Showing results by narrator "Mary Wells" in All Categories

England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she's interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country - only to witness a murder upon her arrival.

Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters: hiding from the world on account of their mother’s ill health, their brother Alexei’s secret affliction, and rising controversy over Father Grigori Rasputin, the priest on whom the tsarina has come to rely.

After her livelihood slips through her fingers, Alexandra Mountbatten takes on an impossible post: transforming a pair of wild orphans into proper young ladies. However, the girls don’t need discipline. They need a loving home. Try telling that to their guardian, Chase Reynaud: duke’s heir in the streets and devil in the sheets. The ladies of London have tried - and failed - to make him settle down. Somehow, Alexandra must reach his heart....without risking her own.

Sophie Dix fled Stuttgart with her brother as the Nazi regime gained power in Germany. Now, with her brother gone and her adopted home city of Paris conquered by the Reich, Sophie reluctantly accepts a position restoring damaged art at the Jeu de Paume museum under the supervision of the ERR—a German art commission using the museum as a repository for art they’ve looted from Jewish families.

Although beautiful young widow Phoebe, Lady Clare, has never met West Ravenel, she knows one thing for certain: He’s a mean, rotten bully. Back in boarding school, he made her late husband’s life a misery, and she’ll never forgive him for it. But when Phoebe attends a family wedding, she encounters a dashing and impossibly charming stranger who sends a fire-and-ice jolt of attraction through her. And then he introduces himself...as none other than West Ravenel.

The time for Antonia’s court presentation has finally arrived, but how will she be received? Not only by the King, but by his Majesty’s new mistress Mme de Pompadour, and also the French nobility? This seems the least of the Duchess’s worries, until the Duke comes face to face with the Comtesse Duras-Valfons in the very public space of the Hall of Mirrors.

Miss Chloe Fong has plans for her life, lists for her days, and absolutely no time for nonsense. Three years ago, she told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night. Except now he’s back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. In his defense, it took him years of attempting to be serious to realize that the endeavor was incompatible with his personality.

Pretty and pampered, Lavinia Yardley always dreamed of becoming a duchess. But family disgrace forces her into marriage with the most vile duke in England, and she finds herself desperate for a way out. When a rustic stranger mistakes her for globe-trotting botanist Muriel Pendrake at a train station, Lavinia has a split second to decide whether to submit to her fate or steal someone else's.

Raised among London’s most notorious criminals, a twist of fate landed Adelaide Frampton in the bright ballrooms of Mayfair, where she masquerades as a quiet wallflower—so plain and unassuming that no one realizes she’s the Matchbreaker…using her superior skills as a thief to help unwilling brides avoid the altar, all while hiding her own scandalous past.

A mysterious artifact zaps Isabelle Rochon to pre-Victorian England, and suddenly her love of historical authenticity collides with the reality that she's a modern-day girl. But when a thief steals her card case, she determines to retrieve the time-traveling artifact. Now she must hunt down the case, navigate the pitfalls of stiff society London, conceal her time-traveling origins, and resist her growing attraction to Lord Montagu, a viscount so hot he curls her shower-loving toes.

Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.

Max Wolff is a committed soldier of the Reich. So when he is sent home wounded, only to discover that his mother is sheltering two young Jewish women in their home, he is outraged. His mother’s act of mercy is a gross betrayal of everything Max stands for. He has dedicated his life to Nazism, fighting to atone for the shame of his anti-Hitler father’s imprisonment. It’s his duty to turn the sisters over to the Gestapo. But he hesitates, and the longer Max fails to do his duty, the harder it becomes.

Six Award-Winning Authors have contributed new stories to A Timeless Romance Anthology: All Regency Collection. Listeners will love this collection of six regency romance novellas.

Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants portrayed in Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, Margaret Powell’s classic memoir of her time in service, Below Stairs, is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high. Powell first arrived at the servants' entrance of one of those great houses in the 1920s. As a kitchen maid - the lowest of the low - she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and bootlaces to be ironed.

Some wallflowers bloom at night...Violet is a quiet girl. She speaks six languages, but seldom raises her voice. The gentlemen aren’t beating down her door. Until the night of the Spindle Cove Christmas ball, when a mysterious stranger crashes into the ballroom and collapses at Violet’s feet. He’s wet, chilled, bleeding, and speaking in an unfamiliar tongue. Only Violet understands him. And she knows he’s not what he seems. She has one night to draw forth the secrets of this dangerously handsome rogue. Is he a smuggler? A fugitive? An enemy spy?

Domestic harmony is once again disrupted at the villa, this time by one of the Duke’s ex-lovers—the Comtesse Duras-Valfons, claiming Roxton is the father of her infant son, which is supported by the Salvan ancient aunts.

It’s been a year since her wretched cad of a husband died and Valencia, the Dowager Duchess of Dedham, is finally her own woman. Flitting from party to party, freedom is sweet and life should be perfect. Until the new duke surfaces. Nothing like the haughty noblemen who populate the ton, Rhain, the newly minted Duke of Dedham, is a big brawny Welshman with an accent that makes Valencia’s knees go weak as he boldly moves into her home with his six wild unwed sisters. The rude and humorless usurper thinks her vain and spoiled.

Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the newfound freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived.

Brighton, 1813. The upper class departs London's bustling streets for the serene seaside elegance of the Royal Pavilion. A summer of relaxation and romance beckons, especially for Lord Roland Percy and Lady Grace Tilbury. Yet, tranquillity is shattered when a key military advisor is found murdered and his secret military codes stolen, plunging the Prince Regent into a frenzy. Under royal edict, the Pavilion is locked down, leaving Roland and Grace with a daunting ultimatum: recover the missing codes or forfeit the royal favor on their budding courtship.

What happens when a bride says no? He is the bastard son of a duke, arrogant, handsome, a little bit dangerous, and, of course, one of the most sought-after bachelors in London. He is also about to be publically jilted by some chit of a girl! Blake Stephens' pride isn't about to let him be humiliated, so he charges after his bride to the wilds of Scotland, determined to bring her to the altar. What happens when the heart says yes? He is promised to one woman, but discovers his soul stirred by…the chit's sister!