Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Historical

Frank Grasby’s father, the Reverend Cyril Grasby, is getting married at Rowntree Hall on Christmas Day 1954. And to make matters worse – Frank is best man. The guests include important clergymen, and Inspector Arthur Juggers, Frank’s boss. As they gather at Rowntree Hall, the snow begins to fall, cutting them off from the outside world. But shortly after the knot is tied, Dean Welling is found dead, poisoned by mistletoe. In his hand is a crumpled piece of paper – on which is written only the letter ‘G’.

In 1907, the revolutionary Joseph Djugashvili - who would later take the name Joseph Stalin - met with an old friend, a clerk at the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire, for a glass of milk. Over talk of national pride, the spirit of the new century and Djugashvili's poetry, they agreed on the beginnings of a plan. With the aid of the Outfit, Djugashvili's hardened crew of 'expropriators', they would pull off the biggest, bloodiest and most daring robbery in Georgia's history, and ruthlessly change the direction of the Bolshevik revolution forever.

Margaret Kerr of Perth is living in Edinburgh with her uncle Murdoch during the summer of 1297. She'd come to search for her long-absent husband who is in the service of Robert the Bruce. Margaret herself is still loyal to the deposed King John Balliol. Then terrifying raids and a brutal murder on the Kerr property bring the wrath of the English down on the heads of Margaret and her uncle.

Colonel William Reid has returned home from India to retire near his children, who are safely stowed at an academy in Bath. Upon his return to the Isles, however, he finds that one of his daughters has vanished, along with one of her classmates. Because she served as second-in-command to the Pink Carnation, one of England’s most intrepid spies, it would be impossible for Gwendolyn Meadows to give up the intrigue of Paris for a quiet life in the English countryside - especially when she’s just overheard news of an alliance forming between Napoleon and an Ottoman Sultan.

New York, 1879: After an epic snow storm ravages the city of Albany, Dr. Mary Sutter, a former Civil War surgeon, begins a search for two little girls, the daughters of close friends killed by the storm who have vanished without a trace. Mary's mother and niece Elizabeth, who has been studying violin in Paris, return to Albany upon learning of the girls' disappearance - but Elizabeth has another reason for wanting to come home, one she is not willing to reveal. Despite resistance from the community, who believe the girls to be dead, the family persists in their efforts to find the two.

In 1920s Toronto, best friends Lily di Marco and Mae Thebault used to be inseparable. They lived under the same roof and cared for each other's children—in a world where men held all the power, they looked out for one another. But then the Great Depression hits, changing their relationship forever, as both women are forced to make impossible decisions to save themselves—and their families—from ruin.

Run, run, girl. In the name of God, run.It's 1141 and freezing cold. Gwil, a battle-hardened mercenary, watches in horror as a little girl with red hair is dragged away by his own men. Caught in the middle of the fight for England she is just one more victim in a winter of atrocities.But a strange twist of fate brings them together again. Gwil finds the girl close to death, clutching a sliver of parchment - and he knows what he must do. He will bring her back to life.

Lauren Willig continues the exciting series with her fourth novel, The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, featuring Lord Vaughn, the delightfully devilish spy from The Masque of the Black Tulip, and Mary Alsworthy, the raven-haired beauty whose sister accidentally stole her suitor in The Deception of the Emerald Ring.

Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations - in her work as a physicist on the Manhattan Project to design the atomic bomb and in her passionate love affair with coworker Thomas Wheeler. Five years after the end of both, her guilt over the results of her work and her heartbreak over Wheeler are intertwined. She has almost succeeded in resigning herself to a more conventional life. Then Wheeler gets back in touch - but so does the FBI. Agent Charlie Szydlo wants Rosalind to spy on Wheeler, whom the FBI suspects of selling nuclear secrets to Russia.

