Ground Sweet as Sugar Release

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

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This must-have collector’s edition includes Ground Sweet as Sugar and The Virtues of Vice, the alternate-ending novella, Into the Complete Unknown, and Catherine C. Heywood’s research notes on “Building the World of Seven Stars.”

1797: After a century of clarifying oppression, Ireland seethes on the brink of rebellion. It waits on one violent tremor—the execution of a seventeen-year-old girl. All Charlotte Dillon wants is to escape. When she slips her fate, she discovers her future lies in the hands of James Blair, a sugar planter with deep ties to her enemies.

Bound to James for seven years, Charlotte must find a way to conceal her true identity and crime, even as they set sail for the West Indies, even as they confront the limits of their endurance, even as they fall in love. 

Meanwhile, an ocean away, a rebellion is unfolding and a mystery unraveling that threaten the tenderness growing between them. Through harrowing battles and the ache of longing, James and Charlotte must face devastating reckonings to finally know the sweetness they’ve earned.

 Sweeping from Ireland’s bleeding battlefields to St. Croix’s burning sugarcane fields, Ground Sweet as Sugar: The Complete Story is the entire saga of power, punishment, and undying love.

Included in this adaptation is INTO THE COMPLETE UNKNOWN -

An alternate-ending novella to the Ground Sweet as Sugar story, the unforgettable coming-of-age saga of one girl’s fight for her freedom, her country, and her heart… 

1801: James Blair wakes, in pain and adrift, on the Caribbean Sea with no memory of how he got there. No memory, he soon discovers, of the last eight years of his life. All he wants is to retreat to what he knows, but forces around him demand he confront a tangled life he can’t seem to bear. 

Resolved to leave James for good, Charlotte Dillon flees the West Indies for a new life. But the most powerful woman in France and a mysterious man who seems to know her secrets disturb her quiet life in the vine rows of Montmartre. And little does she know that the one man who still moves her is the one man who’s still coming for her.

Sweeping from a careless Caribbean to a restless France, Into the Complete Unknown is Book III in the epic Ground Sweet as Sugar saga of power, punishment, and undying love.

 

 

  

 

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Moments later, Charlotte storms onto the dock, a vision in gray silk and cream lace with a russet bow at the bodice and tendrils of auburn hair whipping free from the bun atop her head. The switch of her hips and the loud clack, clack, clack, clack of her shoes as she treads causes the men to part, leaving them stopped and gaping in her wake.

Near the Anne’s gangplank, James casually leans against a post, his voice lighthearted as he banters with her crew. 

“How dare you!” Charlotte stops beside him.

James turns, his expression falling from wide-open contentment to narrowed outrage in a blink. “How dare me? How dare you!”

“How dare me? Me?”

Keogh appears and claps them on their shoulders. “Children, has it been like this the whole time I’ve been away?”

“No!” They answer in unison while glaring at one another.

“Oh, good. You’ve been saving it up for my return.”

 

  

 

 

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Read the First Chapter HERE!

 

 

  

 

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Catherine C. Heywood is an Amazon bestselling author of romantic historical fiction and a former political speechwriter and communications consultant. Raised in Red Wing, Minnesota, she studied international politics at the University of Edinburgh and has degrees in politics, writing, and communications from the University of St. Thomas and Boston College.

She explored the law and improv before settling on storytelling. Her worst job was scraping year-old tobacco spit off a shoe factory wall. Her best is doing this.

She lives in western Wisconsin with her husband and sons, and her interests include architecture and design, fashion and food.

 

 

 

  

 

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