Showing results by narrator "Fiona Hardingham" in All Categories

Struggling with working-mother guilt, Marlene Greene hopes a camping trip in the forest will provide quality time with her three young children - until they see fires in the distance, columns of smoke distorting the sweeping view. Overnight, all communication with the outside world is lost. Knowing something terrible has happened, Marlene suspects that the isolation of the remote campsite is all that's protecting her family. But the arrival of a lost boy reveals they are not alone in the woods, and as the unfolding disaster ravages the land, more youngsters seek refuge under her wing.

Virginia Laydon, an infant at the end of Blood on the River, has now grown up in a colony that is teetering dangerously on the precipice of conflict with the native Algonquins. Virginia has the gift, or the curse, of the knowing - an ability that could help save the colony and is equally likely to land her at the burning stake as an accused witch.

Penniless and stranded in France after a bid to escape her cruel uncle goes awry, Cornelia Shaw is far from the Parisian life of leisure she imagined. Desperate and out of options, she allows herself to be recruited to Napoleon’s Grande Armée. As a naturalist, her mysterious ability to heal any wound with herbal mixtures invites awe amongst the soldiers…and suspicion.

Five strangers are brought together on a reality TV show, The Entrepreneur, to win a cash prize that could change their lives forever. When the five contestants move into a remote house and filming begins, their business plans are unveiled. But when one contestant wins a task by selling murderabilia, it sets in motion a chain of events that will test the sanity of each contender and put them all in danger.

Irréelle fears she’s not quite real. Only the finest magical thread tethers her to life - and to Miss Vesper. But for all her efforts to please her cruel creator, the thread is unraveling. Irréelle is forgetful as she gathers bone dust. She is slow returning from the dark passages beneath the cemetery. Worst of all, she is unmindful of her crooked bones. When Irréelle makes one final, unforgivable mistake by destroying a frightful creature just brought to life, Miss Vesper threatens to imagine her away once and for all.

When accident-prone Helen Grey finds a thong stuffed into the pocket of her boyfriend's best work trousers, it's time for her to move on. His excuse that he needed to dust the photocopier and just thought that it was a rag sounds like a lame excuse. Helen's life is propelled in an unexpected direction after her best friend, Ayshe, sets her a fourteen-day, life-changing challenge. Helen receives a task everyday which she must complete without question.

Her father may have sacrificed his own life to save hers, but heiress Gloria Meriwether-Astor is finding it difficult to forgive him. After all, how many young ladies of her acquaintance will inherit wealth, beauty, and a legacy of arms dealing? Now the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias is about to declare war on the Texican Territory and Gloria simply will not allow it. In company with Alice Chalmers and the crew of Swan, she takes to the air. Her intention - to stop the train carrying the final shipment of monstrous mechanicals into the Wild West.

Thirty-year-old Celeste Hamilton's life is at a crossroads: she has just left a disastrous marriage, and her estranged mother has recently died, leaving the family's rose business in jeopardy. Reluctantly, Celeste returns to the family home, a moated manor house in Suffolk, to help her two younger sisters sort out the estate and revive the business.

Agatha and Jaime have rescued their clan and returned home to Skye as heroes. But when Agatha uncovers a threat to their people, she unwittingly releases a terrible power that could kill every living thing on the island. Jaime must race to Scotia to hunt an ancient blood magic, which may be their only chance of survival. Meanwhile, Sigrid, a Norvegian girl with an unusual gift, journeys to the court of Ingland where a dangerous alliance is forming - one that will soon turn its vengeful eyes to Skye.

Agatha, Jaime and Sigrid must unite the people of Scotia and beyond as war comes to the Isle of Skye. But will betrayal and secrecy be their undoing? With the deadly phantom sgàilean defeated, Jaime and Agatha prepare to help their clan reclaim their compound from the treacherous Raasay people. But Sigrid, sent at the behest of Queen Beatrice, arrives with a warning: the kings of Norveg and Ingland have joined forces and plan to march north to annihilate the people of Scotia. The clan quickly turns to the Badhbh and his powerful blood magic.

It is 1666, one year after plague has devastated England. Young widow Cecilia Thorowgood is a prisoner, trapped and isolated within her older sister’s cavernous London townhouse. At the mercy of a legion of doctors trying to cure her grief with their impatient scalpels, Cecilia shows no sign of improvement. Soon, her sister makes a decision born of desperation: She hires a new physician, someone known for more unusual methods. But he is a foreigner. A Jew. And despite his attempts to save Cecilia, he knows he cannot quell the storm of sorrow that rages inside her.

For psychological profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön, life is good. She and her partner, investigator Peter Lindgren, have just returned from a dream holiday in Greenland, and the symptoms of her early onset dementia seem to be under control. Then they are asked to go to the small, sleepy industrial town of Ormberg to investigate a cold case: 10 years earlier a five-year-old girl's remains were found in a cairn near the town. With her dementia creeping back again, Hanne starts to keep a diary noting down everything she is likely to forget.

The year is 2113. In Jenna Strong’s world, ACID - the most brutal controlling police force in history - rule supreme. No throwaway comment or whispered dissent goes unnoticed - or unpunished. And it was ACID agents who locked Jenna away for life, for a horrendous crime she struggles to remember. But Jenna’s violent prison time has taught her how to survive by any means necessary. When a mysterious rebel group breaks her out, she must use her strength, speed, and skill to stay one step ahead of ACID and try to uncover the truth about what really happened.

Successful screenwriter Finn Masters just landed his dream job writing for Neighbors, one of Hollywood’s highest-rated, longest-running sitcoms. The only downside? It will put him back in proximity of the show’s universally adored, optimistic, altruistic star, Lavender Rhodes, who has been inadvertently ruining his life since they were school chums in England. But she doesn’t even know she destroyed his acting career and wrecked his relationship with the love of his life.

Gloria Meriwether-Astor's belief in doing the right thing has carried her across the world and through dangers that would have felled a lesser woman. She believed that if she married the dashing Captain Fremont, she could approach the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias with impunity. She could convince the prince to stop the war their fathers began. Sadly, belief and reality are two different things. The prince agrees to her proposal on one condition - that she annul her marriage and become his wife instead.

Margrethe Amelia Linden (Daisy to her friends) is a young woman of gentle upbringing, some talent as a watercolorist, and firm opinions that often get her into trouble. Determined to find her missing father, in the summer of 1895 she sets out for the last place he was seen: the Wild West. It's a rude shock when her younger sister stows away on the airship - such behavior no doubt the result of her unsuitable friendship with Maggie Polgarth and the Carrick House set.

Daisy Linden and her sister, Frederica, arrive by airship in Santa Fe, capital of the Texican Territories, determined to search for their missing father. But two surprises await them - the authorities' baffling refusal to help and a not-so-chance meeting with snake-oil salesman William Barnicott. To their joy, the Lindens find that their father has indeed been seen in Santa Fe. To their horror, it was an assignation with a cancan dancer in the dead of night.

This box set contains four novellas in the best-selling Magnificent Devices steampunk series.

An air voyage to remember turns into a disaster no one may survive. With her orphaned charges, Lady Claire Trevelyan joins the Earl of Dunsmuir’s family on an airship voyage to the Americas. If she can stay out of Lord James Selwyn’s way until her eighteenth birthday, she will be of age and cannot be forced into marriage. What she doesn’t know is that Lord James is in the Americas, too, with Andrew Malvern closing in on him - and the wonderful device he stole.

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