Harlem, 1927. Twenty-seven-year-old Louise Lloyd has found the perfect job! She is the new manager of the Dove, a club owned by her close friend Rafael Moreno. There Louise meets Nora Davies, one of the girls she was kidnapped with a decade ago. The two women—along with Rafael and his sister, Louise’s girlfriend, Rosa Maria—spend the night at the Dove, drinking and talking. The next morning, Rosa Maria wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the previous night. Nora is lying dead in the middle of the dance floor.

In The Orchid Affair, Willig introduces her strongest heroine yet. Laura Grey, a veteran governess, joins the Selwick Spy School expecting to find elaborate disguises and thrilling exploits in service to the spy known as the Pink Carnation. She hardly expects her first assignment to be serving as governess for the children of Andre Jaouen, right-hand man to Bonaparte's minister of police....

The heroines of Lauren Willig's best-selling Pink Carnation series have engaged in espionage all over 19th-century Europe. In the sixth stand-alone volume, our fair English heroine travels to India, where she finds freedom-and risk-more exciting than she ever imagined.

The year is 1792 - the start of the French Revolutionary Wars. A shadow hangs over John Thomas Fury in this his first voyage as a midshipman aboard the 32-gun frigate Amazon. Fury is already seen as a pariah by his fellow sailors. Ten years earlier his father, a brig commander in the Service, became mentally unbalanced and violent and his ships crew mutinied and went over to the French.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Hunt by Oscar de Muriel, a Christmas tale from the world of Frey and McGray, read by Andy Secombe. Christmas, 1888. After a thoroughly trying time in Edinburgh, Inspector Ian Frey looks forward to a Christmas break at his family's country estate back in England. But the welcome respite of home cooking, hunting trips and brandy by the fire is ruined by the arrival of an unwelcome guest....

Famous director Elias Theropodous has chosen Haggerman’s Catskills Resort as a shooting location for his next film. It sounds glamorous to much of the staff, but resort manager Elizabeth Grady is less satisfied. Dealing with the ridiculous demands of the antagonistic director is bad enough, and his attempts to walk all over Elizabeth are making her feel like her position at the resort has been changed into a bit part. But when Elias is poisoned during a dinner at the resort, the future of the film and the resort itself are on the line.

In the final months of World War II, San Francisco newspaper secretary Ellie Morgan should be planning her wedding and subsequent exit from the newsroom into domestic life. Instead, Ellie, who harbors dreams of having her own column, is using all the skills she's learned as a would-be reporter to try to uncover any scrap of evidence that her missing pilot father is still alive. But when she discovers a stack of love letters from a woman who is not her mother in his possessions, she vows to find out the truth about the father she loves - and the woman who loved him back.

It’s the summer of 1953, and Elizabeth Grady is settling into Haggerman’s Catskills Resort. But Elizabeth will have to resort to untested abilities if she wants to save her mother’s business. When a reclusive guest is found dead in a lake on the grounds, and a copy of The Communist Manifesto is found in his cabin, the local police chief is convinced that the man was a Russian spy. But Elizabeth isn’t so sure, and with the fate of the resort hanging in the balance, she’ll need to dodge red herrings, withstand the Red Scare, and catch a killer red-handed.

In a remote castle high up in the Tuscan hills secrets are simmering among its glamorous English residents: The ailing gentleman art-dealer. His dazzling niece. Her handsome Fascist husband. Their neglected young daughter. The housekeeper who knows everything and Connie, the English widow working for them. Every night, Connie hears sinister noises and a terrible wailing inside the walls. Is she losing her grip on reality? Or does someone in the castle want her gone?

The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime's experience battling the New York Mafia, and 50,000 dollars in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a Black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-Black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a White woman on the premises. She understands their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers.

August 1856. The Dickinson family is comfortably settled in their homestead on Main Street. Emily’s brother, Austin Dickinson, and his new wife are delighted when famous thinker and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson comes to Amherst to speak at a local literary society and decides he and his young secretary, Luther Howard, will stay with the newlyweds. Emily has been a longtime admirer of Emerson’s writing and is thrilled at the chance to meet her idol. She is determined to impress him with her quick wit, and if she can gather the courage, a poem.