Showing results by narrator "Sasha Higgins" in All Categories

Lady Jaqueline Peabody is extremely vexed. Her nemesis, the Duke of Stone, has just ruined her life by matching her sister with a perfect gentleman. Except the gentleman in question has little in the way of income. With the family fortune in tatters, it means Jacqueline is tasked with marrying well—and must bid adieu to her dreams of a lovely spinsterhood with her pianoforte.

London is buzzing with the news that James Winters, the Duke of Wulverton—thought lost at sea a decade ago—survived in the harsh wilderness of the Yukon. Now he's been returned to his family, his responsibilities, and a nightmarish world of artifice and noise. He has three weeks to become a refined, elegant duke for the Queen . . . or doom the entire family to ruin and scandal.

Miss Lucy Bertram is content to spend her days writing scientific articles or curling up with a Gothic romance novel. Indeed, she'd rather stick a hatpin in her eye than attend a ball. But when her father, the eccentric botanist Sir Oswald, insists she accept the suit of a wealthy but stiffer-than-a-poker industrialist to save the family from penury, Lucy decides to act. She's certain her disowned brother, Monty, will take her side. But first she must find him in St. Giles's cutthroat rookeries.

Lady Madalene Ramsbury has been summoned home from Miss Bell’s Finishing School to some unfortunate news. In three weeks, she is to be married to a man she’s never met. Rather than face a life she does not want; she flees from her own engagement party and elicits help from a most unlikely source. Society’s golden boy, Everett, the Marquess of Northampton, was outraged when a young woman suddenly appeared in his curricle. Was she attempting to trap him into an unwanted marriage? It would be just like some overzealous mother to put her up to such a ploy.

Cursed at her Christening, Briar is doomed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her 17th birthday and plunge her kingdom into eternal slumber. Less than enthused about her fate, she fights to break it, but a hundred years later, the kingdom lies at the center of a forest of thorns. The curse is complete, and only true love's kiss will break it. Volunteering in the place of his brother, Leo is determined to brave the enchanted forest and attempt to end the 100-year-old curse.

All Lady Victoria Kirby wants is to dig in the dirt, take notations, and record history, thank you very much. Bumbling through ballrooms and getting disdained by the ton for her less than ideal looks, on the other hand, is the last thing she wants. But her reckless father has a different idea for her future when he puts up the ultimate ante - her hand in marriage - and loses. Over her dead body.

When radio presenter Casey Fallon answers the call, she assumes it’s a prank. But then a woman’s body is discovered, and she finds herself up against a cruel and calculating killer who wants her to find his victims before they take their last breath. Fifteen years ago, Casey was a key witness in the trial of serial killer Steve Noakes, and her evidence helped put him behind bars for the murders of five women. Someone remembers what happened that summer - someone who is desperate for revenge, someone who won’t stop until Casey has been punished.

Roach would rather be listening to the latest episode of her favorite true crime podcast than assisting the boring and predictable customers at her local branch of the bookstore Spines, where she's worked her entire adult life. A serious true crime junkie, Roach looks down her nose at the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking casual fans who only became interested in the genre once it got trendy. But when Laura, a pretty and charismatic children's bookseller, arrives to help rejuvenate the struggling bookstore branch, Roach recognizes in her an unexpected kindred spirit.

The men of Chitterton Fells are dropping like flies. And the membership of the Widows Club is growing bigger every day. Newlywed Ellie Haskell (nee Simons, thank you very much) is settling nicely into married bliss in the charming village of Chitterton Fells.

Having spent a childhood summer with Viscount Giles Weston, Angelica Wayne has never forgotten his kindness. But when he employs her as his daughter's governess, she finds him cold and formidable. A widower, Giles is engaged to the beautiful but indifferent Lady Barbara Darlington. Darkly cynical, he avoids emotional commitment and wishes to be married in name only. Despite Giles's attitude, Angelica comes to enjoy his company, and her feelings for him start to rekindle. When Barbara calls off the engagement, Giles asks Angelica to take her place as his bride.

