Showing results by narrator "Anne Flosnik" in All Categories

In a quiet corner of northern Edwardian England, Margaret Lounsbury diligently works in her grandmother's millinery shop, making hats and caring for her young sister. Several years earlier, a terrible event shattered their idyllic family life and their future prospects. Maggie is resilient and will do what she must to protect her sister Violet. Still, the loss of her parents weighs heavily on her heart as she begins to wonder if what happened that day on the lake...might not have been an accident.

Agincourt (1415) is an exceptionally famous battle, one that has generated a huge and enduring cultural legacy in the 600 years since it was fought. Everybody thinks they know what the battle was about.

The gods of Olympus are the most colorful characters of Greek civilization: even in antiquity, they were said to be cruel, oversexed, mad, or just plain silly. Yet for all their foibles and flaws, they proved to be tough survivors, far outlasting classical Greece itself. In Egypt, the Olympian gods claimed to have given birth to pharaohs; in Rome, they led respectable citizens into orgiastic rituals of drink and sex.

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, tells the story of Mole, Water Rat, Badger, and Toad. The story takes place along a peaceful riverbank surrounded by lush meadows. Mole is originally from a neighboring meadow, but one fine spring day he ventures away from his home and finds the magical life of the river awaiting him. Mole quickly becomes fast friends with Water Rat, a polite and civilized creature who invites Mole to live with him while he teaches Mole the secrets of river life.

Miranda's sister Kerri has a new boyfriend. He's a handsome charmer who seems to dote on Kerri. But Brendan isn't the man he says he is. Miranda should know. She broke off her own affair with him just a few weeks ago when she found him reading her diary.

Fourteenth-century Europe. The Black Death has killed half the known world, and in an isolated convent, a small group of nuns spends their days in work, austerity, and devotion, chanting the Liturgy of the Hours. But their community is threatened. Rumors of heresy and a scandalous Book of Ursula, based on the teachings of the charismatic former abbess and founder of the order, have prompted the male church hierarchy to launch an investigation. Disrespect and rebellion infect some novices, and the youngest among them pines for the bishop's chief inquisitor.

After the death of her cruel father, Brithwin is determined never again to live under the harsh rule of any man. Independent and resourceful, she longs to be left alone to manage her father's estate. But she soon discovers a woman has few choices when the king decrees she is to marry Royce, the Lord of Rosencraig. As if the unwelcome marriage isn't enough, her new husband accuses her of murdering his family, and she is faced with a challenge of either proving her innocence or facing possible execution.

Kate Bergeron is the beautiful and mysterious former mistress of a cloth merchant... and the latest beauty to capture the interest of the Prince of Wales. Mired in a disastrous divorce, the Prince attempts to distract attention from his next amorous pursuit by ordering Grayson Christopher, the eligible Duke of Darlington, to pretend to London society that he is having an affair with Kate.

Lady Charlotte Cavendish is still the spirited girl who tried to elope in the name of love. That dream was thwarted by her father, who trapped her in a loveless, passionless marriage. But now widowed, Charlotte is free to reenter the giddy world of the ton - and pursue her desires. Hardly a typical widow, she remains innocent of pleasures of the flesh. Yet now that her life is finally her own, she intends to keep it that way.

The Nukecaust radically altered the face of the globe and even the secret malevolent architects of mankind's history could not predict the will of the human spirit to survive - and to rebel. As Earth's destiny remains pawn to sinister forces not of this world, an underground resistance movement is fighting back against the ruling barons and their hidden masters. Kane, once an enforcer of the evil he now seeks to destroy, is joined by his compatriots in a brutal, covert war to reclaim the future for its rightful owners.

This riveting war story introduces us to beautiful Kate Zweig, the English widow of a German surgeon, and Claus Murphy, an exiled American with German roots - two lovers with complicated loyalties. In 1918, Kate and her husband, Horst, are taken for spies by Russian soldiers and forced to flee their field hospital on the eastern front, barely escaping with their lives.

Virginia Dean wakes at midnight beside a dead body, with a bloody knife in her hand and no memory of the evening’s events. Dark energy, emanating from the mirrors lining the room, overpowers her senses. With no apparent way in or out, she’s rescued by a man she’s met only once before, but won’t soon forget.... Owen Sweetwater inherited his family’s talent for hunting the psychical monsters who prey on London’s women and children, and his investigation into the deaths of two glass-readers has led him here.

In a crumbling mansion in a small Irish village in County Wicklow, two elderly sisters, Ella and Roberta O'Callaghan, live alone in Roscarbury Hall with their secrets, memories, and mutual hatred. Long estranged by a dark family tragedy, the two communicate only by terse notes. But when the sisters are threatened with bankruptcy, Ella defies Roberta's wishes and takes matters into her own hands, putting her baking skills to good use and converting the mansion's old ballroom into a café.

Fanny Price, a young girl from a poor family, is being raised by her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram, at Mansfield Park. She grows up with her four cousins, Tom Bertram, Edmund Bertram, Maria Bertram and Julia, but is always treated as inferior to them; only Edmund Bertram shows her real kindness. He is also the most virtuous of the siblings: Maria and Julia are vain and spoiled, while Tom is an irresponsible gambler.

At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. Neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and the story of Miles is one told from the points of view of four of them: a woman in her 40s called Anna, a man in his 60s called Mark, a woman in her 80s called May, and a 10-year-old child called Brooke. The thing is... none of these people knows Miles anything more than glancingly.

Fifteen-year-old Billi San Greal never meant to make history. Co-opted, or rather coerced, at the age of ten into the modern-day remnant of the Knights Templar by her father, the Grandmaster, Billi's the first girl ever to be a Templar. Her life a disciplined round of weapons' practice, occult lore, and a heck of a lot of bruises, Billi would happily settle for being a normal high-school girl rather than a secret warrior out to defeat the Unholy.

Mary Gates longs to restore the family stables to their former glory...so she bids on the famous Spender Stud. The only way she can pay for the beast is to marry, but her only prospect is her neighbor and chief rival, Tye Barlow. She has been tempted by his charms in the past - but she's determined not to give in to him now. So Mary boldly goes to where the husbands are - London. She takes the town by storm, but the marital prospects are uninspiring when compared to Tye. He's followed her, determined to thwart her plans.

Unmarried at 24 - and with no prospects in sight - Anju is a great source of worry to her family. Despite the best efforts of relatives, fortune-tellers, and matchmakers to arrange a marriage, she can't seem to find a husband - or at least one she's willing to marry. Quickly becoming a spinster by her culture's standards, she is eager to escape the community that views her as a failure. After pleading with her parents for permission, she boards a plane bound for the United States and a dream of a career.

Emma, a comic novel by Jane Austen, was published in December 1815. The main character, Emma Woodhouse, is described in the opening paragraph as "handsome, clever, and rich" but is also rather spoiled. Emma schemes to find a suitable husband for her pliant friend Harriet, only to discover that she understands the feelings of others as little as she does her own heart.

A young, inexperienced governess is charged with the care of Miles and Flora, two small children abandoned by their uncle at his grand country house. She sees the figure of an unknown man on the tower and his face at the window. It is Peter Quint, the master's dissolute valet, and he has come for Miles. But Peter Quint is dead....