How to Ditch a Duke

A PENNINGTON FAMILY NOVELLA   Lady Taylor Fleming is an heiress with a suitor on her tail. Her step-by-step plan to ditch him is simple. But there is nothing simple about the Duke of Bamberg. Taylor tries to escape to sanctuary in the Highlands, but her plans become complicated when the duke arrives at her door and her loyal allies desert her. And even with the best laid plans, things can go awry...

May McGoldrick, Nik James,and Jan Coffey are pen names for USA Today bestselling authors Nikoo Kafi and Jim McGoldrick. Together, they have crafted over fifty fast-paced, conflict-filled historical, contemporary, and Western novels, and two works of nonfiction. Nikoo's education and training was in engineering. She worked in robotics and submarine shipbuilding. Before earning a PhD in sixteenth-century Scottish and English literature, Jim pursued a hundred and one jobs, including a decade in submarine construction. Storytellers at heart, Nikoo and Jim were always searching for careers that gave them time for both family and writing. Then, after thirteen years of marriage, they recognized each other's creative strengths. Nikoo is all about characters and feeling. Jim is about action and sense of place. Their first attempt in writing fiction together produced their award-winning novel, The Thistle and the Rose. Since then, their stories have touched the hearts and minds of millions of readers all over the world. Their work has been translated into over a dozen languages and counting. Nikoo and Jim are four-time Rita Finalists and the winners of numerous awards for their writing, including a Will Rogers Medallion Award for Traditional Western Novels, the Daphne DuMaurier Award for Excellence, the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewers' Choice Award, three NJRW Golden Leaf Awards, two Holt Medallions, and the Connecticut Press Club Award for Best Fiction. The authors make their home in California.