Showing results by narrator "Susan Duerden" in All Categories

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Lady Tabitha Hampton has the memory of an elephant. But this talent fails to help the twenty-seven-year-old bluestocking attract the attention of a single wealthy suitor. With three sisters of marriageable age, a sickly father, and a series of bad investments that left them impoverished, Tabitha's marriage could save or ruin her entire family. Arthur, the Duke of Collingford, needs a wife but not just any lady will do. Arthur's future duchess must be perfect in every way-fair of face, impeccable manners, with enough social influence to impact his parliamentary projects.

From the award-winning author of Perdido Street Station and The City & the City "Richly conceived." The New York Times Book Review Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday...

Step into the glittering world of Regency and prepare to have your hearts warmed by Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Connie Brockway . . . During their annual Christmas pilgrimage to Scotland to visit their aged uncle in his decrepit castle, the Comte de Rocheforte and his cousin, Earl of Oakley...

On leave from his Highland regiment, Captain Liam Lockhart comes to London on an urgent mission: to repossess the stolen family heirloom that could save his ancestral estate. He never dreamed it would involve surrendering his heart, but the beautiful and scandalous socialite Ellen Farnsworth sets his Highland blood aflame with a will as strong and reckless as his own. Though bound to Liam by a soul-searing passion, duty impels Ellen to commit a terrible betrayal.

Science fiction is a portal that opens doors onto futures too rich and strange to imagine. Fantasy takes us through doorways of magic and wonder. For more than a decade award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan has sifted through tens of thousands of stories to select the best, the most interesting, the most engaging science fiction and fantasy to thrill and delight readers. 

Myfanwy Thomas awakens in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, she must trust the instructions left by her former in order to survive. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But...

In the fair autumn of Our Lord's grace 1431, the nuns of England's St. Frideswide's prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast.... And her niece, the angelic Thomasine.

Responsible for the care of an opium-addicted uncle, George's life poses dangers to a bride that he'll never risk. It's why he avoided the independent and kind Lady Jane last year, despite her brother's request he protect her during her season. His neglect no doubt led to Jane's tattered reputation. In reparation, he's sent preapproved suitors to the house party to ensure she marries well, not to a man whose life is a nightmare.

When Gia Landon is tricked into a London season by her father, she is pleased to have found a friend who shares her love of horses in the Duke of Roxburghe. The surly Scot enjoys living in London and hates the country, while Gia despises everything about society.

Georgiana Escott has one night to find the perfect man to ruin her and leave her with a tattered reputation so she can avoid an arranged marriage to an aging, despicable roue. With a misstep, she tumbles into the arms of the disgraced and dashing Lord Danvers. But Georgie doesn't know that the lover she has enticed to follow her into the night and the stranger she holds responsible for her misfortunes are in the same....

The Christmas season brings strange guests to the medieval nunnery of St. Frideswide's. They bear with them the badly mangled body of a villager, swearing they found the drunken fool lying in a ditch. But Meg, the victim's wife and a scullery maid of the cloister, thinks there are far fouler deeds afoot. As the players rehearse for the nativity, ancient scandals lick at their heels and dark desperation haunts Meg's steps as she finds cruel feudal laws threatening to strip away the lands that would support both her and her sons in the wake of her husband's death.

Eloisa James's dazzling new Georgian-set series continues with the Wildest hero them of all.... The handsome, rakish heir to a dukedom, Lord Roland Northbridge Wilde - known to his friends as North - left England two years ago, after being jilted by Miss Diana Belgrave. He returns from war to find that he's notorious: polite society has ruled him 'too wild to wed'. Diana never meant to tarnish North's reputation, or his heart, but in her rush to save a helpless child, there was no time to consider the consequences of working as a governess in Lindow Castle.

The first book in Eloisa James's dazzling new series set in the Georgian period glows with her trademark wit and charm. Things are about to get Wilde.... Lord Alaric Wilde, son of the Duke of Lindow, is the most celebrated man in England, revered for his dangerous adventures and rakish good looks. Arriving home from years abroad, he has no idea of his own celebrity until his boat is met by mobs of screaming ladies. Alaric escapes to his father's castle, but just as he grasps that he's not only famous but notorious, he encounters the very private, very witty Miss Willa Ffynche.

She didn't choose this life. But now she's in it, she'll be damned if anyone takes it from her. Ruby never wanted to be part of the family business. She was meant for a life far from the streets her father, Colm Byrne, ruled with fear and favors. But when a violent triad war leaves Colm fighting for his life and the Byrne firm exposed, Ruby is dragged into a world she thought she'd escaped.

Lady Betsy Wilde's first season was triumphant by any measure, and a duke has proposed - but before marriage, she longs for one last adventure. No gentleman would agree to her scandalous plan - but Lord Jeremy Roden is no gentleman. He offers a wager. If she wins a billiards game, he'll provide the breeches. If he wins...she is his, for one wild night. But what happens after Jeremy realises that one night will never be enough? He'll have to convince Betsy to say no to the duke.

It is an hour of desperate need for St. Frideswide's. Thrust into financial ruin by the incompetence and corruption of their former prioress, the nuns have become trapped under the thumb of Abbott Gilberd as he pries into every possible corner of the priory's life. In an effort to escape their desperate straits, Dame Frevisse is forced to journey to London in order to seek both a new prioress and financial aid for her beleaguered sisters.

To the guests at the mourning feast for Thomas Chaucer, the last words of Sir Clement Sharpe had been enough to damn him in the eyes of God. Detested by all who knew him, his final blasphemy had turned even God's anger against him and his death would be a lesson well-remembered. None among them would ever forget the sight of God striking down a sinning man, and each would keep in their heart the need to honor God's charity and love in all the hours of their lives.

A little over 10 years ago, Janine Marsh and her husband gave up their careers in London to chase the good life in the countryside of northern France. Having overcome the obstacles of starting to renovate her dream home - an ancient, dilapidated barn - and fitting in with the peculiarities of the locals, Janine is now the go-to expat in the area for those seeking to get to grips with a very different way of life. In this book, Janine regales us with the delights and dramas of a year attempting to live the rural idyll.

Hackney's underworld has a new queen, and she's not here to play nice. After the death of notorious gangland boss Colm Byrne, his daughter Ruby steps up to the throne. Sharp as broken glass and twice as dangerous, Ruby isn't just fighting to keep her father's legacy alive, she's reshaping it in her own ruthless image.