Showing results by narrator "Helen Stern" in All Categories

Mary Bennet - overlooked, laughed at, despised - married a missionary and vanished into a life of service out in Africa. But now Miriam, her daughter, is coming to England, disliking everything she has been told about her family. Her aunts and cousins are expecting someone quiet, dull and bookish, just like her mother, not the quick-tempered, impulsive girl who arrives. How can this adventurous girl with her desire for freedom possibly fit into their well ordered world? And what havoc will she cause as she tries?

Politicians from all sides compete to convince us they can fix our immigration “problem”, but all the solutions on offer look remarkably similar. Apparently, if we want less inequality at home, we need less immigration from abroad. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if the drive to restrict migration isn’t reducing poverty here, but creating a migration system that is actually exacerbating local inequality? In The Huddled Masses, migration researcher Katy Long shows why we need to rethink the relationship.

One day, 15-year-old Emily Dickinson meets a mysterious, handsome young man. Surprisingly, he doesn't seem to know who she or her family is. And even more surprisingly, he playfully refuses to divulge his name. Emily enjoys her secret flirtation with Mr. "Nobody" until he turns up dead in her family's pond. She's stricken with guilt. Only Emily can discover who this enigmatic stranger was before he's condemned to be buried in an anonymous grave. Her investigation takes her deep into town secrets, blossoming romance, and deadly danger.

Many years have passed since the dramatic events of Pride and Prejudice. In The Cousins of Pemberley series we follow a new generation of heroines - cousins with lives as different and interesting as those enjoyed by their mothers. Cassandra Wickham, daughter of a flirt and a scoundrel, an innocent abroad in a world where money can buy you anything, even a bride. When danger threatens and the man she thought she could rely on fails her, there is only one place she can turn to for help...Pemberley.

The scandal would rip through English society - but how can they resist falling recklessly, irreversibly in love? A series of disasters in Eleanor Lindale’s well-to-do family kept her out of the social whirl where she might have attracted suitors. Now, at age 25, she believes she is irretrievably on the shelf. But her quiet life in Brighton abruptly changes when she’s asked to chaperone her beautiful seventeen-year-old niece, Lady Aurora Crossways, for a brief season before Aurora’s wedding to Philip Radford, Earl of Huntley.

A Girl from Zanzibar is a riveting modern immigration story for a brave, new, and globalized world. Current events, murky international finance, intrigue, and a search for self are played out in the story of Marcella DiSouza. Marcella is a smart, ambitious young woman of Portuguese Indian-Arab background, who follows a dangerous path from her home in Zanzibar to the shadowy business world of London to a teaching position in a small Vermont college.

After a police operation ends in catastrophe, Eve West is suspended. She faces expulsion from the force until John Duran - a criminal Eve incarcerated herself - offers his help. But he wants something in return. Convinced there has been a miscarriage of justice, Duran wants Eve to free a fellow inmate convicted of the murder. But why is a brute like Duran assisting this other inmate? And why has he specifically chosen Eve to investigate?

This is the story of Esther Simpson, a remarkable woman history has largely forgotten, but whose selfless actions left an indelible mark on the cultural and intellectual landscape of the modern world. Forgoing marriage, family, even, it seems, a private life, she committed her whole life resettling academic refugees before, during and after World War Two. She thought of these refugees as her family and by the end of her life could count among her 'children'.

Madelaine Alexander is on a mission. When her boss sends her to the hottest nightclub in town to meet with the owner, she won't be deterred, even if that means standing in line for 58 minutes in torturous heels while she'd rather be home in her pj's with a bowl of popcorn.

After a nasty breakup, Tally Gladstone has no interest in anything serious. But she's dipped her wary toe back into dating with a few blind dates - all bad…or worse. The only good thing to come out of it is a sizable following on social media. Her latest date is doomed from the get-go - he isn't even straight. But at least he knows someone who meets her every very exacting wish....

"There I was, retired from time pirating, enjoying a full if somewhat conventional life as a wife and mother. Then a chance encounter with a stranger drew me back into a world I'd thought I'd left, quite literally, in the past. From his odd behavior and even odder answers to my questions, I knew Phineas Grubb was up to something. I should have trusted my instincts—before he pulled out a time-travel mechanism and dragged my brother, Bacon, back with him...."

They are his inspiration. He is their obsession. Icon, rebel, unabashed romantic… With a single look painter Thomas Rodin conveys the ecstasy of creativity—the pleasures awaiting the woman who can fuel his artistry.

Pirate captain Thayer Drake lures ships onto reefs for plunder, and business is lucrative. Yet, saving a lass from drowning after her ship wrecks becomes more than he bargained for when the crazy wench dives back into the raging sea for her blasted purse. Tavern songstress Gilly McCoy, penniless and fleeing from the man who murdered her lover, stowed away on the doomed ship. Now at Drake's mercy, Gilly must earn her passage by performing for the captain. And that is not all: she must also kiss the captain at every ring of the ship's bell....

"I'm a time pirate - born in 1810, now a 21st-century woman. I travel through time trying to right wrongs without disrupting the fragile balance between what is and what can never be. That's why it's vital that I go to 1836 and find the man who conned my brother out of his Time Travel Mechanism as quickly as possible. If the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could change the world as we know it."

Victoria's work with automatons has gained her renown and changed the face of London. But her concern that the clockworks are taking too many jobs away from humans, creating social unrest, is ignored. Given the ugly mood of the underclass, she fears more outbreaks of violence similar to the murder spree of the notorious Southwark Slasher.

. In the Cousins of Pemberley series we follow a new generation of heroines - cousins with lives as different and interesting as those enjoyed by their mothers. The Darcys have always worried about their daughter Jane. Gentle and delicate, she has been cosseted and protected from the world. But all the Darcy wealth and power cannot save Jane from heartbreak and betrayal. Can she find a courage no one believes she has? Can she break free from the golden cage that imprisons her?

It is the eve of the Longest Night. Eliza Baker and the rest of Lord Jayden's servants excitedly prepare for the lavish festival as their masters enjoy a head start on the debauchery that awaits. Eliza's madly in love with Kell, a sweet, deliciously sexy guard. Kell returns her feelings, but is striving to make himself a worthy man before he asks Eliza's father for permission to court her. To keep the Demon of Winter at bay, an offering must be made during the festival.

Over twenty years of marriage to Max, Prue has remained a busy, contented mother and stepmother. Now, Prue's stepdaughter, Violet, has returned with her new husband from New York and, suddenly, Prue is precipitated into a secret life. As she moves between a sleepy village in Hampshire and buzzing London, Prue finds herself crossing the boundary between innocence and knowledge, exploring the line between the gluttony and surrender of desire and facing the stark realities that result.

When a heartsick Maggie is sent on an errand by her mother to Cannes, she is keen to get it over with as quickly as possible. She has been tasked with collecting a treasured box of photos from her late grandmother Elizabeth’s best friend, the impossibly glamorous Allegra Morgon who is desperate to tell Maggie all about the year she and Elizabeth spent in Paris. The sixties were in full swing, the air hummed with jazz, artists and students made the streets their own, and the City of Love was weaving its magic.

Wretched be the woman of wealth and fortune who fails to produce a suitable heir....And wretched is what Duchess Camille feels living with the cruel and debauched duke. But that soon turns to desperation when she learns her lecherous husband is plotting to have her killed to make way for a more nubile and fertile companion. Knowing she cannot sit idly by and wait for death, she flees into the night, taking with her her own young lover - the stable hand Henri - and her most loyal servants.