Alessandro, a small, beautiful-bodied, fourteen-year-old boy with a heavenly soprano singing voice, feels he lacks life and feeling in a Tuscan village from his widowed father, absent on weekends and drunk most of the time, and the strict, nonpersonal control by choir masters. His response on Saturdays is to seek the attention of men. From the village baker, to the region's aristocratic count, to a hunky young farmer, Alessandro manages to find the attention he thinks he needs.
A night of watching "The Purge" leads to a question whose answer would change the brother/sister relationship that Julian had with his stepsister Marcy for good.
Big strapping black bull slave Big Sam had been brought to the Mississippi River Duval plantation to cover slave women and increase the size of the slave force. He'd done that, but he likes chasing down fourteen-year-old slave boys even better. He's seen with stable boy Joshua by the fourteen-year-old son of the plantation owner, John. John wants what Joshua is getting.
Maggie was a street smart, pretty nineteen year old cockney girl, but she was confused. Why did the beautiful woman who came to her fruit and veg stall nearly every day buy so many cucumbers? Why did Maggie feel like she wanted to find out, so badly, what the woman did with them? One day she would just have to get her nerve up, and ask... The answer took a lot of telling, and changed both their lives forever.