A Desperate Fortune

The Firebird

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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Nicola Marter was born with a gift. When she touches an object, she sometimes glimpses those who have owned it before. When a woman arrives with a small wooden carving at the gallery Nicola works at, she can see the object’s history and knows that it was named after the Firebird - the mythical creature from an old Russian fable. Compelled to know more, Nicola follows a young girl named Anna who leads her into the past on a quest through the glittering backdrops of the Jacobites and Russian courts, unearthing a tale of love, courage, and redemption.

Mariana

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 20 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Carolyn Bonnyman
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Juliet Beckett believes in destiny. When she moves into Greywethers, a beautiful 16th-century farmhouse, she suspects that more than coincidence has brought her there. The locals are warm and welcoming; especially the eligible squire of Crofton Hall, yet beneath the ordinaries, Julia senses a haunting sadness about her new home. Then she learns of Mariana, a beautiful young woman who lived there 300 years ago. It seems history has been waiting for Julia...

The Splendour Falls

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 5 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Barbara Rosenblat
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Emily Braden has stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings. When her fascinating but unreliable cousin Harry invites her on a holiday to explore the legendary town of Chinon, and promptly disappears - well, that's Harry for you. As Emily makes the acquaintance of Chinon and its people, she begins to uncover dark secrets beneath the charm.

The Shadowy Horses

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 1 min)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Sally Armstrong
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Archaeologist Verity Grey has been drawn to the dark legends of the Scottish Borderlands in search of the truth buried in a rocky field by the sea. Her eccentric boss has spent his whole life searching for the resting place of the lost Ninth Roman Legion and is convinced he's finally found it - not because of any scientific evidence, but because a local boy has "seen" a Roman soldier walking in the fields, a ghostly sentinel who guards the bodies of his long-dead comrades.

Named of the Dragon

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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The charm of spending the Christmas holidays in South Wales, with its crumbling castles and ancient myths, seems the perfect distraction from the nightmares that have plagued literary agent Lyn Ravenshaw since the loss of her baby five years ago. Instead she meets an emotionally fragile young widow who's convinced that Lyn's recurring dreams have drawn her to Castle Farm for an important purpose - and she's running out of time.

The Rose Garden

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Nicola Barber
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Acclaimed author Susanna Kearsley's previous works have won the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice Award, and finaled for both the UK Romantic Novel of the Year and the RITA awards.

Eva Ward is a modern woman thrown back three centuries to 1715 - only to find that might be exactly where she belongs. There, she finds true love with Daniel Butler, but the discord surrounding Hanoverian King George plunges the lovers into a world of intrigue, treason, and romance.

Season of Storms

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 20 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Carolyn Bonnyman
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In the early 1900s, the playwright Galeazzo D’Ascanio lived for Celia Sands. She was his muse and the inspiration for his most stunning and original play. But the night before she was to take the stage, Celia disappeared. Now, decades later, Alessandro D’Ascanio is preparing to stage the first performance of his grandfather’s masterpiece. A promising young actress - who shares Celia Sands’ name, but not her blood - has agreed to star. She is instantly drawn to the mysteries surrounding the play - and to her compelling, compassionate employer. And even though she knows she should let the past go, in her dreams it comes back.

The Winter Sea

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 54 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Rosalyn Landor
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History has all but forgotten.... In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown. Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next best-selling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write. But then she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction....

Every Secret Thing

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Susanna Kearsley
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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No one lives forever. But the truth survives us all. Kate Murray is deeply troubled. In front of her lies a dead man, a stranger who only minutes before had approached her wanting to tell her about a mystery, a long-forgotten murder. The crime was old, he'd told her, but still deserving of justice. Soon Kate is caught up in a dangerous whirlwind of events that takes her back into her grandmother's mysterious war-time past and across the Atlantic as she tries to retrace the dead man's footsteps.

A Rather Lovely Inheritance

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 27 mins)
• By CA Belmond
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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This is your life Penny Nichols...Penny Nichols is a historical researcher working on a big-budget film in the south of France when she gets an urgent call. Her Aunt Penelope has just died, and Penny's presence is required in London for the reading of the will. With only a slim recollection of her eccentric aunt, Penny is astonished to learn that not only is she the bona fide heiress - but she's also been invited to put her research skills to work.

The American Heiress: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (13 hrs and 26 mins)
• By Daisy Goodwin
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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Traveling abroad with her mother at the turn of the 20th century to seek a titled husband, beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.

The River Knows

• UNABRIDGED (8 hrs and 37 mins)
• By Amanda Quick
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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The first kiss occurred in a dimly lit hallway on the upper floor of Elwin Hastings' grand house. Louisa never saw it coming....Of course, Anthony Stalbridge couldn't possibly have had romantic intentions. The kiss was an act of desperation, meant to distract the armed guard who was about to catch the pair in a place they most definitely did not belong.

The Ruby Brooch: Time Travel Romance: The Celtic Brooch Trilogy, Book 1

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 40 mins)
• By Katherine Lowry Logan
• Narrated By Teri Schnaubelt
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As the sole survivor of the car crash that killed her parents, grief-stricken paramedic Kit MacKlenna is stunned to learn her life is built on lies. A legacy from her father includes a faded letter and a well-worn journal. The journal reveals she was abandoned as a baby 160 years ago. The only clues to her identity are a blood-splattered shawl, a locket with the portrait of a 19th century man, and a Celtic brooch with magical powers.

