Showing results by author "Patricia Rice" in All Categories

John Fitzhugh Wyckerly has been the spare heir all his life, supporting himself with gambling and charm. The news that he's inherited the bankrupt title of earl of Danecroft shatters his indolent world. Even penniless, he's always paid his debts, but now the estate's creditors are closing in. He can fake his death and run for cover or accept overwhelming responsibility and find a rich wife - one who will also accept his illegitimate terror of a daughter.

The descendant of adventuring-dead-aristocrats, Clarissa Knightley supplements a modest inheritance by penning gothic novels that cost more than they earn. Upon learning that she has mysteriously inherited a share of an earl's estate, she rashly packs up her household. In remote Gravesyde Priory, she hopes to find a safe haven and family who will welcome her and her young nephew. Instead, she discovers a drunken American army captain, his African servant, and ancient, surly caretakers.

On a long-delayed errand to remote Wycliffe Manor, ex-Lieutenant Jack de Sackville stumbles across the murdered body of London dandy, Basil Culpepper, in the hedgerow, a long way from his usual haunts. To Jack's dismay, he discovers the earl's daughter Culpepper hiding in Wycliffe's kitchen. Disguised as a lowly cook, Lady Elspeth Villiers may have liked to shoot Culpepper for ruining her life, but she dropped out of sight for more immediate reasons than an old scandal-her wealth has become the focus of greedy men.

Nora Adams believes she is only a schoolteacher and a poor seaman's widow until the day she inherits a fortune, and her mother sends her to London to deliver a mysterious message to a newly arrived foreign princess - who looks much like Nora. Once Princess Elena receives Nora's missive, she steals Nora's identity and vanishes. Left adrift in unfamiliar waters wearing ill-fitting royal shoes, Nora determinedly sets out in search of the real royal.

Neville Perceval, the bankrupt Duke of Anglesey, has been burdened since youth with more responsibility than one man should handle. He has finally accepted that he needs to marry a wealthy, gracious lady who will ease his burdens and smooth his political path. Fiona MacDermot, the rebellious, untamed cousin of an Irish earl, has the freedom and independence Neville has never known. Like the duke, she needs cash to help starving villagers and orphans. Unfortunately, she'd rather earn a living than have anything to do with useless men, and the politicians she knows all belong at the wrong end of a rope.

Magic is her birthright.... The daughter of one of the strongest magical lineages, Ninian Malcom Siddons is a powerful witch. Determined to use her magic only for good, she lives a simple, solitary life as a healer in her village, where she meets Drogo.

Blake Montague's draconian temper and clever mind belong on the Continent, decoding French communications. Instead, as the youngest son of a baron, he's terrorizing London ballrooms in search of a wife who will buy the commission he can't afford. Jocelyn Carrington, after years of smiling through the pain inflicted by an uncaring family, has just inherited a fortune. Now she can buy the special home with an aviary her eccentric younger brother needs - but Blake Montague's family owns it.

Scarred in a duel over a feckless female, Gavin Lawrence leaves America to take up his new duty as Marquess of Effingham, vowing to never again care for another woman. But lurking in the Marquess' crumbling manor is a young woman in terrible danger. The self-sufficient daughter of a soldier, Dillian Whitnell hides her injured cousin in the secret passages of Arinmede Manor following an attempt on their lives.

Everything about Lord Harry's easygoing life is about to change. After unexpectedly inheriting the title of duke of Sommersville, he's also discovered it comes with a load of debt. To save the estate, he's going to need money. Lots of it - and quick.

Having married once out of desperation, the virgin widow Lady Belden has no intention of giving up her independence - until her long-lost siblings arrive on her doorstep. By law their guardianship belongs to the power-hungry marquess of Belden, but Bell will defy law and society to keep her newly reunited family together. Formidable in trade, unlucky in love, Lord Quentin Hoyt has eyed Lady Bell from afar - not just because she possesses the family fortune but because she's the most desirable woman he's ever met.

"Mac" MacTavish impulsively steals his late sister's neglected children, only to discover it's easier to handle a clipper in a hurricane than steer two ornery brats. What he needs is a nanny until he can take the children back to his parents in America. Bea Cavendish has settled for a quiet life of feathering her father's nest - until he dies, and she's left with an estate she doesn't know how to manage. Alone and terrified, she doesn't know what to make of the very big, very angry man appearing at her door with two adorable hooligans in tow.

Wycliffe Manor has been neglected for decades. Its new heirs are determined to create a welcoming home. Yet soon after the latest family moves in, bones are uncovered in the orchard . . . and odd strangers arrive. When her curate father returns his family to Gravesyde for the marriages of the manor's heirs, gawky spinster Patience Upton has high expectations—until her father is murdered. Shock at learning her father had a mysterious past leads to alarm that the killer may have been after his notebook, which she now possesses.

Minerva Peniston, intrepid spinster and book lover, is determined to capture the villain who tried to shoot a duke at a book auction—imperiling her father's position and the only home she's ever known. And now the same wealthy bibliophiles are gathering at Wycliffe Manor . . .Paul Upton, overeducated and impoverished curate, has volunteered to assist the residents of Wycliffe Manor in preparing for a book auction to save the village and the manor's future. When an intriguing wallflower drags him into aiding her quest to find a potential killer, he agrees for her safety.

Spinster and secret novelist Clarissa Knightley and her gruff American engineer, Captain Huntley, along with their friend and cousin, the Honorable Jack de Sackville and Lady Elspeth, are to wed at last! In anticipation of the double wedding, friends and family are gathering at moldering Wycliffe Manor—until a dying stranger is discovered on the neglected grounds. Despite the tragedy, aristocratic wedding guests and their retinues, foreign and domestic, continue to arrive, not all by invitation.

Book View Cafe celebrates its fifth anniversary with an anthology of our favorite stories. From the fantasy and science fiction of our roots to steampunk, romance, historical and mainstream; from humor to life's hardest challenges, across the spectrum from light to dark.

Though enchanted by the selfless beauty of a duke’s granddaughter, Michael - a man of many names but none his own - has wisely kept his distance. But two years after the disastrous fire that brought Lady Blanche Perceval into his life, he is saddled with a lost, lying Irish waif and needs a woman’s understanding aid. To his dismay, the generous lady he remembers now despises him for deserting her when she needed him most.

Aidan Dougal is deadly, and he knows it. His self-imposed isolation is to keep others out of harm's way. However, it also makes any kind of intimacy impossible...and certainly not marriage! Asking for help is beyond him until a woman unlike any he's ever met slips into his life like an answered prayer.

All the Malcolms have some magic, but Lady Felicity's ability to read people's emotions simply by touching them or their possessions overwhelms her. She's reached a marriageable age, but how can she ever wed when she can see so clearly a man's guilty secrets?

Lady Leila Staines has always felt like an outcast among her magically gifted sisters. Desperate to discover her own talent, she seeks out Dunstan Ives, a dark and brooding aristocrat with a scientific bent who may hold the key to unleashing Leila's hidden powers.

The disappearance of the sacred chalice has brought disastrous weather and volcanic eruptions to the island of Aelynn. Ian Olympus, Aelynn's powerful leader, must venture outside the only home he's known to find the cup and save his people. Chantal Deveau has used her gift of music to write impassioned anthems for the Revolution and lullabies for her niece. But as the mobs grow more violent, the sensual timbre of a handsome stranger in a monk's robes calls more seductively than her music.