Ramshackle House

Pen Broome has spent years holding together her family's crumbling estate while her father fritters away what remains. She's learned to need nothing for herself until the day a stranger named Donald Counsell appears at Broome's Point, camping nearby, impossibly handsome, and accused of murder. The sensible thing would be to keep her distance. Instead, Pen finds herself drawn into his orbit, their encounters crackling with a tension that threatens everything she's carefully built. As secrets from the estate's past collide with the present danger, Pen must choose between the duty that has defined her life and the desire she's never allowed herself to feel. Written in 1922, Ramshackle House is a deliciously propulsive romantic suspense that captures a woman waking up to her own wants while navigating whispered accusations and an estate full of shadows. It belongs on the shelf with the great Gothic romances, where attraction burns brightest precisely because it might destroy everything.