spring Valley, Texas, potential wives are hard to come by. Frank learns of a mail order bride agency, and thinking himself a fool, he sends an application. A month later, he receives a letter from a lady back East who agrees to marry him.

After being turned down by yet another employer, nurse Adele Cowen is in dire straits—her rent is due, her fiancé has abandoned her, and she has nothing left to keep her in New York. When a chance to marry the mayor of a small town in Texas arises, she jumps at the chance. But when bandits strike her train, Adele is left alone in the middle of a strange land. It seems impossible when she stumbles across a lonely, sick man in need of her help. The stranger is Preston Wilder, and he’s a bounty hunter in search of the Silver Gang—the very gang that robbed her train.

Lonely, heartbroken, and determined to leave tragedy behind, Clarabelle Demont packs up her belongings and travels west to Montana. There, she stays with her brother, Stuart, her only living relative, who works as foreman on Circle Moss Ranch in Fort Riggins, Montana.

Serena Stapleton’s father insists she marry in order to satisfy his debt. Upset and angry, Serena boards a train to faraway California. Halfway through the journey, the train is held up by outlaws. Serena is struck on the head and thrown from the train. Tim Dawson, the widowed doctor in Fort Riggins, Montana, rushes to where Serena is injured. He takes care of her in his clinic. His mother insists the young woman recover in their home. Serena, waking to strangers and terrified, claims no memory of what happened to her—praying this might be her way out of the marriage contract.