Return of the Rose

• UNABRIDGED (9 hrs and 39 mins)
• By Theresa Ragan
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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Morgan Hayes grows up in the 20th century with a mysterious attraction to a hollow suit of armor that stands in the window of her mother’s antique store. She is 24 years old when she becomes entangled within the armor’s metal plates and is whisked back in time where she is mistaken for a twin sister she knows nothing about. Morgan is forced to marry King Henry’s favored knight, Derek Vanguard, Lord of Braddock Hall. Abandoned by his mother, Derek’s heart is as cold as the stone walls of his castle....

Amy Snow: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 48 mins)
• By Tracy Rees
• Narrated By Melody Grove
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It is 1831 when eight-year-old Aurelia Vennaway finds a naked baby girl abandoned in the snow on the grounds of her aristocratic family's magnificent mansion. Her parents are horrified that she has brought a bastard foundling into the house, but Aurelia convinces them to keep the baby, whom she names Amy Snow. Amy is brought up as a second-class citizen, but she and Aurelia are as close as sisters. When Aurelia dies at the age of 23, she leaves Amy 10 pounds. But Aurelia also left her much more.

Florence Grace

• UNABRIDGED (15 hrs and 42 mins)
• By Tracy Rees
• Narrated By Imogen Church

Florrie Buckley is an orphan living on the wind-blasted moors of Cornwall. It's a hard existence, but Florrie is content; she runs wild in the mysterious landscape. She thinks her destiny is set in stone. But when Florrie is 14, she inherits a never-imagined secret. She is related to a wealthy and notorious London family: the Graces.

The Queen of the Tearling: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 30 mins)
• By Erika Johansen
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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Magic, adventure, mystery, and romance combine in this epic debut in which a young princess must reclaim her dead mother’s throne, learn to be a ruler - and defeat the Red Queen, a powerful and malevolent sorceress determined to destroy her. On her 19th birthday, Princess Kelsea Raleigh Glynn, raised in exile, sets out on a perilous journey back to the castle of her birth to ascend her rightful throne. Plain and serious, a girl who loves books and learning, Kelsea bears little resemblance to her mother, the vain and frivolous Queen Elyssa.

America's First Daughter: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (23 hrs and 27 mins)
• By Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie
• Narrated By Cassandra Campbell

In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, best-selling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson's eldest daughter, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph - a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.

The Knockoff: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 10 mins)
• By Lucy Sykes, Jo Piazza
• Narrated By Katherine Kellgren
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When Imogen returns to work at Glossy after six months away, she can barely recognize her own magazine. Eve, fresh out of Harvard Business School, has fired "the gray hairs", put the managing editor in a supply closet, stopped using the landlines, and hired a bevy of manicured and questionably attired underlings who text and tweet their way through meetings.

Lost Among the Living

• UNABRIDGED (10 hrs and 23 mins)
• By Simone St. James
• Narrated By Justine Eyre
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England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to Wych Elm House, the family's estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband's origins...and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths' past is just the beginning.

Spinning the Moon

• UNABRIDGED (26 hrs and 21 mins)
• By Karen White
• Narrated By Susan Bennett, Pilar Witherspoon
• Whispersync for Voice-ready

In the Shadow of the Moon: When Laura Truitt first sees the dilapidated plantation house, she's overcome by a sense of familiarity. Inside, the owner claims to have been waiting for years and offers an old photograph of a woman with Laura's face. Soon afterward, when a lunar eclipse inexplicably thrusts Laura back in time to Civil War Georgia, she finds herself fighting not just for her heart but for her very survival.

In Farleigh Field: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (11 hrs and 44 mins)
• By Rhys Bowen
• Narrated By Gemma Dawson
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World War II comes to Farleigh Place, the ancestral home of Lord Westerham and his five daughters, when a soldier with a failed parachute falls to his death on the estate. After his uniform and possessions raise suspicions, MI5 operative and family friend Ben Cresswell is covertly tasked with determining if the man is a German spy. The assignment also offers Ben the chance to be near Lord Westerham's middle daughter, Pamela, whom he furtively loves. But Pamela has her own secret.

The Kitchen House: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED (12 hrs and 55 mins)
• By Kathleen Grissom
• Narrated By Orlagh Cassidy, Bahni Turpin
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Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction.

The House at Tyneford

• UNABRIDGED (14 hrs and 11 mins)
• By Natasha Solomons
• Narrated By Justine Eyre
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It’s the spring of 1938 and no longer safe to be a Jew in Vienna. Nineteen-year-old Elise Landau is forced to leave her glittering life of parties and champagne to become a parlor maid in England. She arrives at Tyneford, the great house on the bay, where servants polish silver and serve drinks on the lawn. But war is coming, and the world is changing. When Kit, the son of Tyneford’s master, returns home, he and Elise strike up an unlikely friendship that will transform Tyneford - and Elise - forever. An irresistible World War II story of a forbidden romance in a great English country house.