Carley Crumpets

Long before Suzanne Collins created Katniss Everdeen and Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower, there were many traditional folktales full of adventure, intrigue, and intrepid female characters. Feminist Folktales from Around the World collects these forgotten classics. Enjoy this collection of all four volumes - Tatterhood, Kamala, Sea Girl, and The Hunter Maiden.

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.

Lady Merritt Sterling, a strong-willed young widow who’s running her late husband’s shipping company, knows London society is dying to catch her in a scandal. So far, she’s been too smart to provide them with one. But then she meets Keir MacRae, a rough-and-rugged Scottish whisky distiller, and all her sensible plans vanish like smoke. They couldn’t be more different, but their attraction is powerful, raw, and irresistible.

Most debutantes dream of finding husbands. Lady Pandora Ravenel has different plans. The ambitious young beauty would much rather stay at home and plot out her new board game business than take part in the London Season. But one night at a glittering society ball, she's ensnared in a scandal with a wickedly handsome stranger.

All of London is abuzz over the imminent arrival of Wulfric Bedwyn, the reclusive, cold-as-ice Duke of Bewcastle, at the most glittering social event of the season. Some whisper of a tragic love affair. Others say he is so aloof and passionless that not even the greatest beauty could capture his attention. But on this dazzling afternoon, one woman did catch the duke's eye - and she was the only female in the room who wasn't even trying.

Wealthy and ruthless, Gabriel Duke clawed his way from the lowliest slums to the pinnacle of high society - and now he wants to get even. Loyal and passionate, Lady Penelope Campion never met a lost or wounded creature she wouldn’t take into her home and her heart. When her imposing - and attractive - new neighbor demands she clear out the rescued animals, Penny sets him a challenge. She will part with her precious charges, if he can find them loving homes.

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.

When Elizabeth Hotchkiss stumbles upon a copy of How to Marry a Marquis in her employer's library, she's convinced someone is playing a cruel joke. With three younger siblings to support, she knows she has to marry for money, but who might have guessed how desperate she's become? A guidebook to seduction might be just the thing she needs - and what harm could there be in taking a little peek?

London 1814... Drake, Duke of Manchester is searching the Marriage Mart for a perfect bride. He wants a woman who is poised, sophisticated, and worthy of the title Duchess. But most of all, he wants a woman who does not want the useless emotion of love. Socially awkward Miss Penelope Clayton isn't meant for marriage. A serious botanist, she has no desire to wed, so being forced by her guardian to participate in the Season to find a husband is torture.

Benedict Fairburn does not quite need his ailing great-aunt's fortune, especially since he'll have to marry to get it. His family, however, thinks otherwise - as do many of the eligible ladies in London - and the pressure is mounting. An embarrassment of attentions fill Benny's time, but the young lady he prefers roundly dislikes him. Claire Dalton, cousin to one of Benedict's oldest friends, is too busy debuting in Society to pay much attention to the Fairburn boy who once insulted her past bearing.