Artemis Jones—respectable finishing-school teacher by day and Gothic-romance writer by night—has never lost sight of her real dream: to open her own academic ladies' college. When she’s unexpectedly called upon by a dear friend, a fellow Byronic Book Club member, to navigate her first London Season, she comes at once—who knows, perhaps she can court the interest of a wealthy patron for her school. It’ll all be fine as long as she can avoid her high-handed aunt's schemes to marry her off.

In the spring of 1853, Private Detective Laetitia Rodd receives a delicate request from a retired actor, whose days on the stage were ended by a theatre fire 10 years before. His great friend, and the man he rescued from the fire, Thomas Transome, has decided to leave his wife, who now needs assistance in securing a worthy settlement. Though Mrs. Rodd is reluctant to get involved with the scandalous world of the theatre, she cannot turn away the woman in need. She agrees to take the case.

Focused on a career in medicine and not on romance, Willa Duvall is thrown slightly off course during the summer of 1865 when she discovers a never-opened love letter in a crack of her old writing desk. Compelled to find the passionate soul who penned it and the person who never received it, she takes a job as a nurse at the seaside Crestwicke Manor. Everyone at Crestwicke has feelings—mostly negative—about the man who wrote the letter, but he seems to have disappeared. With plenty of clues but few answers, Willa's search becomes even more complicated when she misplaces the letter.

The day of 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) is universally acknowledged as a major turning-point in the history of the French Revolution. At midnight, Maximilien Robespierre was planning to destroy one of the most dangerous plots that the Revolution had faced. By midnight at the close of the day, his world had been turned upside down. He was an outlaw, on the run, and himself wanted for conspiracy against the Republic. He shot himself shortly afterwards. Half-dead, the guillotine finished him off. The Fall of Robespierre provides an hour-by-hour analysis of these twenty-four hours.

Have you ever wondered why celebrities look so rested in such a short time after giving birth? The answer: baby specialists like Helen Moon. A baby specialist and professional nanny for the past 25 years, Helen has worked closely with hundreds of families, including some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Helen knows that the first six weeks of a baby's life - when parents tend to be nervous, siblings are needy, and new babies need immediate and constant attention - has a huge impact on the entire family.

Tessa Templeton has thrived at Oxford University under the tutelage and praise of esteemed classics professor Christopher Eccles. And now, his support is the one thing she can rely on: her job search has yielded nothing, and her devotion to her work has just cost her her boyfriend, Ben. Yet shortly before her thesis defense, Tessa learns that Chris has sabotaged her career-and realizes their relationship is not at all what she believed.

Ellie Simons stands to inherit her Uncle Merlin's huge English country house. But on three utterly bizarre conditions. One: she must lose sixty-three pounds (rude!). Two: she must marry the fake fiance she's been passing off as her true love all weekend. And three: she must catch whoever killed Uncle Merlin in the first place.

Nat did something bad. Very bad. But she's not that person anymore. She has a new name and a new life, and no one, not even her husband Brett, knows what she did. She's desperate to keep it that way. When they escape the city to move to their dream home in the suburbs, it seems that life can't get any better. They quickly become friends with new neighbors Fen and Darius, and Nat begins to believe that she can finally put the past behind her. Until the letter arrives.

Georgiana Milford may be a wealthy heiress without title, but even she has her limits. It's vexing enough to be courted by every fortune-hunting noble during the Season—goodness, you'd think she was hiding a gold mine beneath her skirts! But this is not to be condoned. Because during a merry two-week party at a lord's country home, she's forced to endure her father's greatest enemy and the most wretched duke in all of England: the Duke of Despots.

Miss Venus Merriwell has been waiting for her prince to come since the tender age of fourteen. She wants a man who is selfless, academic like her, and free from all the wretched vices her gambler father enjoyed far too much before he left the Merriwell sisters practically destitute. Unfortunately, after a slew of romantic disappointments, there is still no sign of that prince at twenty-three and the only one true love of her life is the bursting-at-the-seams orphanage in Covent Garden that she works tirelessly for.