Showing results by narrator "Moira Quirk" in All Categories

Does one need four fully-grown foxgloves for decorating a dinner table for six guests? Or is it six foxgloves to kill four fully-grown guests? Sophronia's first year at school has certainly been rousing. First, her finishing school is training her to be a spy. (Won't Mumsy be surprised!) Secondly, she gets mixed up in an intrigue over a stolen device and has a cheese pie thrown at her.

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school. Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners - and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped.

The young warrior and bard Liobhan has lost her brother to the Otherworld. Even more determined to gain a place as an elite fighter, she returns to Swan Island to continue her training. But Liobhan is devastated when her comrade Dau is injured and loses his sight in their final display bout. Blamed by Dau's family for the accident, she agrees to go to Dau's home as a bond servant for the span of one year. There, she soon learns that Oakhill is a place of dark secrets. The vicious Crow Folk still threaten both worlds. And Dau, battling the demon of despair, is not an easy man to help.

The Annurian Empire is disintegrating. The advantages it used for millennia have fallen to ruin. The ranks of the Kettral have been decimated from within, and the kenta gates, granting instantaneous travel across the vast lands of the empire, can no longer be used. In order to save the empire, one of the surviving Kettral must voyage beyond the edge of the known world through a land that warps and poisons all living things to find the nesting ground of the giant war hawks. Meanwhile, a monk turned con-artist may hold the secret to the kenta gates.

There is something soul-soothingly simple and refreshing about being in nature, about making the most of the great outdoors, being mindful of Mother Nature's gifts and grabbing spring and summer - and those blue sky, brisk days of autumn and winter - with both hands. But sadly it is a skill we are losing. We are becoming creatures wrapped in walls and trapped by to-do lists, hibernating while the world sprouts, grows and changes.

A year after a grand tour with her brother, Felicity Montague has returned to England with two goals - avoid the marriage proposal of a lovestruck suitor and enroll in medical school. However, her intellect will never be enough in the eyes of the sexist administrators. But then a window of opportunity opens - a doctor she idolizes is marrying an old friend of hers in Germany. Felicity believes this man can help her, but she has no money of her own to make the trip. Luckily, a mysterious young woman is willing to pay Felicity’s way, so long as she’s allowed to travel with Felicity.

Diana, the Roman Goddess of the hunt, lives alone on the far edge of the Roman Empire. When an old friend arrives looking for help, Diana finds herself thrust back into her old life, and her old problems. With innocent lives caught in the crossfire, Diana realizes that the only way to ensure the safety of her friends and loved ones is to do what she does best: hunt her enemies down.

When Ruby arrives in Corfu, she’s greeted by a sparkling sea, hot sand and a new future. She’s ready to learn the trade at her Aunt Hazel’s taverna and she’s certainly not going to be distracted by Yianni, her handsome colleague, no matter how much they are drawn to each other. Because getting close to someone again means facing up to her past—and the reason she was so desperate to get away from home in the first place.

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead.

The fourth and final book in a steampunk YA adventure series from Orbit's New York Times best-selling author of the Parasol Protectorate series.When a dastardly Pickleman plot comes to fruition, only Sophronia can save her friends, her school and all of London...but at what cost? Our proper young heroine puts her training and skills to the test in this highly anticipated conclusion of the rousing, intriguing and always polished New York Times best-selling Finishing School series!

Every five years, two kingdoms take part in a Wild Hunt. Joining is a bloody risk, and even the most qualified hunters can suffer the deadliest fates. Still, hundreds gamble their lives to participate—all vying for the Hunt’s life-changing prize: a magical wish granted by the Otherking. A trickster, a prince, and a wild huntress—all in pursuit of the Champion’s prize. If they band together against the monstrous creatures within the woods, they have a chance to win. But nothing is guaranteed. After all, all are fair game in love and the Hunt.

At just 15, Eskara Helsene fought in the greatest war mankind has ever known - and lost. There is only one place her enemies would send a Sourcerer as powerful as her: the Pit, a prison sunk so deep into the earth the sun is a distant memory. Now, she finds herself stripped of her magic; a young girl surrounded by thieves, murderers, and worse. In order to survive she will need to make new allies, play the inmates against each other, and find a way out. Her enemies will soon find out that Eskara is not so easily broken.

In a not-too-distant future that is not quite ours, there has been a major scientific breakthrough. It is a way to open windows into the past, permitting historical researchers to view, but not participate, in the events of the past.

Eskara has lost everything. The War Eternal has cost her everything she loves, and the Iron Legion has taken the rest. Yet there is something that is still hers, something that kept her warm during her time in the Pit: anger and a lust for vengeance. First on the list of those who must pay: the Emperor of Terrelan. Her friends counsel peace, but her inner demons push for war. Will she find a way to reap her vengeance? Or will the enemies of her past catch up to her first? One thing is certain. The world will soon know fear when the Corpse Queen ascends her throne.

Percival Tunstell loves that his sister and her best friend are building themselves a family of misfits aboard their airship, the Spotted Custard. Of course, he'd never admit that he belongs among them. He's always been on the outside - dispassionate, aloof, and hatless. But accidental spies, a trip to Japan, and one smart and beautiful doctor may have him renegotiating his whole philosophy on life.

Kembral Thorne is spending a few hours away from her newborn, and she's determined to enjoy the party no matter what. But when the guests start dropping dead, Kem has no choice but to get to work. She's a member of the Guild of Hounds, after all, and she can't help picking up the scent of trouble. She's not the only one. Her professional and personal nemesis, notorious burglar Rika Nonesuch, is on the prowl. They quickly identify what's causing the mayhem: a mysterious grandfather clock that sends them down an Echo every time it chimes.

New to the job and with everything to prove, Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Eve Wren is working on the biggest UK trial in decades. Notorious cult leader Patrick Nye and his followers, known as The Seven, are pleading not guilty to detonating a bomb in a London theatre. Patrick might be charming on the stand, but Eve knows that the evidence never lies. The trial has already started when Eve discovers a piece of evidence that calls the whole case into question.

When the witch built the 40-flight tower, she made very sure to do the whole thing properly. Each flight contains a dreadful monster, ranging from a diamond-scaled dragon to a pack of slavering goblins. Should a prince battle his way to the top, he will be rewarded with a golden sword - and the lovely Princess Floralinda. But no prince has managed to conquer the first flight yet, let alone get to the 40th. In fact, the supply of fresh princes seems to have quite dried up.

All alone in Singapore, proper Miss Primrose Tunstell must steal helium to save her airship, the Spotted Custard, in a scheme involving a lovesick werecat and a fake fish tail. When she uncovers rumors of a new kind of vampire, Prim and the Custard crew embark on a mission to Peru. There, they encounter airship pirates and strange atmospheric phenomena, and are mistaken for representatives of the Spanish Inquisition. Forced into extreme subterfuge (and some rather ridiculous outfits) Prim must also answer three of life's most challenging questions.

London, 1851—When Pierette, a daring acrobat performing at the Great Exhibition, rescues the mathematician Ada Lovelace from a gang of thugs, she becomes immersed in an ancient feud between Assassins and Templars. But Lovelace is gravely ill, and shares her secrets with Pierette, sending the acrobat in search of a terrible weapon–the Engine of History–which she’d been developing for a shadowy figure known as “the Magus”. Pierette’s only ally is Simeon Price, Lovelace’s childhood friend who belongs to a Brotherhood devoted to freedom.