The School for Heiresses

In four new crowd-pleasing Regency novellas, students from Mrs. Harris's School for Young Ladies return home for the holidays with high hopes for entering society. Despite their careful training under the wise Mrs. Harris, each defies the rules in her own way and, in the process, gets her first taste of romance. Bestselling Jeffries, author of the series that inspired this anthology, leads with panache: her passionate tale of Eliza Crenshawe finds the young firebrand fleeing a marriage arranged by her cruel uncle, attempting to steal a horse and falling under the spell of the horse's owner, the new earl of Monteith. Rita-winner Carlyle weaves a complicated tale about Martinique, a courtesan's daughter with a mysterious past in the West Indies, whose bedchamber is mistakenly breached by the scandalous Lord St. Vrain. London presents Grace Holcomb, the daughter of a wealthy wool merchant, who inherits her domineering father's distorted values and nearly misses out on the love of a good man from Leeds. Bernard's tale of mischievous Alyssa Martin, whose odd luck lands her in a series of comical misadventures, rounds out the collection with an "all's well that ends well" finale. (Jan.)