From "one of the most powerful voices in the romantic genre" (Romantic Times) comes a tale set in the steamy bayous of the American South. Steeped in sensuality and lavish prose, it is Katherine Sutcliffe's Þnest novel to date. Fever Orphaned and penniless, Juliette Broussard is overjoyed when her godfather, Max Hollinsworth, plucks her from an isolated French convent. Then she discovers his plan for her to marry his shiftless son Tylor so that he can acquire her family's dilapidated sugar cane plantation, Belle Jarod. Juliette's dreams are of rebuilding her once-glorious home and she wants nothing to do with marriage -- until she comes face-to-face with a blue-eyed temptation who unleashes the same passions that drove her mother, Louisiana's most beautiful and notorious prostitute, to destroy every man who loved her. Chantz Boudreaux, Max's bastard first-born, has one desire: for his father to acknowledge him. But the moment he drags Juliette's naked body from the flood-driven Mississippi, he is swept into a liaison that unsettles his priorities and threatens his life. Soon their forbidden passion burns like a fever. As they struggle to revive Belle Jarod, betrayal and a deadly plague threaten everything they hold dear.

Katherine Sutcliffe is the USA Today bestselling author of nineteen novels. She has won numerous awards, including the Affaire de Coeur Silver Pen for Favorite Author of the Year and a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award. Several of her books have been finalists for the Romance Writers of America's RITA Awards.

Sutcliffe has worked as consultant head writer for the daytime dramas Another World and As the World Turns, and even played herself on the former. When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her children, as well as with her Arabian horses, pygmy goats, and house rabbit. She is married to an English-born geologist, and invites readers to visit www.romancejournal.com/Sutcliffe.