title: No Monsters in New Jersey
author: Rodriguez, Julian
description: Secrets Lurking Beneath a Civilized Veneer... In 19th-century Sea Girt, New Jersey, everyone knows the most powerful citizen: wealthy Samuel Johnson. And yet at the same time, nobody really knows him-especially not his own son, Joseph, who arrives from England to meet Elizabeth Edwards, the young woman his father has arranged for him to marry. It seems sensible enough that Joseph should marry the daughter of his father's good friend, Dr. Edwards, but when he arrives in Sea Girt, an unexpected temptation crosses his path: the servant girl Isabel, banished to a small beach cottage to protect others from the tuberculosis that has given her a death sentence. As Joseph tries to win Isabel's trust, he begins to learn that all is not as it seems-and with dawning rebellion, he senses the cold horrors that lie just behind Samuel Johnson's hard surface. Sweeping from a beachfront estate in New Jersey to the sultry streets of Cartagena, from high society to the desperate lives of the poor, No Monsters in New Jersey is a compelling story of abuses of power...and the power of love.