title: Cradle of Fire
author: Daley, Gail
description: A must read. A fast-paced Sci-Fi novel of adventure, suspense and romance.  A desperate woman takes a perilous gamble to save her family from a brutal murderer. They weren't supposed to see their 'kindly' new guardian slaughter three people. But they did see it. Jade knows they can't go to the police—he owns them. The only choice is to run and hide; but where can a woman, a teenage girl and a young boy go to be safe from a crime lord? Desperate, she risks taking her family through an illegal Portal to St. Antoni. In the Forbidden Colony they are safe from their former guardian. But she may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. St. Antoni is a dangerous haven; it's a planet whose citizens have created a society poles apart from the dystopian earth they fled. With almost no resources, Jade needs a way to support herself and her siblings in this strange world. When she is offered a job as an illustrator for a book company owned by the elderly Hortense Jones, she jumps at it. Then she meets Hortense's nephew, the fascinating Levi Jones, a former Enforcer with a dangerous reputation as a gunman. Loyalty to the kindhearted Hortense draws Jade into the deadly feud between the Jones and the Smith families. Can she find happiness on St. Antoni and keep her family safe?