Showing results by narrator "Liz Pearce" in All Categories

The highly-anticipated final volume of the critically-acclaimed science fiction anthology series....

Emilie de Marais is more at home holding scalpels than embroidery needles and is desperate to escape her noble roots to serve her country as a physician. But society dictates a noble lady cannot perform such gruesome work. Annette Boucher, overlooked and overworked by her family, wants more from life than her humble beginnings and is desperate to be trained in magic. So when a strange noble girl offers Annette the chance of a lifetime, she accepts. Emilie and Annette swap lives. But when their nation instigates a terrible war, Emilie and Annette come together....

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.

In the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks' dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar. In "The Cemetery for Lost Faces", two orphans translate their grief into taxidermy, artfully arresting the passage of time. The anchoring novella, The Unfinished World, unfurls a surprising love story between a free and adventurous young woman and a dashing filmmaker burdened by a mysterious family.

Prince Jean-Marc Charming Arundel, known to friends and enemies alike as "Prince Charming," is handsome, well-mannered, brave, a peerless swordsman, a cunning tactician—and a liar, a con man and a fraud. For years he has been travelling from one kingdom to the next, rescuing endangered princesses and maidens, securing their troths and his place in their fathers' palaces, then looting their treasuries and having it away before dawn.

Former party girl Theophania Bogart is hiding in San Francisco to escape a family scandal, but her carefully constructed new life is threatened when she sees Tim Callahan fall from a window. The police don't believe his death was an accident, and they seem to think Theo had sufficient motive to wish him dead. And when Theo's friend and business partner is also murdered mere days later, the police start digging even deeper into the secrets Theo's been running from.

When captured rebel Scotsman Alex MacKinnon is granted the king’s mercy—transport across the Atlantic Ocean and exile to the colony of North Carolina—he’s indentured as a blacksmith to Edmund Carey, prosperous owner of Severn Plantation. The arrangement devastates the Scot, who mourns the life he lost and finds life on a slave plantation intolerable. Unwittingly, Alex is drawn into the plight of Carey’s slaves, particularly those connected to Carey’s stepdaughter, Joanna.

Kay's father has gone missing on Christmas Eve. And when Kay and her sister Ell go to his office, everyone he works with claims never to have heard of him. So later that evening, when Kay wakes up to find two mysterious strangers outside her bedroom window, talking about her father, she demands to know what's happened to her dad. The two strangers are wraiths, on a mission to bring Kay and Ell's father to their world - the world of woven stories and grand imagination that their father has spent his career studying. Only things in that world have gone very wrong.

Moody Aster and her spoiled sister, Ursula, are the daughters of Jasper Lourdes, Major of Bears and lord of all the realm. Rivals, both girls dream of becoming the Bear queen someday, although neither really deserve to, having no particular talent in...well, anything. But when their uncle Bram murders their father in a bid for the crown, the girls are forced onto the run, along with lowly Dev the Bearkeeper and the Lourdes's half-grown grizzly Alcor, symbol of their house.

The war in the Bear Highen is over. Aster, at thirteen, has defeated her uncle and become the High Queen. Peace is good, but things are still difficult: political challenges confront her, personal challenges stymie her, and the massive Hemoth Bear, symbol of the House of the Bear, is beginning to resist her control. When, during a royal hunt, Aster stumbles on a young girl living in a nest of wyverns, matters become even more complex. Because this girl is not a girl at all. She is a living star, come down from her constellation, on a mission both terrible and glorious.

Impressed by the work of the puppet master and his apprentice, Tavia's ruler, The Margrave, has ordered dozens of life-size marionette soldiers to be sent to Wolfspire Hall. When the orders for more soldiers come in with increasingly urgent deadlines, the puppet master's health suffers and Pirouette, his daughter and protégé, is left to build in his stead. But there is something far more twisted brewing at Wolfspire - the Margrave's son wants Pirouette to create an assassin. And he wants her to give it life.

Late one evening as the stars begin to twinkle, Harper and her friends are flying on her magic scarlet umbrella when they see a girl running on air. She leads them to the Circus of Dreams, a menagerie of wonders suspended in the sky. There, they meet the mesmerizing mermaid acrobat, the spectacular circus baker, and the mysterious fortune-teller, all more dazzling than even Harper could dream up. But as the friends learn about the Circus of Dreams, they discover an important secret about Harper’s past that could change everything....

Harper lives in the City of Clouds, an enchanting place where it rains every day and an umbrella is always a good idea. With her aunt Sassy, her beloved cat, Midnight, and all of her neighbors in the Tall Apartment Block, every day is full of possibility. But when every cat in the city goes missing - including Midnight - Harper is determined to find all of the precious pets. And she’ll need a magic, flying umbrella to help in her search.

Three cell phones ring in an opulent London suite. The calls go unanswered, because their recipients are dead. Earlier that night, four old friends and lovers meet for a reunion dinner. Miko and Robert haven't seen each other in 10 years; Miko hates Robert for the money he's made with shady ethics. Unbeknownst to Miko, his wife, Veera, also slept with Robert the last time everyone was together. Robert's young trophy wife, Elise, has no old grudges to bear, but will be swept up in the murderous fray.

At 21 the passionate and headstrong Ann Veronica Stanley is determined to rule her own life. When her autocratic father forbids her, via formal letter, from attending a fashionable art-school ball, and even further refuses to allow her advanced study of science, she decides she has no choice but to leave her family home and make a fresh start alone.

Harper and her friends want to help the Wild Conductor win back his place in the magical Circus of Dreams. They put on a wondrous show, but their plan goes horribly wrong. Instead of the Wild Conductor, the ringmaster selects Harper to show off her incredible musical skills for the world to see. But once inside the circus, Harper learns of the Fire Star, a girl with her own extraordinary gift. She shines like a star whenever she hears music. And Harper may have figured out why….

Harper is on a mission! Rumor tells of the mysterious Ice Raven who lives among the ebony trees, singing a magical song that can melt even the hardest of hearts. Now the Wild Conductor wants to capture this mythical bird and create the greatest orchestra ever known. So Harper and her friends set off to find the mythical bird. Their journey takes them from the mysterious Night Forest where fairy tales are more than they seem to the City of Singing Clocks. But soon Harper realizes she faces a terrible dilemma. Should a wild, free creature like the Ice Raven ever be tied down?

Kay’s father is still missing — and worse, now nine-year-old Ell is too. More determined than ever, and with time running out as the 12 nights come to an end, Kay must puzzle out the riddles laid before her in this new land of Bithynia — and help restore the world to order — before her dad and sister are gone forever.

Rosemary Gresham has no family beyond the band of former urchins that helped her survive as a girl in the mean streets of London. Grown now, they concentrate on stealing high-value items and have learned how to blend into upper-class society. But when Rosemary must determine whether a certain wealthy gentleman is loyal to Britain or to Germany, she is in for the challenge of a lifetime. How does one steal a family's history, their very name? Peter Holstein, given his family's German blood, writes his popular series of adventure novels under a pen name.