Life hasn't been easy for Jeanne Bettencourt, a widow approaching thirty and struggling to provide for her eight-year-old daughter. But hope arrives in the form of the Helena Rose, a steamboat she unexpectedly inherits from a distant relative. Jeanne looks forward to a renewed livelihood on the mighty Mississippi, until news comes of another heir, a tough man named Clint Hardin--and a clause in the will that says claimants of the estate must live...

Some seven years after Anne sent her beau packing, she's still alone. But then the guy she never stopped loving comes back from the sea

"The year 1807 starts out badly for Captain Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy. His frigate HMS Reliant has a new captain, he's living at his father's estate at Anglesgreen, among spiteful neighbors and family, and he's recovering from a wound suffered in the South Atlantic. At last, there's a bright spot. When fit, Admiralty awards him a new commission; not a frigate but a clumsy, slow two-decker Fourth Rate 50. Are his frigate days over for good? Lewrie's...

"IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR was awarded the Malcolm Bradbury Memorial Scholarship in 2013 to study creative writing at the Uni- versity of East Anglia. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, her first novel, is short-listed for the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, and was a finalist in the Mslexia First Novel Competition. Her previous stud- ies in archaeology, anthropology, and art history, and her work in...

Laura Rose White is one of the most gifted riverboat pilots on the Missouri River -- her late father taught her and her brother Joe everything he knew, and even named their family's riverboat after her. But in 1867, the idea of a "skirt" being a captain is unheard of. At least until Joe takes ill and dies in the middle of a trip, leaving Laura grieving and halfway upriver with a full cargo. She successfully takes charge of the crew and expertly guides...