Showing results by narrator "Bianca Amato" in All Categories

The Earl of St. Merryn needs a woman. His intentions are purely practical - he simply wants someone sensible and suitably lovely to pose as his betrothed for a few weeks among polite society. He has his own agenda to pursue, and a false fiancée will keep the husband-hunters at bay while he goes about his business. The simplest solution is to hire a paid companion. Finding the right candidate proves more of a challenge than he expected.

Anglemore Park is the ancestral home of Lady Emily Hargreave's husband Colin. But the stately calm of country life is destroyed when their neighbor, the Marquess of Montagu, bursts through the French doors from the garden and falls down dead in front of the shocked gathering. But who has a motive for murdering the young aristocrat? The lovely cousin who was threatened by his engagement, the Oxford friend he falsely accused of cheating, the scheming vicar's daughter he shamelessly seduced or the relative no one knew existed who appears to claim the Montagu title?

Claire Barclay finds a home in England after 25 years of travelling. She has money, a tour guide business, and ambitions. She is shocked by the murder in her quiet village, but is not going to give up on the haven she has finally found. With the help of her sister, the barracuda barrister, her new dog, new friends, and the unexpected stimulus of a new man in her life, she deals with suspicion, confusion, and threats.

In a futuristic world where predictive software can map out the lives of every living person and their descendants, Naomi Prynne is on trial. The charge: endangerment by way of a pregnancy. Thirteen jurors will determine whether Naomi is allowed to carry the pregnancy to term, but the jurors are also all plaintiffs, the software having predicted how Naomi Prynne’s child will affect each of them in life-changing ways.

In Secrets of the Nile, Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have joined his formidable mother on a holiday to visit the exotic treasures of Egypt. Their host, Lord Bertram Deeley, is a renowned amateur British collector of antiquities, who has invited his closest friends on a lavish cruise up the Nile to his home at Luxor. But on the first night of their journey, he suddenly collapses after offering a welcome toast, a victim of the lethal poison cyanide. Who amongst this group of his nearest and dearest would want to kill their generous host?

From the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words comes a rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries. In a squatter camp on...

Java Island, 1941. Six-year-old Rita Vischer cowers in her family’s dug-out bomb shelter, listening to the sirens and waiting for a bomb to fall. Her charmed life on Java—living with other Dutch families—had always been peaceful, but when Holland declares war on Japan and the Japanese army invades Indonesia, Rita’s family is forced to relocate to a POW camp, and Rita must help care for her little brother, Georgie.

A widow at just thirty years of age, Rose Finlay is determined to put all ideas of marriage and family behind her and pursue an independent life. But when she notices a young woman about to be led astray by a roguish aristocrat, bitter memories from her past arise, and she feels compelled to intervene. The unintended consequences of her efforts will ultimately force Rose to reexamine her life in a new light.

A serial predator is on the prowl in Liverpool—seven victims so far—and he’s already chosen his next one. The police can’t catch him. He leaves no trace. No one has been able to provide a reliable description. Detective Cassie Rowan goes undercover in a dangerous game of cat and mouse through the teeming backstreets of Liverpool. But how long will it be before he turns the tables and begins hunting her?

Master storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, the team behind Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, collaborate again to create five captivating tales incorporating the element of fire.

What magical beings inhabit Earth’s waters? Some are as almost-familiar as the mer-people; some as strange as the thing glimpsed only as a golden eye in a pool at the edge of the Great Desert Kalarsham, where the mad god Geljdreth rules; or the unknowable, immense Kraken, dark beyond the darkness of the deepest ocean, who will one day rise and rule the world. Here are seven tales from the remarkable storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson. Vividly imagined and written, they transform the simple element of water into something very powerful indeed.

Claire Barclay, owner of a mystery book tour company, collects three women at the Manchester airport who have flown in from Tucson, Arizona, then starts on a tour of Yorkshire and the sites of mystery novels. She meets the rest of the tour in York: two British couples and Phillip, a single man.

Emma Sutton knows she should be satisfied with her position at London's Central Telegraph Office. But ever since she was orphaned young, she's longed for a family of her own. Things look up when a handsome engineer is thrown into her orbit and he sends Emma the love note of her dreams.

It’s been twenty-six years since the accident, but Helen still lives on autopilot, going through the motions of work and motherhood. Her one wish is for her daughter Julia to settle down with her own family - so Helen can let go. Julia has dealt with her mother’s emotional distance by looking for love in all the wrong places. But when her latest choice drives away her best friend, Claire, Julia realises she’s on her own.

Family secrets run deep for Grace, a young girl growing up in Cape Town during the 1980s. Her family secrets spill over into adulthood and threaten to ruin the respectable life she has built for herself. When an old childhood friend emerges after disappearing a decade earlier during a clash with apartheid riot police in the Cape Flats, where South Africa’s colored community makes its home, Grace’s memories of her childhood come rushing back, and she is confronted, once again, with the loss that has shaped her.

In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence - burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor.

Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, have accompanied her dear friend Ivy Brandon on a trip to Pompeii. When they uncover a corpse and the police dismiss the murder as the work of local gangsters, Emily launches an investigation of her own. She seems to be aided by the archaeologists excavating the ruins, including a moody painter, the enigmatic site director, and a free-thinking American capable of sparring with even the Duke of Bainbridge. But each of them has secrets hiding among the ruins.

She was tainted. Once known as the Mongrel, Lahlil only had one purpose: to reap blood and carnage for those who paid the right price. When the Shadari called upon Lahlil to lead the rebellion against Norlanders - telepathic and bloodthirsty invaders who conquered their lands and enslaved their people to the mines - she delivered. Then she ran. Now, Lahlil must return to Shadar to save the person she loves the most and rebuild. She finds a kingdom that has devolved to political discord and an old enemy's ships sailing just beyond the horizon.

Trilby opens in the Latin Quarter of Paris where Trilby O'Ferrall works as an artist's model. Her grace and ingenuous charm make a poignant contrast to the cruel magnetism of Svengali, under whose spell she falls. Using hypnotic powers, Svengali shapes her into a virtuoso singer, the toast of Europe, but her golden voice, and even her life, become fatally tied to him.

Livia Blackburne gathered sterling reviews for her fast-paced YA debut, Midnight Thief. In this thrilling sequel, Kyra employs her preternatural thieving skills to preserve a shaky alliance with the Palace. Keeping her newly discovered heritage a secret, Kyra must embrace her Makvani blood to save the city from her Demon Rider kin and their bloodthirsty wildcats.