Susanne Dunlap

Exiled to Siberia when the Bolsheviks seize control, young Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov, the daughter of Russia's ill-fated last tsar, falls in love with a sympathetic young guard she hopes will save her family from execution.

Anastasia's Secret

Sixteen-year-old Molly Fraser works as a nurse with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War to earn a salary to help her family survive in nineteenth-century England.

In the Shadow of the Lamp

Told in separate voices, teenaged Eliza Monroe, the daughter of a future United States President, Hortense de Beauharnais and Caroline Bonaparte, relatives of Napolâeon I, and Madeleine, daughter of an actress, come together at L'Acadâemie Nationale áa Saint-Germain in the turmoil of 1799 France.

The Academie

A Novel of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

Portraitist

Marry a Catholic stranger, or flee the only world she's ever known: Headstrong Bruna de Gansard must choose one or the other to protect her Cathar family from the inquisitors. Toulouse, 1229. The inquisitors have arrived to rid the city of Cathar heretics once and for all, and are putting all unmarried girls over the age of 12 to the question. After an incident in the town calls unwanted attention to 14-year-old Bruna, a young Catholic stranger who is sympathetic to the heretics warns her family about the looming danger, and volunteers to marry their daughter to save her from being questioned. But Bruna doesn't want to be forced into marriage, so she chooses flight-which lands her unexpectedly in the midst of a Catholic pilgrimage to Compostela, thrusting her into a life of deceit. When her beauty and her voice bring her to the attention of the powerful Baron de Belascon, who owes fealty to the king of France, Bruna earns the enmity of the baron's bitter and imperious mother and finds herself caught between her allegiance to her own people and the dangerous secret of her origins-a secret that can be revealed at any time after the arrival of a French knight who recognizes her. The Orphans of Tolosa Trilogy comes to a dramatic end in this gripping story of loyalty and betrayal, set amidst the violence and peril of the Albigensian Crusades.

Voices in the Mist

Enamored of the celebrated composer and pianist Franz Liszt during a concert, young pianist Anne secures an introduction in spite of her recently widowed father's objections and finds herself swept up by a shocking family secret that her father will go any length to protect. By the author of Emilie's Voice. Original. 25,000 first printing.

A Novel

Liszt's Kiss

Sent away for their own protection when they were very young, Azemar and Azalaïs become separated when they flee from the band of outlaws who served as their supposed protectors. Armed only with fleeting memories, their names, and the wits and intelligence that have helped them survive brutal conditions, they struggle to find each other again and discover the mysterious past that links them across distance and time. Who are they? And do they hold the secret of the legendary Cathar treasure? All they know is that knights and priests spell danger, and they must survive at all costs if they are to fulfill their destiny.

The Orphans of Tolosa

Listen to the Wind

Musician's Daughter

Courtesan's Daughter

Adored One

The Journey Continues ﻿Thirteenth-century Languedoc, torn apart by decades of crusades against the Cathar heretics, braces for the final stand of the Catholic Church against the Good Men and Good Women at the remote fortress of Montsegur. Azemar and Azalais, now fugitives after their daring escape from the castel de Belascon, must try to reach the fortress-and fulfill their destiny-before it's too late. But the captivating trobairitz Jordane de la Moux d'Aniort and her damozel Johana have escaped with them at the last minute, putting them all in grave peril. Will Jordane's conflicting desire to reunite with the rebel Raimon de Berenger thwart Azemar and Azalais's quest? A cryptic note leads Azemar to the Templar stronghold at Mas Deu, where he undergoes brutal trials-only to discover that his ultimate purpose could lead him to destroy the very culture and religion he wants to preserve. Book II of the Orphans of Tolosa Trilogy.

