Maverick Heart Collection

She's afraid to love again, and he's afraid to love at all … until their shared love for horses shows them how to love each other. In one day at a horse show in 1975, Linny Eagan loses her job, her beloved, and her dream of becoming an equestrian champion. The triple loss forces her to invent a new dream-this time skipping the romance part and trusting only in horses, which can never betray her. Her first try lands her at a public trail-riding stable on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There she meets Con Winston, who dreams of being a Western artist on his own Montana ranch. But he must play family head-games for two more years, when he will inherit a fortune that will make his dream come true. Until then he won't waver from his path, or give himself to anyone. Yet in working together with horses, he and Linny discover a perfect match of heart and mind. But Linny doesn't share Con's dream and won't ask him to sacrifice it; and Con feels the same way about her dream. When things fall apart at the stable, they regretfully continue in opposite directions, connected only by Con's half-wild horse. Living apart finally proves to them that dreams need love to sustain them, and the only chance to have both is to reinvent a new dream together.

Her near miss at becoming a murderer helps Jane Brown find the person who really is …Every day, the media remind Jane of global atrocities, injustice, and pollution. Heartsick and helpless to change anything, she fantasizes about assassinating the greedy, violent, and immoral individuals causing problems for all. But she can't kill, not even kill herself to escape reality. She can only retreat to rural Vermont and do the one thing in her power to influence change: write inspirational adventure stories for girls. For that she needs monastic peace, but instead her darkest fantasy arrives at her doorstep. Someone is thinking globally but acting locally by slaying everyone in town who has harmed others for their own gain.Nothing connects the crimes except the victims' evil natures, and the only evidence exists in Jane's mind. To her, the killer's motive is transparent. However, being new to the community, she has no idea who might have the motive; and to help the police, she must expose her inner demons that she moved to Vermont to bury.She's most afraid to reveal her demons to her one remaining friend, Luce-a joyous extrovert-and Jane's surprising new chance at love: the enigmatic postman, Ned. Alienating them would lose the only support Jane has to hold herself together. Ned and Luce, aware that Jane is fighting an internal war without knowing why, conspire to tug her back into caring involvement, believing that light is the only true weapon against darkness. Jane must learn this for herself by facing the killer and choosing between right and wrong when they are the same face in the mirror.