In 1898, Allegra Grayson has one dream: to become a journalist in a world built to keep women like her silent, well-married, and safely behind a needlepoint hoop. Raised in Charleston's finishing-school society and unofficially promised to a proper gentleman of means, Allegra is expected to want nothing more than a household and a brood of children. But beneath her polished manners is a woman keeping secrets even her closest friends don't suspect -- and a heart set on a very different future. When circumstances carry her far from Charleston and into the path of a striking widowed rancher running his family's newspaper, Allegra finds herself unraveling every plan she'd carefully laid for her own life. He is guarded, grieving, and raising a young daughter alone. She is hiding more than anyone around her realizes. Between them grows a connection neither can explain -- and neither can resist. Deception by Perception is a lush, unhurried journey through Gilded Age society, family secrets, and a romance that builds from stolen glances to something neither Allegra nor Jeb ever expected to find. Told with rich period detail and simmering, explicit passion, this is a love story about the distance between who we're expected to be and who we truly are. Discover the secret Allegra has been keeping -- and the love that changes everything.
