Showing results by narrator "Esther" in All Categories

My heart is thumping with fear as I stare out at the snow-capped mountains. This ski trip to the French Alps was meant to be a chance for me and my two sisters to put the past behind us after years of not speaking. Instead, I'm expecting the police to knock on the door of our chalet. I'd planned for our families to get to know each other, sipping hot chocolate while laughing together around the fireplace. I didn't think our winter getaway would end in murder.

It's summer in Bliss Bay. Ladybirds have descended upon the village, and event organizer Megan Fallon has a diary as clear as the sky. Although her wedding to American fiance Jack Windsor is a year away, excitement surrounding the biggest event of her life (after the birth of her daughter Evie, of course) is already building, and she's determined that nothing will take the edge off it. However, when a visitor to the village is found dead in suspicious circumstances, the police are left scratching their heads.

In a beautiful Belgravia house, Dowager Countess Georgiana intends to celebrate her son's birthday—delightful festivities are planned. Lord Stokely has a different agenda for the occasion, one concerning governance, politics, and the seizing of power. Burgoyne's Agency has yet a third and very dangerous design for the evening—the toppling of Britain's foremost charismatic personality and most photogenic peer—Stokely. Outside of Belgravia, Britain is in a turbulent state.

Who doesn't worry sometimes that smart phones, the Internet, and TV are robbing us of time and preventing us from having a life? How can we make the most of our time on earth? In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger offered one of the most famous answers to that question in his essay "On the Shortness of Life"—a work that has more to teach us today than ever before.

Twenty-six-year-old single mum Brianna Lewis (a.k.a. Bree) doesn't believe in fairy tales - not after being abandoned by the father of daughter, Isabelle. Suddenly finding herself in dire straits, she converts her garden shed into a rental suite in hopes of climbing out of the financial hole she's in. But when the only person interested in renting the suite turns out to be to Leopold Davenport, the ridiculously good-looking co-worker she loves to hate, she knows she must choose between being happy and being broke.

On a spring night, a lone nightingale starts to sing in the boughs of the old village oak tree and a local psychic predicts that it will sing every night until a village mystery is solved . . . As if the excitement surrounding Megan and Jack's forthcoming nuptials isn't enough, a TV antiques show arrives in Bliss Bay to film an episode on the village green, and a trinket Des bought years ago in a junk shop for pennies turns out to be worth thousands . . . and a magnet for trouble.

Formed in 1940, Special Operations Executive was to coordinate Resistance work overseas. The organization's F section sent more than 400 agents into France, 39 of whom were women. But while some are widely known - Violette Szabo, Odette Sansom, Noor Inayat Khan - others have had their stories largely overlooked. Kate Vigurs interweaves for the first time the stories of all 39 female agents.

Dubbed 'Lady Scandal' thanks to her gossip-stirring past, Portia Fairhaven, the widowed Countess of Blakewell, is no stranger to rumors and innuendos. Although freed of her unhappy marriage, she is still forced to maintain as spotless a reputation as she can manage for the sake of her son. That is, until a desperate search for her lost half brother takes her to the darkest depths of London’s underworld and straight into the arms of one brawny, undeniably handsome East End rogue.

Daniel Sullivan needs a wife; the bank insists they will only finance his business if he gets married. What's he to do when the woman he's interested in is promised to another?

Mary Ryan leaves the orphanage and heartbreak behind and follows her friend Katie to Clover Springs to become a mail order bride. She's nervous, but reminds herself that Davy Sullivan must be a nice man or Katie wouldn't have recommended him.

One hundred and fifty years ago, global warming brought humankind to the edge of extinction. In a desperate bid for survival, 4,000 genetically enhanced soldiers - the last slice of humanity - were sent to eight space stations. To serve. To protect. Then the Critamal arrived, uninvited. Waves of aliens now work to break through the Orbitos' defenses, the black-shelled creatures seeking to colonize the vacated and barren world. War is their reality. All Romy can do is fight alongside her knot and watch from the mocking midst of the stars as Earth rises and falls in the distance.

Princess Cordelia is used to being overshadowed by her many brothers and sisters. So when she's offered the chance to attend her brother's wedding in a faraway kingdom, she leaps at it. In Northhelm, she'll finally have the chance to stand out. And maybe, just maybe, she'll even find romance. But not everything in the Northhelmian court is as it appears. With her brother distracted by the wedding, only Ferdinand, the ugliest man at court, will listen to Cordelia's concerns.

Princess Adelaide has been missing for years. And that's exactly the way she wants it. Haunted by her past, not even the curse that entraps her is enough to make her long for her old home. But her past finds her anyway, in the form of a handsome prince from her childhood. Adelaide doesn't want to let Gabe in, but a sinister force is spreading fear throughout her new kingdom, and only Gabe has the will to help her. Adelaide can't refuse his assistance - not when the evil might soon ensnare much more than a solitary princess.

Lore has spent years dedicated to one purpose. Save the kingdom, give her people the freedom they deserve, and show the humans that they were in the wrong. But when she finally returns with her dragon at her side, she realizes that some things are not so black and white. The kingdom they return to is not the one they have seen before. The elves have taken over, the throne is now theirs, and the humans they left behind are nowhere to be found. Umbra is a husk of what it once was, with the same mistakes repeated by the hands of a different species.

Amanda Bartlett, widowed countess of Kingston, is a woman beyond reproach. Married at 19, she dutifully provided the earl with an heir and a spare before his death three years ago. Since then, Amanda has lived a simple, quiet life - a life that, if she were honest, has become more than a trifle dull. So when an adventure literally drops into her lap, in the shape of a mysterious book, she intends to make the most of it - especially if it brings her closer to a charismatic stranger.

Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace - leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before - a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes.

Medieval queens were seen as mere dynastic trophies, yet many of the Plantagenet queens of the High Middle Ages dramatically broke away from the restrictions imposed on their sex, as Alison Weir shows in this gripping group biography of England's fourteenth-century consorts. Using personal letters and wonderfully vivid sources, Alison Weir evokes the lives of five remarkable queens: Marguerite of France, Isabella of France, Philippa of Hainault, Anne of Bohemia and Isabella of Valois.

How can we think more deeply about our travels? This was the question that inspired Emily Thomas's journey into the philosophy of travel. Part philosophical ramble, part travelogue, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery, when philosophers first started taking travel seriously. It meanders forward to consider Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness.

Hay secretos que hemos guardado mucho tiempo. Vigilantes. Insomnes. Eternos. Y pronto dejarán de ser nuestros.

When Daisy dreamed of leaving home on an adventure, she never imagined ending up trapped in a tower, cut off from the world and invisible to others. The years pass slowly, leaving Daisy desperate to reclaim her old life, however dull. But her captor has bigger plans, and Daisy knows she can’t just rescue herself. She has to shatter her captor's enchantments forever. When opportunity comes, however, it arrives in an unexpected guise. Young and handsome, Prince Xander has come to rescue a princess from a tower. Instead, he finds himself battling at Daisy's side for the fate of a kingdom.