Showing results by narrator "Esther Wane" in All Categories

Like any mother, Chrissie wants to protect her family. She would do anything to keep them safe. So when a mysterious stranger turns up at her door, offering to prevent the deaths of the people she loves, it sounds too good to be true. The only problem: she must choose someone to die in their place. A substitute. When her daughter Holly has a terrible accident, Chrissie has no option but to enter the programme. In that horrifying moment, she would do anything to save her.

Ursula Smart, along with her dysfunctional family, heads to Scotland for a gentle weekend of foraging and camping in the Outer Hebrides. Their boat capsizes. Washed up on an uninhabited island, the Smart women face starvation, freezing conditions, and - worse - no Wi-Fi. A fun break swiftly turns into a desperate battle for survival. Someone begins killing them off one by one.

When Princess Liliana and her twin sister set sail for new lands, Lily hopes to find adventure and romance. But the people of Marin live under the shadow of a curse-one powerful enough to destroy entire kingdoms. To protect them all, Lily and 11 other princesses are forced to participate in a mysterious and secret tournament. Lily spends her nights competing in a magical underground realm and her days unraveling the dangers of this new court. Although she needs the help of the Marinese prince, Lily knows she can't let herself grow too close to him.

Making cupcakes can be murder. Especially when someone has poisoned them. Diana knows she's being framed for a crime she didn't commit, but who is out to make her look guilty, and why? Speaking of secret enemies...Fergus has done something terrible. Now part of a new crime-fighting duo, Diana finds herself immersed in a deep, dark conspiracy theory. At the heart of it is a mystery that has baffled investigators for decades. The whole thing is more ridiculous than anything Fergus has ever previously believed. The worst part is...she's starting to think it might all be true.

Digging up trouble is becoming a habit for Diana Flowers. But when she finds a collection of bones buried where she had planned to plant out her lupins, she can't believe her bad luck...especially as she doesn't think Diggory the dog is the one who buried them. Fergus has a wild theory about the identity of the skeleton beneath the flower field. More shockingly still, he might just be right.

Justin Rodale is the wealthy bastard son of the duke of Chanceworth. Educated with the rest of the aristocrats, he knows all the rules by which Society lives, but he is beholden to no one. Clarissa Kincaid has been raised to be the perfect English lady...in need of the perfectly respectable English husband. She's found her quarry, but the man won't commit, and she finds herself seeking assistance in the form of seduction lessons from someone the opposite of respectable...Justin.

Life isn't easy for a young woman alone in 19th Century Colorado, but when Emer Matthews needs to escape an untenable situation, she only has herself to depend on. She has no time for men having seen firsthand the high price women pay for love, so she seeks solace with the sister she's never met, Sorcha. But when Emer gets to Boston, she discovers her sister has moved to Clover Springs and she's left alone with no money and no means to go back to Colorado.

Mathematics prodigy, Caroline Jellico, plans to support herself by winning big in the gaming hells of London - while dressed as a boy. She's tired of waiting for the elusive Roe to notice her. She'll marry him or no man.

For the last few months, I've been content just watching her from afar, but one rainy night changes everything. Saving her from being roadkill wasn't something I thought about for more than a passing heartbeat. The girl I love wasn't going to die on my watch.

Mary Ryan leaves the orphanage and heartbreak behind and follows her friend Katie to Clover Springs to become a mail order bride. She's nervous, but reminds herself that Davy Sullivan must be a nice man or Katie wouldn't have recommended him.

How can we think more deeply about our travels? This was the question that inspired Emily Thomas's journey into the philosophy of travel. Part philosophical ramble, part travelogue, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery, when philosophers first started taking travel seriously. It meanders forward to consider Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness.

'I still have that recurring fear of something happening to me before I see you again, and before I can tell you myself just how much and how often I've realised during the last few months that I love you completely and to the exclusion of all others. Remember that, because if there wasn't you, my darling Mary, the world would seem very empty and meaningless.' Mary was only 21 when she met and fell in love with the privately educated 19-year-old David in 1938.

Ten years ago, Grace made her dying sister a promise - that she would look after Hope’s baby son as her own. Now, the man whose son she is raising has turned up on Grace’s operating table, fighting for his life. When an accusation of negligence follows, Grace is forced to confront not just the man who abandoned her sister, but also his mother, Norma - who blames Grace for taking everything she loves. Based on what her sister told her, Grace is sure she did the right thing to keep that promise. But what if Hope didn’t tell her everything?

Thirty years ago, Elise and Nathaniel shared a horrific trauma that united them in grief. Now, grown up and married with a young family, they feel their worst nightmares are behind them. Until the day their daughter is abducted and murdered. Both Elise and Nathaniel lost their mothers to a notorious killer who manipulated innocent victims into taking their own lives. Could it be that "the Watcher" has returned for another round of the same sadistic game? Why now? And why are Elise and Nathaniel being targeted again?

Celeste has been cursed since her 16th birthday - just not in the way the rest of the kingdom thinks. All they see is her breath-taking beauty, marred by her foolishness. Only she knows that she retains her brilliant mind. And it's a secret she must keep at all costs. Over the years she's grown accustomed to the necessary deception. After all, her life depends on it. And she's even found a way to protect her kingdom, working from the shadows. But now a dangerous new threat has emerged, one that Celeste can't defeat alone. She needs the help of a newly-arrived prince.

When Fergus tells Diana he's taking her on a flower-arranging retreat for her birthday, she should have been more suspicious. Especially when he announces that he's coming with her. After discovering the whole truth about the retreat, Diana is still considering how to murder Fergus...when one of their fellow flower arrangers is found dead - stabbed in the back with a mystery weapon. With the retreat on complete lockdown, Diana and Fergus have a mystery to solve that wasn't part of the itinerary. Will they find the killer before the clock runs out?

Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism in Eastern Europe. Through the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the aristocratic Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan, scientist, and global women's activist Elena Lagadinova—Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of radicals.

Rumors have long swirled about the strange kingdom of Eldon. The only thing more frozen than its mountains are the inhabitants themselves. But Princess Celine has never backed away from a challenge, so she eagerly accepts an invitation to visit. Yet the situation in Eldon is even worse than Celine feared. And if the kingdom is to have any hope of freedom or a future, she's going to have to call on new skills and new allies - including the crown prince, Oliver. But against an enemy stronger and colder than ice, all her fire may not be enough.

Abraxas learned long ago that a life without his soul is not one worth living. Heart shattered with the loss of his mate, he does the only thing he can think of and packs up his children and he leaves the Kingdom of Umbra. The journey across the sea is arduous and long, but soon he finds himself on a very familiar shore: Dracomaquia. But the island may not be as uninhabited as he originally thought...

When Gabby’s husband accepts a transfer to Pakistan, she discovers a new world of heat and colour, of exotic bazaars and trips to the breathtaking Kashmiri mountains. It's an escape she didn’t know she was looking for. But then a shocking letter from her sister reveals a devastating secret. Gabby is transported back to her childhood home on the Cornish coast, and as memories unravel, so too does her new life in Karachi. Will Gabby find the courage to face the dark secrets and embrace a different future?