Manhattan Stories

Jessica McCarthy's only Christmas wish is for a home of her own and children. All her friends are already married and have families. Believing that true love will never come her way, she settles for the man she sees as her last chance to realize her dream, handsome, charming, ne'er-do-well, Zachary Belk. Jessica's father, one of the most successful businessmen in 1860's Manhattan, warns her that he isn't a good prospect for a husband. Jessica seldom goes against his advice, but Zachary is the only man in New York who has courted her. His own firm is on the edge of bankruptcy, and he desperately needs a financial lifeline. Jessica believes she is only being realistic when she agrees to be Zachary's wife, but she soon finds out her carousing husband doesn't share her hopes for domestic life. The stock market crash of 1869 changes all their lives. Born into wealth, Jessica never had to ask the price of anything. Now the cost of simply putting food on the table is the first thing on her mind when she awakes every morning. Jessica must adapt drastically to being penniless. She calls upon her faith in God, her friends, both old and new, and her own determination, not only to survive, but to find peace, happiness, security, and a real love. This is the first of novels in the 'Manhattan Stories' saga. It takes the reader from the opulent drawing rooms of Manhattan, New York, where fortunes are made and financial empires can collapse without warning, to the frontier cabins of Manhattan, Kansas, where everything, including true love, is possible.

Emma is nine on the day they meet, hot-headed and wild-haired. Akecheta is twelve, and already the man of his house. He saves her life and tells her she belongs to him. As they grow up together on the frontier surrounding Manhattan, Kansas, he teaches her how to fish, hunt, and how to survive in a land where bears, snakes, accidents, and even nature itself can steal away your life in an instant. She teaches him how to trust and how to share the burdens of his shameful past. When he graduates from high school, an aunt send him to university in the other Manhattan, in New York. Emma continues her schooling at home, becoming one of the first women to study animal husbandry at Kansas State University. At first, Akecheta is dazzled by New York. He explores the grand library, the museums, and the theatres. When a friend takes him to back-room poker games in the Bowery, he learns that Manhattan, New York, may be more deadly than the wilds of Kansas, and in the elegant drawing rooms of city mansions, he finds that the most dangerous thing of all may not be a grizzly or the armed loser of a card game, but a beautiful, wealthy, well-connected blonde.

In the third of The Manhattan Stories, it's 1930, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains are home to a town of renegade Mormons. On Nancy's 18th birthday, her father tells her she must marry her cousin Abner, the town's blacksmith. He's already married to three other women, one of them her younger sister. Terrified of what being married to Abner would mean, Nancy runs away and gets lost in the woods. Hungry and cold, she finds a seemingly deserted cabin and takes shelter. When she meets Jake, the man who owns it, she must decide if he is a man she can trust. She has nowhere else to go except home to marry Abner. At first reluctant to let her stay, Jake finally agrees. Tired of living alone in the wilderness, he is willing to wait for Nancy to learn to care for him. As they slowly get to know one another, she learns to love him. She expects to spend her life there, but Abner has other ideas. His rage drives him to murder, and he sets out to kill not only Nancy, but Jake as well, and almost succeeds. Thinking they will only be safe in one place, Jake takes Nancy to his childhood home, Manhattan, Kansas. They aren't there very long before Nancy discovers their stalker has followed them across the country. She knows that sooner or later, someone is going to die. The only question is, which one of them is it going to be?

Kansas 1852 Half-breed Everett Snipes discovers a newborn baby crying by the body of her mother. He recognizes the mother as the second wife of his cousin Wakiza, chief of the Village of Scouts located a few miles from the Army base. Everett rescues the infant and takes her to her family. The child's people are being pushed out of their ancestral lands. In the East, rumblings of the coming war over slavery are already spreading across the nation, and Kansas, Bloody Kansas, will not escape the carnage. The Kansa Indians once controlled the entire territory. Now, white settlers are flooding in and, in spite of treaties, stealing reservation lands while the white government takes no action against the invasion. As she grows, Kimimela and her family fight marauding Pawnees, the white man's diseases, and changing times. Under the protection of her cousin Everett, a man who belongs nowhere, yet manages to fit in everywhere, she survives. Kimimela must adapt and make her way in life by learning to blend in with the very people who have stolen everything rightfully hers. Throughout her struggle, Kimimela, the daughter and granddaughter of chiefs, clings to the traditions of her people. She is Kansa ... and will never forget it.

