Books by Author Morgan Wade

Morgan Wade, 2015

Bottle and Glass is a story of survival and escape told from the barstools of two dozen boisterous Kingston taverns at the close of the War of 1812. The novel follows the fortunes of Jeremy Castor and his cousin, Merit Davey, two young men snatched from the Cornish coast by the Royal Navy in the summer of 1813. A year later, they arrive in Kingston, in Upper Canada, a town tense with the fear and deprivation of war. Paid, pent, and thirsty, their first riotous night ashore is spent at a tavern, the novel's namesake, the Violin, Bottle, and Glass. Jeremy and Merit meet sixteen‐year‐old Amelia Barrett, newly and unhappily married to Colonel Noble Spafford, a Peninsular War veteran many decades her senior. When, later that evening, Jeremy stumbles upon a dead man linked to the Colonel, the lives of these three people seeking freedom become bound together forever.

Morgan Wade, 2019

Paper and Rags, follows the stories of many of the characters first introduced in Bottle and Glass, as they struggle to make lives for themselves in post-war Kingston, a time when civil unrest and political reform simmer. Young Jeremy Castor, forced into the Royal Navy by a press gang, is discharged and cast adrift. To survive and support his ailing mother, he must make difficult choices about how to earn a living. Along the way he meets three strong, beguiling women -- Amelia, Lilac, and Lenore -- each breaking from society's shackles in her own unique way. The four become entwined with the mysterious Dr. Scriven who has come to Kingston from England to escape his shameful past. Scriven decides that founding a newspaper is the only way of setting his personal record straight. In the face of a severe paper shortage, Jeremy and the others come together, sacrificing the very shirts from their backs, to make the paper that will see Scriven's truth in print. Even so, the eventual discovery of Scriven's secret and its publication in the local Gazette changes their lives forever.