Showing results by narrator "Emma Powell"

India Steele is desperate. Her father is dead, her fiancé took her inheritance, and no one will employ her, despite years working for her watchmaker father. Indeed, the other London watchmakers seem frightened of her. Alone, poor, and at the end of her tether, India takes employment with the only person who'll accept her - an enigmatic and mysterious man from America, a man who possesses a strange watch that rejuvenates him when he's ill.

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

Philippa Gregory's first story in the best-selling Wideacre trilogy. A compelling tale of passion and intrigue set in the 18th century. From the author of The Other Boleyn Girl and The Virgin's Lover. Wideacre Hall, set in the heart of the English countryside, is the ancestral home that Beatrice Lacey loves. But as a woman of the 18th century, she has no right of inheritance. Corrupted by a world that mistreats women, she sets out to corrupt others.

My name's Devon Jinx, and, yes, I'm half warlock, half witch. But I couldn't care less about which kind of magic is better. All I want to do is keep my head down and get on with my new job as an investigator at the Hunted Witch Agency. A recent, shall we say, mistake has put me in place to inherit the leadership of the warlocks. Which means only one thing. I have a choice to make: leave behind my life of witchery to become a warlock, or lose my warlock magic forever. Complicating my choice is the fact that someone is trying to destroy the warlock coven.

A disgraced son with a dark reputation, William Ferguson Avenel is content to live in exile in Scotland - until his father dies in the scandal of the Season, making him the new Duke of Rothwell and leaving him in charge of his young sisters. With rumors of insanity swirling around their family, the girls desperately need a chaperone. And he thinks he's found the lady for the job...until Rothwell discovers her dangerous secret life.

If magic could kill, it would, or at least it would kill Devon Jinx. Half-warlock, half....well, it used to be half-witch, but I'm not so sure anymore. Ever since I defeated a powerful witch, my magic isn't what it used to be. And yet, I still hunt the ring leaders of the witch slave trade until a more unsavory plot appears. Gerard, my agent partner, works with me to unravel the mystery of the warlock and witch gatherings. Apparently, they want to do a lot more than party. They're prepared to create half-breeds, like me, to keep the warlock coven safe from the witches who threaten it.

The Hunted Witch Agency is hot on the heels of the leader of the witch slave trade. I'm determined to bring them down, even though they're closer to home than I realize. Gerard, the only male keeping me sane, is ready to put them down for good. Until I'm kidnapped. The witch who takes me has a personal vendetta. She can torture me all she likes, but she'll never make me give up my mission to end her enterprise. And her. I'm witch royalty, I'm a warlock disgrace. And now, I'm kidnapped. However, my magic is under control. For now. How long can I keep avoiding the inevitable? 

Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded. Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low?

When Aidan Lloyd's bleak funeral is followed by a nocturnal ritual in the fog, it becomes all too clear that Aidan, son of a wealthy farmer, will not be resting in peace. Aidan's hidden history has reignited an old feud, and a rural tradition begins to display its sinister side. It's already a fraught time for Merrily Watkins, her future threatened by a bishop committed to restricting her role as diocesan exorcist for Hereford.

The widowed Marchioness of Folkestone is notorious for her parties, her art collection, and her utter disregard for the rules. But Ellie Claiborne knows her destruction is near. The new marquess is her first lover - the man whose sculpted body and sardonic grin haunt her every time she picks up her paintbrush. If he ever returns to claim his inheritance, her heart won't survive seeing him again.

In a world where people born with an exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her Uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to carry out his dirty work, punnishing and torturing anyone who displeases him. Breaking arms and cutting off fingers are her stock-in-trade.

The blossom is out in the little Cornish harbour town of St Felix. But Poppy Carmichael's spirits aren't lifted by the pretty West Country spring. Inheriting her grandmother's flower shop has forced her to return to Cornwall, a place that holds too many memories. Poppy is determined to do her best for the sake of her adored grandmother, but she struggles with the responsibility of the more-shabby-than-chic shop.

A must-read title for all fans of Patrick Rothfuss and Trudi Canavan, Fire is an exceptional fantasy novel. From the deft characterisation to the gripping story, the fast-paced action to the evocative prose, this is one of the strongest fantasy novels of the year. Set in a world of stunningly beautiful, exceptionally dangerous monsters, Fire is one of the most dangerous monsters of all - a human one. Marked out by her vivid red hair, she's more than attractive. Fire is mesmerising.

This was supposed to be simple. Make a nice dinner for the Chemist, a ghoul with a penchant for stand-up and utterly obsessed with all things alchemical, and fulfill my promise. But it hasn't gone according to plan, and now corpses are littering the streets - although they're getting eaten pretty rapidly too. I'm not exactly in anyone's good graces either, as it's partly my fault, and my whole life is being turned upside down and inside out.

Merrily Watkins, parish priest, single mother, and Deliverance Consultant, heads for the Malvern Hills to investigate an alleged paranormal dimension to a spate of road accidents. A revamped local pub has injected the valley with a shattering surge of inner-city nightlife and drugs. When a dealer is found savagely murdered below the great earthen hillfort of Herefordshire Beacon, police wonder if it is a gangland disposal, a cry of outrage or something more sinister.

The phone rang, and like a fool I answered. Mistake number one. Then I agreed to do a job for the Hidden Council. Definitely mistake number two. Now I've lost count of my bad choices, same as I have the bodies, as they're piling up faster than a troll after free chalk. As I get to grips with this new magic I've been gifted, the city remains under a spell of violence, and it's down to yours truly to deal with it. But I'm a noob at this job, ill-prepared and with my own personal demons to fight.

Welcome to your new cottage in the country - complete with grumpy vet, village gossip and a very muddy dog.... City girl Ella wants to take refuge in the country, lick her wounds and work out what she's going to do with the rest of her life. She certainly doesn't want to have a four-legged houseguest or anything to do with village life. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of Wilsgrave have other ideas.

When autumn storms blast Hereford, centuries-old human bones are found among the roots of a blown down tree. At the nearby Cathedral, another storm is building around a new bishop who believes that the Church must phase out irrelevant archaic practices.

In Herefordshire's hop-growing country, a converted kiln is the scene of a savage murder. When the local vicar refuses to help its new owners cope with the aftermath, Merrily Watkins is sent in by the Bishop of Hereford to defuse the situation. Merrily, however, is already contending with a woman's claim that her daughter is possessed by evil. In both cases Merrily remains unconvinced, but nothing is ever quite what it seems.

In January 2015 renowned neuroscientist Barbara Lipska's melanoma spread to her brain. It was, in effect, a death sentence. She had surgery, radiation treatments and entered an immunotherapy clinical trial. And then her brain started to play tricks on her. The expert on mental illness - who had spent a career trying to work out how the brain operates and what happens when it fails - experienced what it is like to go mad.