The Tobacco Lords Trilogy — Margaret Thomson Davis

Beginning in Glasgow during the Jacobite Rising of 1745, The Tobacco Lords Trilogy is the epic story of two very different women - Annabelle Ramsay, the wilful and impetuous daughter of a rich Tobacco Lord, and Regina Chisholm, a child of the slums, born to a life of poverty and degradation yet determined to make something of herself. As the story unfolds, their lives and loves become tragically intertwined, and the two women become deadly enemies - rivals in an all-consuming passion that will last a lifetime and follow them from the streets of Glasgow to the shores of the New World and the splendour of colonial Williamsburg. A compelling story of romance and rivalry, The Tobacco Lords Trilogy is also a marvellous evocation of the city of Glasgow and its people in the 18th century - from the wealth and grandeur of the Tobacco Lords, the city's thriving merchants, to the poverty and desperation of the filthy, overcrowded tenements.