Showing results by narrator "Virginia Ferguson" in All Categories

In the Metfield of the 1930s, you could do all of your shopping without leaving the village, have a choice of pubs and "spend happy evenings helping to dig potatoes and listening to the old boys". If this sounds too idyllic to be true, Evelyn Whiting's charming memoir of growing up in this Suffolk community is quick to remind us that making a living from the land was hard and tedious work in those days. There was no electricity and water came from the sky, or from the pond.

Now, Emma is a back-to-school PhD student with bigger and better things to worry about. That is, until one night, exhausted, slightly tipsy, and on her way home from a party, the glaring white light of a car comes crashing toward her, changing her life forever. Instead of waking up in a 21st-century hospital, she finds herself waking up in the backwaters of London, Victorian England, 1881.

This seaside town holds more secrets than you could ever imagine. Grace and Dick Thomas are the proud owners of the Sandybank Guest House, a pristine establishment set in a prime location overlooking the beach. Tourists come and go all year round, enjoying the beautiful setting and their host's wonderful culinary skills. However, the permanent residents of this pretty coastal town cause net curtains to flutter and tongues to wag with their myriad of secrets and tales to be told.

As her freshman classmates move into dorms at Cornell University, Olivia Somerset suffers a nervous breakdown. When months of coaxing and analyzing fail to rouse Olivia from her stupor, big sister Miranda decides the sisters should fly off to Barcelona for some “vacation therapy”. After a mistake at their Barcelona hostel puts the Somersets in a large coed dorm room, Olivia and Miranda are saved by kindly Mr. Brown and his son, Greg, who happily volunteer to surrender their private room.

It’s 1890. A veteran, Detective Rudyard Bloodstone has fought a brutal battle and witnessed war horrors that haunt his nightmares. Now, one of those horrors has followed him home from Africa. A vicious predator, the Cape cobra, can kill a man in 30 minutes. A suspect using the snake as a weapon in robberies is terrorizing London. When the crimes escalate into murder, a victim’s daughter Honoria Underhill becomes the focus of the killer.

Victoria Walsingham is head over heels in love with Isaac Quinn, the son of the Duke of Daventry, and she can't imagine spending the rest of her life with anyone else. But when Isaac admits that, despite his feelings for her, he cannot possibly marry the daughter of a country doctor, Victoria is left heartbroken.

Alan Brodie, a highly decorated former Special Forces operative in the British army, is a trained killer with extensive experience in undercover black ops in the deadly battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other deniable war zones. Retired from the military and now working in the private security sector, Brodie has just agreed to buy a beach front bar/restaurant in the Almeria region of Spain.

Fenella Conyers, a distant Raynham connection, unexpectedly appears at Beaumatin, the ancestral home of the Barons Raynham, with a request and a gift. After a life spent roaming the globe, she wants to settle down in the Cotswolds and asks if her noble cousin has an empty cottage where she could stay until she can find her own place. The gift is an extremely rare snowdrop—a yellow “spiky” that Fenella mysteriously acquired in her travels and which she has named Mystic Mayhem.

Recently retired from the Royal Navy, much acclaimed Captain Bartholomew Grayson has come home to London. He’s looking forward to the Christmastide season, especially now that he’s adopted his 10-year-old former cabin boy. The waif needs a family, and Bart wants to recapture the joy of his own childhood. Too bad the fly in the ointment is a strong-willed harridan with a tart mouth intent on stealing his cargo.

Fainting in the notorious nobleman’s arms is the smartest move the self-proclaimed spazz ever made. Now her picture decorates every gossip rag in Britain, and the public wants to know who the Devil Duke’s new squeeze is. Offered a sizable sum, Izzy De Luca travels to England where she will pose as the Duke of Devoy’s new bride. It seems the rake’s reputation needs some rehabilitation, and the fresh-faced orphan is just the girl to brighten his tarnished image.

Cordelia Honeyfield has been sent to the seaside "for her health" - and the last thing she wants is the meddling nonsense of a country doctor. Her wild spirit is frowned upon by the town, and familial embarrassment now means she's stuck at the beach in a brisk March wind, waiting to meet this doctor as she promised her father. Dr. Timothy Walsingham is about to meet a new elderly patient - a Miss Honeyfield whose letters have had him in stitches. As he waits by the sand, a beautiful woman catches his eye.

How much would you gamble for love? Rufus Lovell has been thrust unexpectedly into riches and gained a new set of friends who delight in wagers and bets, with nothing too small or too big to gamble on - even marriage.

Beautiful, titled, and wealthy to boot, Lady Lydia Beaufort was expected to have a spectacular London Season. There was just one problem; the eccentric daughter of the Earl of Galway had no intention of becoming the ton’s darling. Especially if it involved humoring the awful herds of fortune hunters and greedy second sons, intent on making her their bride. All Lydia wanted was to be left alone in peace, to read her beloved Lord Byron. That is, until an incorrigible rogue of a Marquess burst into her life and turned all her ideas about love upside down.

The witty, wily princess, Elizabeth Tudor has survived the turmoil of her formative years, and finally, is now Queen of England. Rising to the throne on a wave of popularity, Elizabeth is keen to avoid the mistakes of her siblings, and bring England to a new sense of unity and hope.

The last thing the Duke of Greystone wants is a wife, until the Lady Jane Blackmore seeks out his quiet corner of Earl Braxton's ballroom. But there she stands, attempting to shut out the rest of the world by simply closing her eyes, but the duke understands better than most that life is never that simple.

An accidental trophy wife must survive the deepest depths of high society. Meet Amy, the world's most improbable trophy wife. She has a degree, ambitions, and something resembling a mind of her own. The trouble is, she just doesn't use it anymore. Married to handsome aristocrat, Harry Green, Amy's world is a whirlwind of luxury, labels, and lunches. But amidst the peerages and polo of the privileged, few lie wolves in minks' clothing. Before she knows it, Amy's perfect existence is plunged into chaos by the poshest of plots.

Phillip Brown and Timothy Sweitzinger became best friends as boys, went off to war together, and remained steadfast as men to guard each other’s backs from all threats. When Timothy is found in bed with a dead woman, covered in her blood and with no memory of what happened, Phillip vows to uncover what really happened. Phillip’s investigation takes him all over the city of Baltimore, from the lowest of its citizens to the highest, and even to those who were thought to be above suspicion.

In late November a few weeks after rare book expert Crystal McInney’s relationship with her long-time boyfriend ends abruptly, she trades the sunshine of Orlando, Florida, for a more traditional Christmas atmosphere in her hometown of Placer, South Dakota. Unsure of her future, she begins a new job: cataloging and valuing the massive private library of Saul Custer, the town curmudgeon. Saul’s son Jason, whom she had jilted in their junior year of high school, shows up from New York City with his fiancée.

"What happens when an irresistible force encounters an immovable object?" The ancient paradox becomes a real-life problem when a woman, whose wealth and influence are matched only by her arrogance and violent temper, encounters someone with the strength of character to rival her own. It is bad enough that this new, formidable foe is a mere girl. But to make matters worse, she also happens to be the great lady's only granddaughter.

It's 412 AD, and the Roman Empire is on the brink of collapse. In Albion, Lalia gathers with fellow supplicants to call on the Goddess Cybele to aid Londinium. When a rival mob attacks, a golden orb is lost, trapping the goddess in her statue. Before she turns to stone, Cybele lays a curse on Lalia's head; she is bound in a cycle of reincarnation and death. Only the return of the orb will set her free.