An Unsuitable Engagement

Spontaneous and serious. Young and old. Opposites clash and attract, but they can’t ignore each other for long. Seventeen-year-old Octavia Shelford tries to live up to her mother’s expectations and dazzle the beau monde and her suitors. Trying to please everyone has her muddled and exhausted, but the one person whose opinion matters the most never seems to approve. She’s spent a year traveling through Europe, trying to avoid him. Twenty-nine-year-old Guy Claybury, the Duke of Woodford, knows precisely how he feels about everything and isn’t worried about anyone’s opinion of him. He hasn’t been able to find a fit and proper wife to help run the embassy in Paris, and he has given up on love matches. His only concern is trying to prove that England did not order the assassination attempt on Napoleon III. With the threat of war between France and England, Octavia is forced to stay at the British embassy in Paris until it’s safe to travel again. No matter how hard the duke tries to overlook his attraction to his entirely inappropriate friend, the more she seems determined to solve the riddle that he is. But he cannot allow her to piece together the puzzle his heart has become, because unlocking that secret can only lead to one thing: an unsuitable engagement.

Spontaneous and serious. Young and old. Opposites clash and attract, but they can't ignore each other for long.Seventeen-year-old Octavia Shelford tries to live up to her mother's expectations and dazzle the beau monde and her suitors. Trying to please everyone has her muddled and exhausted, but the one person whose opinion matters the most never seems to approve. She's spent a year traveling through Europe, trying to avoid him.Twenty-nine-year-old Guy Claybury, the Duke of Woodford, knows precisely how he feels about everything and isn't worried about anyone's opinion of him. He hasn't been able to find a fit and proper wife to help run the embassy in Paris, and he has given up on love matches. His only concern is trying to prove that England did not order the assassination attempt on Napoleon III.With the threat of war between France and England, Octavia is forced to stay at the British embassy in Paris until it's safe to travel again. No matter how hard the duke tries to overlook his attraction to his entirely inappropriate friend, the more she seems determined to solve the riddle that he is.But he cannot allow her to piece together the puzzle his heart has become, because unlocking that secret can only lead to one thing: an unsuitable engagement.

Ethan Silverton, the Lord of Edon, is very content with his life. He’s carefully sculpted it so that everyone thinks he’s a notorious rake. For years, he’s worked hard to build his reputation to secure his place as the most undesirable bachelor in London. And it’s worked. No decent lady will have him. But one simple error in judgment has just sealed his fate. His intention was to dissuade a horrid mother from matching him up with her equally horrid daughter. Seeing no one but Lady Catherine without a dance partner, he tells a lie. He approaches Lady Catherine as if they are betrothed, and the ploy works. The horrid mother and her daughter abandon their pursuit of him. Except Ethan’s mother spies his ploy and is so relieved that she’s found a way to marry him to a reputable young lady that she tells everyone of their engagement. To his horror, word spreads and it’s his duty to see the lie through. This is the worst thing that can happen, and no one but his mother is happy about it. Not Lady Catherine. Not her doting father. Not even Ethan. But his mother is sure it’ll all work out…eventually. Books in the Marriage by Scandal Series: Book 1: The Earl's Inconvenient Wife Book 2: A Most Unsuitable Earl Book 3: His Reluctant Lady Book 4: The Earl's Scandalous Wife

This book defends and articulates an “Engaged Buddhist” approach to economics as a response to the destructive effects of global capitalism. The author posits that Buddhist understandings of the distortions of greed, aversion, and ignorance can be read to apply not only to mental states but also to socio-political ones, and that such a reading suggests rational responses to current social and environmental challenges. The book proposes that we engage both “inner and outer” modes of transformation through which to free ourselves from our current human-made, dysfunctional systems: the former, by examining the workings of our own minds, the latter by criticizing and reforming our economic systems. Since traditional Buddhism provides few sources to build a Buddhist economic vision, this work brings together Buddhist notions of skillful practice, John Dewey’s pragmatic principles for social provisioning, and institutional economics. The author provides two case studies for experiments in Buddhist-based socioeconomic policies, Thailand and Bhutan. Of special interest is the implied parallel between worldviews emerging from modern socially-engaged Buddhism and Dewey’s notion of a human existential drive to shape the world in collectively beneficial ways.