annie fields

After five unsuccessful Seasons on the marriage mart, Miss Adelaide Duveen has resigned herself to the notion that she's destined to remain a spinster forever—a rather dismal prospect, but one that will allow her to concentrate on her darling cats and books. However, when she inadvertently stumbles upon Mr. Gideon Abbott engaged in a clandestine activity during a dinner party, Adelaide finds herself thrust into a world of intrigue that resembles the plots in the spy novels she devours.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.

Melissa North had assumed that after eight years of not setting eyes on each other, her youthful attraction to - or an infatuation with - Julian Delamere, once Viscount Dagenham and now earl of Carsely, would have faded to nothing and gasped its last. Unfortunately, during the intervening years, she has failed to find any suitable suitor who measures up to her mark, and she is resigned to ending her days an old maid. Then she sees Julian across a crowded ballroom, and he sees her, and the intensity of their connection shocks her.

OCD-afflicted Griffin has just lost his first love, Theo, in a drowning accident. In an attempt to hold on to every piece of the past, he forges a friendship with Theo's last boyfriend, Jackson. When Jackson begins to exhibit signs of guilt, Griffin suspects he's hiding something and will stop at nothing to get to the truth about Theo's death. But as the grieving pair grows closer, listeners will question Griffin's own version of the truth - in terms of both what he's willing to hide and what true love means.