Showing results for "the widow" in Historical

A compulsively readable story of passion, adventure and a woman's quest for independence set against the colourful backdrop of 19th century Bendigo and the goldfields of Ballarat. 1854, Ballarat, Victoria When Nell Amberton's husband is shot dead by a bushranger, there are few who grieve his...

Stepping into the wrong carriage at a Sussex village, Elinor Rochdale is swept up in a thrilling and dangerous adventure. Overnight the would-be governess becomes mistress of a ruined estate and partner in a secret conspiracy to save a family's name. By midnight, she is a bride, by dawn, a widow. 

Lady Guinevere Mallory has been married four times in 12 years, and each of her husbands has died mysteriously. Adept in the laws of property, she has secured the land of each of her late spouses, vastly increasing her personal wealth. After the death of her fourth husband, this trend raises some eyebrows at the royal court, and Hugh of Beaucaire is sent to investigate these puzzling events.

Lady Charlotte Cavendish is still the spirited girl who tried to elope in the name of love. That dream was thwarted by her father, who trapped her in a loveless, passionless marriage. But now widowed, Charlotte is free to reenter the giddy world of the ton - and pursue her desires. Hardly a typical widow, she remains innocent of pleasures of the flesh. Yet now that her life is finally her own, she intends to keep it that way.

In 1800 France, twenty-year-old Barbe-Nicole inherits her great-grandfather's uncanny sense of smell and uses it to make great champagne, despite the Code prohibiting women from owning a business. When tragedy strikes and she becomes a Veuve (widow), she must grapple with a domineering partner, the complexities of making champagne, and the aftermath of six Napoleon wars. When she falls in love with her sales manager, Louis Bohne, she must choose between losing her winery to her husband to obey the Napoleon Code, or losing Louis.

A traditional Regency romance, drawing room rather than bedroom. Nell Caldicott awaits the return of her violent sailor husband with trepidation, but for once her fears are not realised. Her husband’s ship, the Brig Minerva, has sunk off the Cornish coast. Nell is free, but her husband has left her with little money and many questions about his past. Gradually, as his secrets are laid bare, she realises she didn’t know her husband at all. Can she uncover the truth? And can she ever learn to trust a man with her heart again?

1851, England. After her merchant husband saved her from a life of prostitution, Louisa Hill was briefly happy as a housewife in Bristol. But then a constable arrives at her door. Her husband has been found hanged in a Bath hotel room, a note and a key to a property in Bath she knew nothing about the only things she has left of him. Knowing the debt collectors will arrive any moment, Louisa must leave everything she knows behind, and move to Bath. But left with no means of income, Louisa knows she has little choice but to return to her old way of life.

Of all the widows of Lyttlefield Park, Elizabeth Easton seems least likely to remarry. Although many gentlemen would love to get to know the charming Mrs. Easton better, she is devoted to the memory of her late husband - which is why she’s so shocked to be overtaken by passion during a harvest festival, succumbing to an unforgettable interlude with the handsome Lord Brack.

Julia Hollis’ opulent life in Victorian London crashes to pieces when her husband passes away. Worse, she is told by his bankers that he gambled away their fortune. Now the family’s hope rests on The Larkspur, an old abandoned coaching inn in the quaint village of Gresham. Driven by dread and her desire to provide for her children, Julia decides to turn the dilapidated inn into a lodging house. But can she - who was accustomed to servants attending to every need - do what needs to be done and cope when boarders begin arriving? 

Natalie Shaw has been healing from a difficult marriage while living with her sister, Dr. Rayne Sterling, and her husband, Lord Edwin Sterling. Lord Alex St. John has spent his adult life being pushed by his mother find a wife. He had been betrothed and due to actions on the young lady's part, he broke off the engagement. Now he must attend his cousin's five day wedding celebration and expects to be harassed by all his female family members, with numerous women dragged before him for consideration.

Scandal is afoot and seduction is in the air in this, Amanda Quick's sixteenth and most deliciously entertaining novel. Now the mistress of Regency-period romantic suspense brings us a notorious widow and a man of mystery as they flirt with danger, fight temptation, and fall into the snare of...

Elizabeth Bennet never expected that answering an advertisement for a lady’s companion would result in almost immediate marriage and widowhood. Destitute and hopeless after her father’s death, she accepts the position as a means to provide a home for her family, but is daily baffled by the abrupt ways and inscrutable motives of her employer and benefactor, Mr. Darcy.

When Elizabeth weds one of Darcy's dearest friends he tries, and fails, to put his love for her behind him. Then, after two years of regretting his decision to step aside for his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy is given that rarest of gifts, a second chance. Though he mourns the cousin he loved like a brother, Darcy can't help but wonder what might have been, and what could still be. Elizabeth's heart is broken by her husband's death. Worse, she's being pressed to marry not only by her family, but a barrage of suitors.

A town gripped by fear. A woman accused of witchcraft. Who can save Pale Harbor from itself? Maine, 1846. Gabriel Stone is desperate to escape the ghosts that haunt him in Massachusetts after his wife’s death, so he moves to Maine, taking a position as a minister in the remote village of Pale...

Years ago, Miles Brookfield, the Marquess of Guilford, made a frivolous vow he never thought would come to fruition - he promised to marry his mother's goddaughter if he was unwed by the age of 30. Now, to his dismay, he's faced with honoring that pledge. But when he encounters the beautiful and intriguing Lady Philippa, Miles knows his true path in life. It's up to him to break down every belief Philippa carries about gentlemen, proving not only that is love real but that he is the man deserving of her sheltered heart.

It’s 1875, and Alva Webster has perfected her stiff upper lip after three years of being pilloried in the presses of two continents over fleeing her abusive husband. Now his sudden death allows her to return to New York to make a fresh start, restoring Liefdehuis, a dilapidated Hyde Park mansion, and hopefully her reputation at the same time. However, fresh starts aren’t as easy as they seem, as Alva discovers when stories of a haunting at Liefdehuis begin to reach her.

Jane Parker never dreamed that her marriage into the Boleyn family would raise her star to such dizzying heights. Before long, she finds herself as trusted servant and confidante to her sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s second queen. On a gorgeous spring day, that golden era is cut short by the swing of a sword. Jane is unmoored by the tragic death of her husband, George, and her loss sets her on a reckless path that leads to her own imprisonment in the Tower of London.

Penguin Presents the audiobook edition of The Sapphire Widow by Dinah Jefferies read by Gabrielle Glaister. Ceylon, 1935. Louisa Reeve, the daughter of a successful British gem trader, and her husband Elliot, a charming, thrill-seeking businessman, seem like the couple who have it all. Except...

Christina MacKinnon is secretly relieved to be a widow. She is equally desperate to distance herself from the clan of her dead husband, but as the heir to his estate—one she needs in order to support her siblings—she must first stave off both the advances and threats of the man next in line to inherit. It seems the only person she can turn to is a nearby stranger who seems inclined to help her. But he has a request….

It is no secret that infamous gold miner Cass Hite hates the Mormons. When he nearly dies while passing through a remote Mormon settlement, the kind-hearted widow, Sarah Hansen takes him in and nurses him back to health. She has the room and the time to take care of this man that everyone else in town shuns. She’s known loneliness since a young age, when her parents died and she became the third wife of a polygamist. And again when her husband died and her two children moved away.