The Novels of Sharon Virts

Book 1 · 1816–1819

"A story of honor, ambition, and the cost of sacrificing one life to forge another."

In 1819 Virginia, honor is everything—and an insult can demand a deadly price. Jack McCarty and his cousin, powerful U.S. Senator Armistead Thomson Mason, are bound by blood but divided by ambition, politics, and old resentments. As their rivalry turns dangerously personal, the women in their lives are drawn into the gathering storm. Charlotte Mason struggles against the forces consuming her marriage, while Lucinda Lee finds herself increasingly drawn to Jack, despite the expectations that stand between them. With loyalties fracturing and reputations at stake, Jack and Armistead move toward a confrontation at Bladensburg that could change everything forever.

Book 3 · 1826–1829

"In the territories, the law is whatever the powerful say it is."

While Jack McCarty navigates ambition, betrayal, and the shifting alliances of national politics, his brother William accepts an appointment in the volatile Florida Territory. As danger closes around William in the south and Jack is drawn once again toward the ghosts of his past, a fractured bond between brothers will test what each is willing to risk for family, principle, and honor.

Book 5 · 1835–1838

"Exile and reckoning — absence is its own kind of violence."

After a decade of political compromise and personal loss, Jack McCarty heads west — buying land in the Wisconsin Territory, surviving a brutal frontier winter, and returning to Virginia altered by solitude and grief. But the dueling culture he left behind is still very much alive, and the people who needed him most have been carrying the weight of his absence alone.