Showing results by narrator "Lorna Bennett" in All Categories

Rosemary Thorn's life takes another surreal turn as she prepares to host the most unlikely event of the season, while her daughter Athena juggles exam stress and organizing the town's Imbolc ritual. Darkness is stirring in the nearby forest, and a hunger-driven force threatens to consume everything in its path. With vampire politics, fae realm adventures, and cantankerous deities in the mix, Rosemary and Athena must confront both external dangers and their own inner demons.

Set in the vibrant fourteenth century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who rule despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already-married Katherine. Their affair persists through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption.

Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious 12-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.

When Grace’s husband, Adam, inherits an isolated North Yorkshire cottage, they leave the bustle of London behind to try a new life. A week later, Adam vanishes without a trace, leaving their baby daughter, Millie, in her stroller on the doorstep. The following year, Grace returns to the tiny village on the untamed heath. Everyone - the police, her parents, even her best friend and younger sister - is convinced that Adam left her. But Grace, unable to let go of her memories of their love and life together, cannot accept this explanation.

Written by a Welsh practitioner, this book shares the magical traditions of the land of the red dragon, exploring deities, fairies, folklore, charms, plants, and magic with dozens of exercises for hands-on practice. Explore the history and terminology of Welsh magic and methods for honoring the land. Discover how you can incorporate traditional Welsh folk magic into your modern witchcraft practice, with exercises for honoring those who came before, connecting with the spirit of your home, protecting against adversity and malignant spirits, changing the weather, and much more.

In The Tech Coup, Marietje Schaake explains how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies.

To celebrate their engagement, DCI Arthur St. Just and Portia De’Ath visit the quiet village of Maidsfell in Cornwall. Upon arriving, they find the villagers in an uproar over plans to redevelop the local seafront.

Julia Larwood’s Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they’ve already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the point: Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?

Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems.

Sixteen-year-old Wendy Darling’s life is not what she imagined it would be. The doldrums of an empty house after her brothers have gone to school, the dull parties where everyone thinks she talks too much, and the fact that her parents have decided to send her away to Ireland as a governess - it all makes her wish things could be different. Wendy’s only real escape is in writing down tales of Never Land. After nearly meeting her hero, Peter Pan, four years earlier, she still holds on to the childhood hope that his magical home truly exists.

Rosemary's chocolate shop is thriving with the help of Papa Jack, but it isn't long before the town is under attack by mysterious swampy monsters, and the local election reveals a dark side to the normally peaceful village. Meanwhile, despite her mother's reservations, Athena is determined to embark on a journey into the fae realm to uncover her heritage and play a role in forging a treaty between magical beings. Join Rosemary and Athena as they navigate vampire politics, pesky pixies, complicated magical family dynamics, and feisty familiars!

Affectionately known as the Queen Mother, she was born a commoner and never expected to be Queen. Yet, her life was forever changed with the abdication of her brother-in-law, Edward VIII, and she rose to become one of the most popular royal figures. Helen Cathcart's fascinating account charts the life of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, from her birth to her life as Queen Mother. Drawing information from family letters, royal journals, and the personal recollections, The Queen Mother is an exceptionally detailed picture of one of the most influential women of the twentieth century.

Adele has had a colorful romantic past, but she's finally found her soulmate in Tom. They're engaged, and she's looking forward to a future of blissful happiness. But then she realizes her ex-boyfriends are turning up dead. At first, the deaths seem accidental, but soon a sinister pattern emerges. All of Adele’s former partners are being killed off—in the order she dated them. As the body count grows, Adele has to figure out who is doing this and why. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time until the killer gets to Tom.

Valoree no longer has to masquerade as her murdered brother and scour the oceans as Captain Red. She no longer has to command his pirate band in a quest to regain his birthright. She has been named heir to Ainsley Castle. But no executor would ever hand over the estate to an unmarried pirate wench and her infamous crew - no matter to whom she'd been born. And the will distinctly states that in order to inherit, Valoree must be married to a nobleman...and pregnant.

Rosemary and Athena's lives are thrown as the big Summer Solstice festival brings a series of mysterious events. Rosemary's chocolate shop plans are being waylaid by strange disappearances and uninvited visitors. Meanwhile, Athena is sure the astrological lessons at Myrtlewood Academy hold the key to unlocking the town's latest mystery, even if her mother doesn't want to hear about it. Can Rosemary and Athena manage to work together and cast aside their stubbornness before thousands of festival-goers succumb to a magical catastrophe?

It seemed the perfect way to avoid three million in taxes on a five-million-pound estate: change the trust arrangement. Everyone in the family agreed to support the heiress, the ravishing raven-haired Camilla Galloway, in her court petition—except dreary Cousin Deirdre, who suddenly demanded a small fortune for her signature. Then Deirdre had a terrible accident. That was when the young London barristers handling the trust—Cantrip, Selena, Timothy, Ragwort, and Julia—summoned their Oxford friend Professor Hilary Tamar to Lincoln’s Inn.

Rosemary and Athena are just settling into their new life in the unapologetically magical village of Myrtlewood. After so many years in financial turmoil, things are looking up. Rosemary even nabs the perfect part-time job while waiting on a certain handsome vampire lawyer to process her inheritance. Life is surprisingly peaceful until strange disappearances throw everything into chaos leading up to the Spring Equinox.

As the festival of Beltane draws near, mysterious fires are springing up around the magical village of Myrtlewood, and Rosemary Thorn can't help but try to solve the case. Rosemary already has too much on her plate with a hoard of foundling children to house and her own teenager to raise. On top of all this, she has run out of excuses. There's nothing standing between Rosemary and her dream of becoming a magical chocolatier. Well, nothing except her own self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Athena Thorn is yearning for the fae realm and harboring a secret that could put the whole town at risk.

Young barrsiter Michael Cantrip has skipped of to the Channel Islands to take on a tax-law case that's worth a fortune—if Cantrip's tax-planning cronies can locate the missing heir. But Cantrip has waded in way over his head. Strange things are happening on these mysterious, isolated isles. Something is going bump in the night —and bumping off members of the legal team, one by one. Soon Cantrip is telexing the gang at the home office for help. And it's up to amateur investigator Hilaray Tamar (Oxford don turned supersleuth) to get Cantrip back to safety of his chambers—alive!

To understand what it is to be a Princess Royal, Helen Cathcart skillfully portrays the lives of the foremost royal daughters from the days when princesses were "ladyes" and the King's eldest son was styled Prince Royal, through to our present Princess Royal.