Showing results by narrator "Helen Stern" in All Categories

They are his inspiration. He is their obsession. Icon, rebel, unabashed romantic… With a single look painter Thomas Rodin conveys the ecstasy of creativity—the pleasures awaiting the woman who can fuel his artistry.

Walton Wood College's 10 year reunion will be night to remember for these three women. In "Twice the Pleasure", Caitlyn finally gets the passionate encounter she's always dreamed of with the boy who got away... and his best friend. For Willa, the party means a red-hot reunion with her ex-husband--now darker, sexier and eager to be in command--in "Second Time Around".

A Girl from Zanzibar is a riveting modern immigration story for a brave, new, and globalized world. Current events, murky international finance, intrigue, and a search for self are played out in the story of Marcella DiSouza. Marcella is a smart, ambitious young woman of Portuguese Indian-Arab background, who follows a dangerous path from her home in Zanzibar to the shadowy business world of London to a teaching position in a small Vermont college.

The first chapter of a manuscript arrives on Publisher Marina’s desk. She assumes it’s just another novel by another aspiring writer. As the chapters arrive one by one, Marina is convinced they are about her past. There’s only one person who can know everything about the scandal, the trial, and the trauma that nearly broke her. This is one story that should never be told, and Marina is so desperate she will do anything to stop it getting out.

After a nasty breakup, Tally Gladstone has no interest in anything serious. But she's dipped her wary toe back into dating with a few blind dates - all bad…or worse. The only good thing to come out of it is a sizable following on social media. Her latest date is doomed from the get-go - he isn't even straight. But at least he knows someone who meets her every very exacting wish....

Elizabeth Morgan didn't intend to abandon her very proper life. But that's the best way to find her true – and less proper – self. So here she is in Australia, standing in front of a man who's clad only in a towel. Nathan Jones is so tempting he could be the ideal candidate to help this good girl be very bad!

It is the eve of the Longest Night. Eliza Baker and the rest of Lord Jayden's servants excitedly prepare for the lavish festival as their masters enjoy a head start on the debauchery that awaits. Eliza's madly in love with Kell, a sweet, deliciously sexy guard. Kell returns her feelings, but is striving to make himself a worthy man before he asks Eliza's father for permission to court her. To keep the Demon of Winter at bay, an offering must be made during the festival.

This is the story of Esther Simpson, a remarkable woman history has largely forgotten, but whose selfless actions left an indelible mark on the cultural and intellectual landscape of the modern world. Forgoing marriage, family, even, it seems, a private life, she committed her whole life resettling academic refugees before, during and after World War Two. She thought of these refugees as her family and by the end of her life could count among her 'children'.

Wretched be the woman of wealth and fortune who fails to produce a suitable heir....And wretched is what Duchess Camille feels living with the cruel and debauched duke. But that soon turns to desperation when she learns her lecherous husband is plotting to have her killed to make way for a more nubile and fertile companion. Knowing she cannot sit idly by and wait for death, she flees into the night, taking with her her own young lover - the stable hand Henri - and her most loyal servants.

Pirate captain Thayer Drake lures ships onto reefs for plunder, and business is lucrative. Yet, saving a lass from drowning after her ship wrecks becomes more than he bargained for when the crazy wench dives back into the raging sea for her blasted purse. Tavern songstress Gilly McCoy, penniless and fleeing from the man who murdered her lover, stowed away on the doomed ship. Now at Drake's mercy, Gilly must earn her passage by performing for the captain. And that is not all: she must also kiss the captain at every ring of the ship's bell....

"There I was, retired from time pirating, enjoying a full if somewhat conventional life as a wife and mother. Then a chance encounter with a stranger drew me back into a world I'd thought I'd left, quite literally, in the past. From his odd behavior and even odder answers to my questions, I knew Phineas Grubb was up to something. I should have trusted my instincts—before he pulled out a time-travel mechanism and dragged my brother, Bacon, back with him...."

"I'm a time pirate - born in 1810, now a 21st-century woman. I travel through time trying to right wrongs without disrupting the fragile balance between what is and what can never be. That's why it's vital that I go to 1836 and find the man who conned my brother out of his Time Travel Mechanism as quickly as possible. If the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could change the world as we know it."

Victoria's work with automatons has gained her renown and changed the face of London. But her concern that the clockworks are taking too many jobs away from humans, creating social unrest, is ignored. Given the ugly mood of the underclass, she fears more outbreaks of violence similar to the murder spree of the notorious Southwark Slasher.

To the rest of the ton, Lord and Lady Atwood seem to have the perfect marriage. They wed for love and their marriage bed doesn't lack for passion - but Imogen is haunted by the memory of her first marriage, while Charles harbors secret thoughts and desires he's been unable to confess to his wife. Then Charles's ex-lover Alexander arrives in town, throwing Charles into a tailspin - and awakening a surprising attraction in Imogen. Now, both have to face the possibility that they need more than each other.

Catherine Collins, a very ordinary young woman - plain, quiet, often overlooked but possessing a reputation for having great common sense. Or so her distant cousin Elizabeth Darcy believes when she recommends her as governess for little Matilda Courtney. Catherine travels to Northumberland, full of good intentions to do her best and be a credit to the family. But appearances and reputations can be deceptive, and Robert and Martin Courtney will soon learn exactly what type of girl Elizabeth has sent them.

Paris, 1789. As the shadow of the guillotine falls over a nation at war with itself, three very different women find themselves caught up in the storm of revolution...

Over twenty years of marriage to Max, Prue has remained a busy, contented mother and stepmother. Now, Prue's stepdaughter, Violet, has returned with her new husband from New York and, suddenly, Prue is precipitated into a secret life. As she moves between a sleepy village in Hampshire and buzzing London, Prue finds herself crossing the boundary between innocence and knowledge, exploring the line between the gluttony and surrender of desire and facing the stark realities that result.

The hectic world we live in demands so much of you, it can be exhausting to keep up. You crave spa days and holidays to recharge but, while they offer short-term respite, they don’t give you the long-term rejuvenation you really need. To achieve complete rest, we need to develop eight different rest habits. Packed with simple activities, backed by science and personal experiences, calmism takes a fresh look at the eight essential habits for rest and offers a menu of easy-fit options to give you the variety that’s key to wellbeing.

In the summer of 1889, a young man sits painting a line of elms in Kensington Gardens. One day, he glimpses a mother at play with her two daughters and decides to include them in his picture. From that moment, he is haunted by dreams that seem to foreshadow his doom. A century later, in Kentish Town, a painter and her grown-up daughters receive news of an ancestor linking them to the long-vanished double portrait of Molly & the Captain. Meanwhile friendship with a young musician stirs unexpected passions and threatens to tear the family apart.

Politicians from all sides compete to convince us they can fix our immigration “problem”, but all the solutions on offer look remarkably similar. Apparently, if we want less inequality at home, we need less immigration from abroad. But what if this assumption is wrong? What if the drive to restrict migration isn’t reducing poverty here, but creating a migration system that is actually exacerbating local inequality? In The Huddled Masses, migration researcher Katy Long shows why we need to rethink the relationship.