Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Eloisa! We’re thrilled to have you here. Can you tell us a bit about your Wildes of Lindow Castle series and where SAY YES TO THE DUKE fits in?  The Wildes of Lindow Castle series follows a huge family living on the edge of a bog, and Say Yes is the story of an adopted Wilde, Viola. Her half-siblings are gorgeous, vivid, and dramatic—but Viola is a shy wallflower. As she describes it, she has no more in common with His Grace’s offspring than a donkey to a dragon.  SAY YES TO THE DUKE is pure escapist fun: the wallflower attracts the attention of a duke, but she doesn’t want him because she thinks she’s in love with a vicar. They end up married, and then he has to work hard to change her mind! Family is an important factor in SAY YES TO THE DUKE, as well as the other books in this series, and I enjoyed catching up with the Wildes from previous books. What do you love about creating a tight-knit family like the Wildes?  It’s wonderful to be able to deepen and grow characters over several books. I became so fond of the duke and duchess, for example, that I have a prequel of their romance coming…

The devastation of war tests the human spirit to its limits, as individuals struggle to survive in desperate and dangerous circumstances.  With the war we’ve all been fighting the last few months against an invisible enemy, the topic is even more timely.  The following stories enthrall, astound, and invite us to look past the minor irritations and minutiae of our everyday lives and concentrate on what is truly important. This was certainly the case for the women involved in SEVEN DAYS IN MAY by Kim Izzo.  Despite the savage war being fought on the Western Front–and a warning from Germany that any ship crossing the Atlantic puts itself at-risk–New York heiresses Sydney and Brooke Sinclair stick to their plan to sail to England, where Brooke is to marry Edward Thorpe-Tracey.   While Brooke is excited to marry into the aristocracy, independent Sydney is drawn to the suffragette movement. Full of confidence in the future, the girls and Edward board the Lusitania for the seven-day voyage.  Meanwhile in England, Isabel Nelson, after escaping a scandal in Oxford, is grateful to have landed a secretary’s job at the British Admiralty’s mysterious Room 40.  Recognizing her skill at codes and cyphers, she’s soon put…