How Many Books Has Doris Kearns Goodwin Written?

It only took a moment to burn everything down. For five years, Isla Merrick played the part—soft-spoken wife, graceful hostess, quiet shadow to Callum Braxton’s powerful presence. She became what the world expected: dutiful, polished, harmless. Then came his cold declaration: “Let’s get divorced.” No emotion. No explanation. Just a clean cut—like a business deal. But Callum never knew she had been waiting for that moment. Planning for it. Beneath the composed surface, Isla had been sharpening the edges he once dulled. Because Isla Merrick had a past—and it wasn’t the scandal the tabloids spun. It was deeper. Sharper. Before she was Mrs. Braxton, she trained at Summerdell—an elite, off-the-record martial arts academy. Whispers of crime and prison blurred the truth, but Isla stayed silent. She had bigger plans. Three years later, she returns—not to reconcile, but to reintroduce herself. Isla Merrick now runs a luxury fashion empire, famous for turning scandal into power. And when she steps into the country’s most elite gala, draped in elegance and authority, Callum barely recognizes her. But she recognizes him. Before he can speak, a figure joins her—Dorian Kane. Ruthless investor. Public obsession. His hand rests on Isla’s waist like it belongs there. “Just so we’re clear, Braxton,” Dorian says coolly. “She’s not yours. Not anymore.” For Callum, it’s the beginning of a reckoning. For Isla, it’s the first breath of freedom. She isn’t the woman who once begged to be loved. She’s the woman who knows she never needed to be. And this time, she’s not just rewriting the story—she’s owning the ending.

For one year, I believed Matteo De Luca had truly fallen in love with me. Our marriage began as an alliance, but he held me every night, kissed me before council meetings, and fastened the De Luca Donna brooch at my throat as if I already belonged beside him. Then his first love, Vanessa Ashford, came back. Within days, our official ceremony was postponed, her access was added to the Donna wing, and Matteo stopped wearing the family signet he once used to claim me in public. He said it was council business. But council business did not leave amber perfume on his skin. It did not sit beside him on a private jet to Palm Beach. And it certainly did not smile from the Donna’s chair while his friends watched me lose my place. The final humiliation came at a private dinner, when someone asked whether I was Matteo’s wife. He looked at me, then said calmly, “Elena and I have an arrangement.” That night, I stopped waiting to be chosen. Matteo could keep his first love, his title, and the home he let her enter. I packed my passport, my Florence contract, and the prenatal report he had never seen. Then I left New York with his child.

Torn between the man she loves, and the man who loves her.... Cordia Pike has always been strong-willed, but she knows her family expects her to accept the hand of her childhood friend, Jaris Adams, in marriage. As the conflict between the states continues to escalate, Cordia hopes it will last long enough for her to find a way to free herself without breaking her friend’s heart. On the eve of war, as the men prepare to ride off to battle, Cordia meets a mysterious newcomer. There’s just something about Will Tucker that she finds both intriguing and dangerous. Under the guise of caring for his sister, she makes a plan to write to him. Perhaps by the time the war is over, Will’s feelings for Cordia will have blossomed into the love she is starting to feel for the Union soldier. But war is evil and complex, and by the time it begins to wind its way through Southwest Missouri, one of these men will be dead, and Cordia will find herself betrothed to a man she loathes. Will she have the courage to follow her heart and stand up for what she believes in like so many others, or will she do as she is told and acquiesce to a loveless marriage to a heartless traitor?

She was never meant to be loved—only used. Lorelie Montgomery was the illegitimate daughter of a powerful political dynasty, raised in silence and trained to serve. When her family arranged a marriage between her and Governor Sebastian Kingston, she knew it was just another move in a game she never asked to play. To the public, they were the perfect political couple. Behind closed doors, there were strangers bound by suspicion, secrets and hidden agendas. Sebastian saw her as his pawn to get close to her corrupt family. Lorelie never trusted him and wanted nothing more than to escape from him and her family. Every smile was rehearsed. Every word was measured. Every laugh was practiced. Every touch was calculated. But as the lines between ally and enemy blur, and buried truths claw their way to the surface, Lorelie begins to see the cracks in Sebastian’s armor—and he starts to question everything he thought he knew about his wife. Can love save them from the lies that built their world? Or will it be the reason they lose everything?

"Barrister Dash... what do you mean my father wants me to marry all three of these men?" "It's only for one year, Miss Wellington. Fulfill the Trust Mandate, and the Wellington empire is yours." One year. Billionaire CEO Salma Wellington can survive one year. Her heart already belongs to another woman, and nothing—not even her late father's final wish—can change that. Or so she thinks. What begins as a simple contractual arrangement quickly unravels into something far more dangerous. Beneath the Wellington fortune lies a legacy of carefully buried secrets, impossible obligations, and enemies who have waited years for Arthur Wellington's death. The deeper Salma is pulled into her father's world, the more she realizes the man who built the empire planned far beyond his own lifetime. The three men she once saw as strangers slowly become her greatest strength, turning an arrangement built on duty into an unexpected family worth fighting for. Just when Salma begins to believe she has found happiness, the people she loves become the enemy's greatest target. Betrayals strike from the shadows, loyalties are tested, innocent blood is spilled, and every decision she makes carries consequences that can never be undone. Every answer uncovers another lie. Every choice tightens a trap she never saw coming. And by the time Salma understands the true price of her inheritance, walking away is no longer an option. As war closes in, contract marriages become unbreakable bonds, strangers become family, and every victory demands an unbearable sacrifice. Because some inherit wealth. Salma Wellington inherited a legacy written in blood... and after losing everything she holds dear, she must decide whether to become the leader her father prepared her to be—or let the Wellington empire die with her.

Two years ago, Amelia was framed, stripped of her identity, and left to rot in a brutal South African prison. Her husband, Dean, and his ruthless mistress, Natalie, stole everything: Her father’s multi-billion-dollar tech empire, her wealth, and worst of all, her infant son, Leo. But a tiger doesn’t stay caged forever. When the reclusive, fiercely brilliant billionaire CEO Jared Donovan bails Amelia from prison, he offers her a devil’s bargain. He will give her the money, the legal power, and the protection she needs to dismantle her enemies piece by piece. In exchange? He wants her father's empire. Amelia signs the contract, playing the part of his pawn while secretly plotting to outsmart him, too. No one keeps her legacy. Dean and Natalie think they’ve buried her. But they are about to learn that the only thing more dangerous than a woman with nothing to lose... is a ghost coming back to take it all.