In 1861, in the small town of Manhattan, Kansas, the Curran girls have expectations of what their lives will be. D'Arcy, 12, redheaded and freckled, curious and rebellious, wants to grow up and dominate her world. Suzanne, not yet 18, wants only to marry her handsome lieutenant from Fort Riley, Jonathan Taylor. The beginning of the Civil War and Suzanne's one night of passion sends everyone's lives in an unexpected direction. Jonathan is sent to the battlefields that will determine the survival of the nation. To avoid scandal in their small town, the girls are sent to Detroit to live with family. They not only find a welcoming aunt and uncle, they discover a burgeoning city, both ugly and beautiful, rough and cultured, drunk and refined. As she matures, D'Arcy develops a friendship with the older boy next door, and it changes her opinion of men. Fate throws both girls undreamed-of twists, and D'Arcy is forced to cope. A rash decision changes everything. Will D'Arcy be prepared for the consequences?

The Civil War ended, but the turmoil of D'Arcy Curran's life did not. Rather than give up the child she raised from birth, sixteen-year-old D'Arcy kidnaps her sister Suzanne's son. The only safe place for her and little Danny is home...Manhattan, Kansas. Once there, D'Arcy learns that danger comes in many forms, and some of them are too close for comfort. Her father is murdered by marauding Jayhawkers. Her mother is lost in grief. D'Arcy faces the disapproval of many when she wears trousers, carries a gun, and takes over the responsibility for the farm. She's drawn to Royce Quinn, her foreman, who years earlier swore his love to Suzanne. When her sister comes home, D'Arcy fears Suzanne is there to take Danny away from her...and maybe Royce as well.

Seventh in The Manhattan Stories by Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Selling author, Donna Foley Mabry, "The Currans and The Quinns, The Manhattan Stories: The Currans, Book Three" continues the saga of the Curran Family. On the Manhattan, Kansas frontier of the 1870s D'Arcy Curran, her adopted son Dan, and her new husband, Royce Quinn, want nothing more than to raise a family and live in peace. Their plans are waylaid when the renegade Jayhawker who killed D'Arcy's father returns from prison looking for revenge. Human treachery isn't the only thing D'Arcy and Royce battle on their prairie home. As Dan grows from a boy to a man and more children arrive, they struggle against the forces of nature, animals that are not as tame as expected, and disease. When Dan meets Kathleen O'Malley, he's only sixteen but is convinced she's the girl for him. He sets out to win her heart, but he wonders, can the pampered daughter of a New York millionaire learn to love a rough-hewn cowboy?

Eighth in 'The Manhattan Stories' by Wall Street Journal Top 10 Best Selling author, Donna Foley Mabry, "Dan Curran Quinn The Manhattan Stories: The Currans, Book Four" continues the saga of the Curran Family. After a romance that started when he was still in high school, Dan Curran Quinn marries his longtime love, Kathleen O'Malley. They begin their lives together with a bright future, but a vengeful killer from Dan's past has other plans. When every dream he ever had is shattered, Dan is unable to recover. Restless, he sets out to ride horseback across the vanishing frontier from Manhattan, Kansas to the little town of Goodland near the Colorado border. Along the way, Dan encounters dangers, hunger, thirst, desperate people, and situations that teach him what kind of man he is-and what kind of man he wants to be.

Meaghan Curran Quinn has her life all planned out. Newly graduated from Manhattan High School, she expects to study law at Kansas State and then to marry Arthur Franklin, her childhood sweetheart. Fate takes the future in its own hands and sends Meaghan on more than one dangerous journey. Before the storms pass, both her faith and her physical strength will be tested. ~ Ninth in 'The Manhattan Stories' by Wall Street Journal best-selling author, Donna Foley Mabry, Meaghan Curran Quinn The Manhattan Stories: The Currans, Book Five continues the saga of the Curran Family.