Okay, so you go back in time and, sidestepping the rules, you mess up the future. What do you do now? I suppose it would depend on what it was you messed up. If it were only a small thing, misplaced a watch, broke a wagon wheel, spoke to the wrong person, you could probably fudge it over and get out of "time", back to your own era and hope for the best. But if you stopped someone from being born, that's another story altogether. That's the problem a time tourist faces in On Eagle's Wings by Rebecca Goings.

Shannon Phillips is trying to get to her grandfather's cabin to escape a marriage to a cruel and hateful man. She has gone so far at to hire Otis Pratt, a man reeking of whiskey and sweat, but owning a rickety wagon, to take her there. When he gets her out in the middle of nowhere, thinking there is no one else around, Pratt decides to collect his payment for his services in a manner other than in cash. Lucky for Shannon there is an Indian Brave watching from a low rise nearby, or is it lucky? Shannon wonders if being the captive of the savage would be better or worse than being raped by the disgusting man she hired.

Siena, Italy: the land of wine, sun, and romance. Only for Faith Murphy, such things are too lucky for her. It's more like, "Fleeing four thousand miles from one Rossi only to find another Rossi and a dead man was perfect Murphy luck, Faith thought as she walked on the herringbone brick walkway.“ Well aware of her family name’s tendency towards such things, she knows all the Murphy’s Laws by heart and had added quite a few of her own.

Something new is born with the juxtaposition of two unlikely elements. For example, what happens if you rescue a character you met in someone's book and apply romance á la The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Not the 1945 novel by R.A. Dick AKA Josephine Aimee Campbell Leslie (which I never read), and not the thirty minute comedy series that aired back in 1969. No, romance is the 1947 black and white movie with Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney. Romance is what happens when the widow named Lucy Muir moves into Gull Cottage, a seaside bungalow formerly owned and still occupied by Daniel Gregg, the irascible ghost-captain. What is more romantic than having your own ghost lover?

Audrey O'Conner had been groomed since birth to become the head of the High Council when she reached twenty-one. Even as a child, she had been a powerful mage. Unfortunately, her parents had been killed in an accident when she was little, putting more pressure on her to become a great leader. That naturally meant that a lot of choices that most little girls got to make were actually made for her. Audrey could deal with that. She had been taught that her people came first. The only choice that she wished she could have made on her own was for her mate. He had been chosen for her--the man who would be her life partner--and she had no say in the matter.