Showing results by narrator "Jill Tanner" in All Categories

It has been 12 years since a dark, murderous figure stalked the alleys and courts of Whitechapel. And yet, in the summer of 1900, East London is still poor, still brutal, still a shadow city to its western twin. Among the reformers is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones, recently graduated from medical school. With the help of her influential fiance - Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal MP - she works to shut down the area's opium dens that destroy both body and soul.

When her vile brother's wicked scheming ruins her reputation, Eleanor Chivenham is forced into a marriage of convenience. Yet there is much more to her new husband than meets the eye, and soon her heart is filled with unexpected desires.

In Atonement, three children lose their innocence, as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935, and their lives are changed forever. Cecilia Tallis is of England's priviledged class; Robbie Turner is the housekeeper's son. In their moment of intimate surrender, they are interrupted by Cecilia's hyperimaginative and scheming 13-year-old sister, Briony. And as chaos consumes the family, Briony commits a crime, the guilt of which she shall carry throughout her life.

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores, and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night, where bright hopes meet the darkest truths. Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save, and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.

Stephanie Laurens' hot-blooded romances, including her New York Times best-selling Bar Cynster series, have earned her legions of loyal devotees. The beginning of an exciting new saga, The Lady Chosen introduces the distinguished war veterans of the Bastion Club, single gentlemen not entirely committed to staying that way.

Viscount Torrington is the hottest commodity in town as London's matchmaking season begins. But the viscount only has eyes for the penniless Widow Carrington, who has recently been accused of murder.

Reluctant love and shared faith blossom during the daily chores and arguments of tobacco farmer Drew O'Connor and Lady Constance Morrow. Constance is everything Drew despises in a wife - she cannot cook and she prefers mathematical equations to cleaning. Worst of all, she has red hair! But when the two are forced into a marriage of convenience, Drew soon realizes how blessed he truly is.

It is London, 1914. World War I looms on the horizon, women are fighting for the right to vote, and explorers are pushing the limits of endurance in the most forbidding corners of the earth. Into this volatile time, Jennifer Donnelly places her vivid and memorable characters, including Willa Alden, a passionate mountain climber who lost her leg while summiting Kilimanjaro with Seamus Finnegan - and will never forgive him for saving her life.

All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life: Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth remains an ever-present pain.

Mary J. Macleod and her husband left the London area for an idyllic place to raise their young children in the late '60s, and they found the island of Papavray in the Scottish Hebrides. There they bought a croft house on a "small acre" of land, and Mary J. (also known as Julia) became the district nurse.

London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.

When a comet appears in the sky over England in 1066, Ailith, a young Saxon wife, feels sure that it can only bode well, in spite of her husband's fears. With a child on its way, the couple are prosperous and content. Yet, within a year, Ailith's joy turns to heartache as her husband and her child are taken from her and the conquering Normans' advance.

Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister, and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. In poor health, Bramble sees the world as one of degeneracy and raucous overcrowding, and will not hesitate to let his companions know his feelings on the matter. Peopled with pimps, drunkards, decadents, and con-men, Humphrey Clinker displays Smollett's ferociously pessimistic view of mankind, and his belief that the luxury of 18th-century English existence was the enemy of sense and sobriety.

Adam Bede (1859), George Eliot's first full-length novel, marked the emergence of an artist to rank with Scott and Dickens. Set in the English Midlands of farmers and village craftsmen at the turn of the 18th century, the book relates a story of seduction issuing in "the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis". But it is also a rich and pioneering record - drawing on intimate knowledge and affectionate memory - of a rural world that we have lost.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

Arriving in Constantinople in 1273, Anna Zarides vows to prove the innocence of her twin brother, Justinian, who has been exiled to the desert for conspiring to kill a nobleman. Disguising herself as a eunuch named Anastasius, Anna moves freely about in society, maneuvering close to the key players involved in her brother’s fate, including Zoe Chrysaphes, a devious noblewoman with her own hidden agenda, and Giuliano Dandolo, a ship’s captain conflicted by his growing feelings for Anastasius.

A best-selling author of more than 25 historical romances, Jane Feather boasts more than 10 million copies of her books in print. Rushed to the Altar kicks off a new trilogy in high style. In order to inherit a fortune, Jasper Sullivan, Earl of Blackwater, must rescue a “fallen woman.” So when a lady of the night attempts to pick his pocket, he makes a daring proposal. Everything seems to have dropped into place for Jasper—but he may have made a colossal blunder.

First published in 1861, The Mill on the Floss was a best-seller in its day. This classic novel explores the traditions and moral expectations of an English rural community. Maggie Tulliver is a girl of uncontrollable romantic ideals. But her brother, along with most of society, cannot accept her brashness and vitality. Narrator Jill Tanner gracefully unfolds this tragic tale of love and loss.

Kate Sutton is all arms and legs. She possesses none of her sister Alicia’s honey-eyed beauty, but is intelligent and willful like her grandfather. It is an injustice, then, when Kate is falsely accused of Alicia’s wrongdoing and is banished to remote Elvenwood Hall. But the world Kate encounters in Derbyshire, England, is so strange and otherworldly that she has little time for regret. Elvenwood Hall has another, secret name - the Perilous Gard - and a mysterious history to go with it. It isn’t long before Kate has a hundred questions about her new home.

Sorcha knew the mission was dangerous. Leaving the safe grounds of her brother's kingdom and parlaying with the elves across their border...well, treachery seemed at least as likely as true peace. But to support her sister, Sorcha would brave far more than the underhanded ways of the elves. Or so she thought, before she was taken hostage.