Dear Deceiver / The Matchmaker's Marriage

by Mary Nichols, Meg Alexander

Dear Deceiver by Mary Nichols
The only thing that Dominic could be certain he knew about Emma was that she had been lying to him. He wasn't even sure that Emma Woodhill was her real name. So why on earth was he falling in love with her? Especially when he was already engaged to someone else?

Despite all this, Dominic was determined to discover the truth and give Emma all the help she needed...

The Matchmaker's Marriage by Meg Alexander
Despite constant admonitions to be discreet, Amy Wentworth had never learned to hold her tongue! Bright, honest and forthright, she couldn't bear any form of unkindness, and it was her good nature that made her take Miss Charlotte Skelmersdale under her wing.

It had seemed like a good idea to make a match for Charlotte with Sir James Richmond. But somehow Amy found she couldn't do it. James was everything she herself wanted in a husband - now Amy just needed to convince him!

Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 2009

About the author

Born in Singapore to a Dutch-South African father and an English mother, Mary Nichols came to England when she was three and considers herself totally English. Her father, like many people who learn English as a second language, would have no sloppiness, either spoken or written, and Mary puts her love of the language down to him. He was also a great reader and there were always books in the house so that Mary learned to read at a very early age. She read anything that came to hand, whether it was suitable or not! By the time she was nine or ten, her one ambition was to be a writer.

Her first novel, handwritten in several school exercise books, was completed when she was fifteen. Not having any idea of how to go about finding a publisher, she wrapped it up and sent it to the editor of the woman's monthly magazine to which her mother subscribed. It says a great deal for that editor that she took the trouble to read it and sent Mary a long and very encouraging letter, which put her ambition into overdrive.

Finishing her education and finding a job took over in the next few years, followed by an early marriage and a family. When her children were all at school she joined her local writers' circle. Publication of articles and stories in a variety of periodicals and magazines followed, but the ambition to be a novelist never wavered and throughout the time she was writing and selling short pieces she was working on her novels.

Mary joined the Romantic Novelists Association in the 1960s. Her first novel was a contemporary one published by Robert Hale in 1981 and that was followed by nine more. Mary sent her first historical romance to Mills and Boon in 1985 and was delighted when a telephone call three weeks later told her it had been accepted. Since then she has been a regular writer for the historical series. Among these is a miniseries about a group of gentleman in the mid-eighteenth century who form a club to track down criminals, a sort of private detective agency, which naturally leads each of them into romance.

She is also the author of family sagas, published by Allison and Busby. She has also written a biography of her grandmother, entitled The Mother of Necton, who was the midwife and nurse in the village of Necton in Norfolk from 1910 until the advent of the National Health Service in 1948.

Apart from when her children were small, Mary always had a 'day job', being a school secretary, an editor of a house journal and an information manager for a database of open learning courses. Now writing full time, Mary spends part of every day at her computer producing her novels and divides the rest of the time between reading and research and gardening. Occasionally she gives talks about her writing to groups and societies. “Writing for me is an addiction,” Mary says. “I am not happy if I haven't got a book on the go and if my readers enjoy what I have written, then that is an added bonus.”