Book excerpt: A restless London wife escapes to the Arizona desert to find passion and danger in an “impassioned blockbuster” of a love story (The Independent). Jumping at the chance to spend a year away from her claustrophobic marriage to a workaholic British developer, Alice Coleman takes her two small children to the American desert lands between Arizona and the Mexican border. But the unpredictable southwest has room for the dreams of more than one fugitive. There’s Benjamin, the kindly Mexican caretaker of an abandoned mining town; the desperate immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border; and the laconic cowboy Henry Duval, whose rugged charms are as irresistible to Alice, as his secrets are dark. But when Alice’s husband arrives, the sun-scorched sanctuary turns dangerous. Now Alice must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to preserve not only her freedom, but Benjamin and Duvall’s as well. Both a perilous love story and a compelling exploration of the tension between unrealized ambitions and the pull of family, Midnight Cactus is an “absorbing . . . lively meditation on how far people will go to escape the past” (Entertainment Weekly).