The Spirit of Fire

Set against the backdrop of Paris and the court of Versailles, émilie's Voice introduces a young heroine of modest upbringing who possesses a special gift: the voice of an angel. When distinguished composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier hears émilie's voice, he offers to instruct her in the art of singing with the ultimate goal of presenting her at the court of Louis XIV. Her head filled with dreams of elegant gowns, opulent jewels, and the thrill of someday performing in the great houses of Paris, she begins her training -- until a scheming noblewoman looking to unseat the king's official mistress interferes by preemptively bringing émilie to Versailles. There, amid royal pomp and splendor, she is swept up in dangerous palatial intrigues, becoming a pawn in aristocratic power games. But it is the passionate battle for control over her life and career waged between Charpentier and Louis XIV's official court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, that has far-reaching consequences for a girl on the verge of becoming a woman and a singer on the verge of becoming extraordinary.

Emilie's Voice

Based on a true story, this is the tale of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris. With a beautiful rival who’s better connected and better trained than she is, Adélaïde faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, her rival goes from strength to strength, becoming Marie Antoinette’s official portraitist and gaining entrance to the elite Académie Royale at the same time as Adélaïde. When at last Adélaïde earns her own royal appointment and receives a massive commission from a member of the royal family, the timing couldn’t be worse: it’s 1789, and with the fall of the Bastille her world is turned upside down by political chaos and revolution. With danger around every corner in her beloved Paris, she must find a way adjust to the new order, carving out a life and a career all over again—and stay alive in the process.

A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard

The Portraitist

The romantic story of a young female pianist in cholera-ravaged Paris of 1832, whose own tragedy leaves her susceptible to the passions and scandals of the composer Franz Liszt At the height of the Romantic era in Paris, there was no bigger celebrity than the composer and pianist Franz Liszt. A fiery and gorgeous Hungarian, he made women swoon at soirees and left a trail of broken hearts behind him. Anne, a countess and talented young pianist whose mother has just died of cholera, hears Franz Liszt in concert and is swept up in his allure. The enigmatic Marie d'Agoult, a friend of Anne's late mother, takes her under her wing and introduces her to the artistic world -- despite the objections of Anne's sullen and sorrowful father. Anne soon finds herself in the midst of dangerous intrigues, discovering a family secret so shocking that her father will go to any lengths to protect it. With the ominous presence of Paris's most deadly epidemic looming over every turbulent event, Liszt's Kiss is a rich evocation of a remarkable period as seen through the eyes of a sensitive young artist.

Apparently, false rumors about Marie Antoinette are all the fashion in 1783. Marie Antoinette is facing hostility from the populace, inflamed by rumors circulated in pamphlets throughout Paris. The rumors claim that she has dozens of lovers, drinks the blood of poor people, holds satanic masses at Versailles, and more, when nothing could be further from the truth. On the advice of the handsome, enigmatic Captain von Bauer, Joseph II-emperor of Austria and Marie Antoinette's brother-decides that mystery-solving violinist Theresa Schurman is the ideal candidate for a spy to discover the source of these vile slanders.Theresa is only too glad to get away from Vienna for a while, unwilling to commit herself yet to marrying Zoltan-a Hungarian baron she met when she was fifteen-and running out of reasons to postpone her decision. She is eager, too, to explore a new musical scene and broaden her artistic education. But when the captain confounds her expectations and places her as a bookkeeper in the establishment of Rose Bertin, milliner to the queen, she begins to lose hope that she will ever achieve her musical aims-or the emperor's goal of exposing the pamphleteers.A chance encounter with the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an extraordinary black violinist and expert swordsman, sets Theresa on the path to unraveling the mystery. But will the chevalier's patron, the powerful duc de Chartres, confound her efforts and put her-and the captain's-lives in danger?Be prepared for music, mystery, love, and murder in this riveting tale of pre-revolutionary Paris.

A Theresa Schurman Mystery

The Paris Affair

Amid the glitter and glamour of musical and court life in 18th century Vienna, fifteen-year-old Theresa Maria Shurman is trying to solve a brutal mystery. Who killed her father, an acclaimed violinist, and stole his valuable Amati violin? When Haydn himself offers her a position as his assistant, it gives Theresa access to life in the palace-and to a world of deceit. Theresa uncovers blackmail and extortion even as she discovers courage and honor in unexpected places: from a Gypsy camp on the banks of the Danube, to the rarefied life of the imperial family. And she feels the stirrings of a first, tentative love for someone who is as deeply involved in the mystery as she is.

Susanne Dunlap

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