Showing results by narrator "Mary Sarah" in All Categories

A walking scandal surviving on little more than wits, whisky, and wicked skills in the bedchamber, Benedict Chatham, the new Marquess of Rutherford, is at the end of his rope. Deeply in debt and down to his last farthing, he must marry nothing short of an absolute fortune, or risk utter ruin. Enter Miss Charlotte Lancaster, unfashionably tall heiress to just such a fortune and a clumsy, redheaded disaster in her five London seasons. While she dreams of leaving England for a life of trade in America, her father schemes to trade her dowry for a title.

A shy wallflower, Caroline hasn't the faintest idea why the Duke of Readington chose her to be his bride. She could ask, but that would mean speaking to him...and she'd rather have a conversation with the devil Eric married Caroline for one simple reason: he wasn't in love with her. Having seen firsthand how love can bring a man to his knees, he's determined not to make the same mistakes his father did. After a winter storm leaves him stranded with Caroline, Eric turns around and finds himself stumbling over the wife he never wanted...but is slowly beginning to desire....or was it?

Furious at being tricked into marrying a woman who keeps a hedgehog in her pocket, Derek couldn't get away from Eleanor fast enough after their vows were read. It's been a year since he's seen her, and he has no plans to change that anytime soon - until his scheming cousin shows up and declares the union a sham. Now Derek has exactly one month to woo a wife he never desired and consummate a marriage he never wanted.

Detective Victoria Tyler is investigating Collins Bay's new serial killer, one of the city's vampires. Since they have marked her as a human to be killed or conquered, Tori knows that Michael is her only hope for survival. But she hasn't spoken to him since the night she tried to kill him. As the enforcer for the Italian vampire Cosca, Michael expects a certain amount of cooperation from his boss. That amount has been shrinking ever since their leader took a new sadist lover.

Painfully shy Jane Huxley is the furthest thing from a diamond of the first water. Bookish, bespectacled, and, well, plain, she never expected to befriend a dissolute charmer like Colin Lacey, much less agree to help him retrieve a lost family heirloom. Fortunately, he is nothing like his cold, rigid older brother. Unfortunately, he is not above deception if it means winning a wager. And that puts Jane in a most precarious position. For Harrison Lacey, the Duke of Blackmore, protecting his family honor is not a choice, it is a necessity.

On the eve of her profession as a nun, Lady Graeye Charwyck is called home to Medland by the father who disavowed her years earlier for the devil's mark she bears. Desperate to escape the convent, she agrees to wed a man she detests to provide an heir for her family's holdings. But when the king declares the Charwyck lands forfeit and awards them to their enemy, Graeye once more finds herself discarded.

The winds of change have brought great joy to Lady Arianna and Saybrook, who have recently welcomed an infant son to their family. They are still adjusting to their new life when a letter arrives from Arianna's dearest friend and former comrade-in-chicanery inviting them to a gala fiftieth birthday celebration in Switzerland. With the blessing of their surgeon friend, they decide to make the trip, only to find themselves once again drawn into a dangerous web of political intrigue that may ignite war throughout Europe.

It is a good thing that mothers understand what no one else seems to when you are the youngest child in the family, and are finally four years old. Bonnie is more than ready to join her older sisters and brother in the many adventures she sees come their way, whether it be sliding along the ice, searching for arrowheads, or going on that journey of all journeys-across the swinging bridge to school.

Miss Viola Darling always gets what she wants. Always. And what she wants more than anything is to marry James Kilbrenner, the earl of Tannenbrook. She's fallen hard for the giant, taciturn, surly brute, and she positively will have no other. The problem? He's not interested. Not even a little. But Viola cannot afford to lose. And she has her heart set on James. If only he will bend to a bit of persuasion.

Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battleground is the Internet. On one side the alt-right ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, struggle sessions and virtue signaling lurk behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures.

Believing only death will prevent him from returning to England, Sir Lucien de Gautier answers his king's call to arms. When he is captured and his family refuses the ransom demand, he finds himself bound to the oars of a galley. Enraged and embittered, he has no hope of escape - until a rich merchant's wife offers him freedom.

In July 1888, in a public garden in Arles, France, Vincent van Gogh meets a young woman who will change his life forever. He came to Arles to escape the strains of Paris and find a different light for his painting. Meeting Rachel was the spark he needed to rededicate himself. Feeding off the energy of this fascinating woman, fighting the hopelessness deep inside him, Vincent throws himself into his work.

Determined to find the men responsible for her disgraced father's murder, Lady Arianna Hadley disguises herself as a man and contrives to be hired as a chef in one of London's aristocratic households. But when the prince regent is poisoned by Arianna's special chocolate dessert, she finds her own quest has become intertwined with a far more deadly intrigue. The earl of Saybrook is asked by the government to investigate. When someone tries to kill them both, they become reluctant allies in the hunt to discover what evil is afoot.

Miss Maryann FitzWilliam is too witty and bookish for her own good. No gentleman of the ton will marry her, so her parents arrange for her to wed a man old enough to be her father. But Maryann is ready to use those wits to turn herself into a sinful wallflower. When the scandal sheet reports a sighting of Nicolas Ives climbing out the chamber windows of a house party, Maryann does the unthinkable. She anonymously claims that the bedchamber belonged to none other than Miss FitzWilliam, tarnishing her own reputation - and chances of the dastardly union her family secured for her.

Rejected by a sister who has allowed her new status as wife to Mr. Bingley to make her proud, Elizabeth Bennet goes to her uncle's estate in Derbyshire, ostensibly to assist her cousin in her introduction to society. In reality, Elizabeth feels there is nothing left for her in the neighborhood of her birth. Her uncle's estate is small, and Elizabeth must work while there, and though she finds her tasks easy to bear. She quickly becomes close to her young cousin and uncle, though her aunt is a hard, demanding woman.

For James Trent, Lord Huntington, there's no escaping the question that labeled him The Murdering Marquess: was his wife's death a tragic accident or a cold-blooded crime? He's avoided London's gossipmongers since that terrible night, as guardian to his younger siblings on his Essex estate. But trouble finds him when a veiled temptress with secrets of her own falls - quite literally - into his arms.

Bonnie's and Debbie's desire to get rich causes them to respond to a sure-thing magazine advertisement. They are soon embarked upon an ambitious summer of selling up and down the river. Not that circumstances end quite in the way they had imagined!

The Fairchild family is here again, and this time, Bonnie is old enough to begin the great adventure - school! We join Bonnie in the excruciating anticipation of the first day, when she will wear her new dress, carry a first reader and slate, and displaying nonchalance as she braves the swinging bridge - enter into the mysteries of schoolroom learning and playground rites in a woodland setting of the early 1900s.

School in the Kentucky hills goes from August to the last Friday before Christmas. After that the snows are too high, and later, the thawing rivers too full, for the Fairchild children, and their neighbors, the Wattersons, the Sawyers, and the Huffs to make it safely to the little school house in the woods. Now that Althy is 14, Mr. Fairchild has other plans for the long winter months. Learn, along with Bonnie, Debbie, Chris, and Emmy, what it is like to have school at home in the early 1900s.

Jonas Luciano is the new owner of The Dungeon, a newly renovated, vampire-themed bondage and blood club. He also has his hands full protecting Michael, the new padrone of the Italian vampiro cosca in Collins Bay, Florida. He is perfectly content to carry out Michael's orders and scramble the brain of anyone who threatens their safety. But protecting Tori, Michael's drop-dead sexy new compagna, is proving dangerous to his self-control. His lust becomes more powerful every night he is with her...