Showing results by narrator "Esther Wane" in All Categories

When Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth, learns of a Jesuit assassin landing on England's shores, he's determined to go to any lengths to protect his Protestant Queen. His protege, Kit Scarlett, discovers a letter revealing the name of the assassin—Gregorio Luca. Together with Scottish agent, Iomhar Blackwood, Walsingham sends them on a mission to track Luca down. It is clear Luca is only coming with one task in mind—to kill. But is his target the English queen?

Esme Nicholls is to spend the summer in Cornwall. Her late husband, Alec, who died fighting in the war, grew up in Penzance, and she’s hoping to learn more about the man she loved and lost. While there, she will stay with Gilbert, in his rambling seaside house, where he lives with his former brothers in arms. Esme is fascinated by this community of eccentric artists and former soldiers, and as she gets to know the men and their stories, she begins to feel this summer might be exactly what she needs.

As she helps to nurse the dying Queen Elizabeth, Frances Gorges longs for the fields and ancient woods of her parents' Hampshire estate, where she has learned to use the flowers and herbs to become a much-loved healer. Frances is happy to stay in her beloved countryside when the new King arrives from Scotland, bringing change, fear and suspicion. His court may be shockingly decadent, but James' religion is Puritan, intolerant of all the old ways.

No longer a princess and not yet a queen, the sorceress Oria welcomes the rush of power the ancient mask brings her—though the obsessive connection to it frightens her and alarms her barbarian husband, Lonen. But retreat is not an option. She must wrestle the magic to prevent an annihilating war, even if she must make the ultimate sacrifice.

Liz and Jess have been friends for 10 years, ever since they both started a family. But how well do they really know each other? When Jess arrives at hospital with a story that doesn’t add up, Liz is the doctor on call. Jess has devoted her life to family and home. But she is holding so many secrets. As the truth begins to emerge, Liz is forced to question everything she thought she knew: about Jess and about herself. When something feels so personal, how do you stay professional?

Vogue magazine started, like so many great things do, in the spare room of someone's house. But unlike other such makeshift projects that flare up then fizzle away, Vogue burnt itself onto our cultural consciousness. Today, 128 years later, Vogue spans twenty-two countries, has an international print readership upwards of twelve million, and nets over sixty-seven million monthly online users. Uncontested market leader for a century, it is one of the most recognizable brands in the world and a multi-million dollar money-making machine.

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.

Alone in her tower, Princess Oria has spent too long studying her people’s barbarian enemies, the Destrye—and neglected the search for calm that will control her magic and release her to society. Her restlessness makes meditation hopeless and her fragility renders human companionship unbearable. Oria is near giving up. Then the Destrye attack, and her people’s lives depend on her handling of their prince…

This collection investigates the origins of our most intriguing old-fashioned superstitions, many of which we still find ourselves abiding by today. Hundreds of the beliefs passed down through the generations have their foundations in our ancestors' efforts to ward off evil, which they blamed for hardship, illness, and injustice in times when life was, as often as not, "nasty, brutish and short."

Catastrophically ill-suited for each other, and forever straddling a line between relative calm and explosive confrontation, Neve and her husband, Edwyn, live together in London. For the moment they have reached a place of peace in their relationship, but past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that brought her to Edwyn, she describes other loves and other debts—from her bullying father and her self-involved mother, to a musician she struggled to forget.

In this gothic, virtuoso debut collection, Mike McCormack dispenses nightmares both stylish and macabre. "A Is for Ax" offers alphabetized look at the killing of a parent, while the title story tracks a chilling sibling rivalry. Other works here offer multiple-quiz on the road to Calvary, a door-to-door saleswoman trafficking in strange and menacing feats, and a self-mutilating artist pushing himself to the limit. These sly and dangerous stories show us a young writer who was already a master of wicked formal play, and whose sly takes on life and death remain profoundly unsettling.

Once Princess Oria spun wicked daydreams from the legends of sorceresses kidnapped by the barbarian Destrye. Now, though she’s come willingly, she finds herself in a mirror of the old tales: the king’s foreign trophy of war, starved of magic, surrounded by snowy forest and hostile strangers. But this place has secrets, too—and Oria must learn them quickly if she is to survive.

Meet Sister Veronica Angelica, a secret crime fiction writer and lover of custard cream biscuits. When she discovers a dead man in the grounds of the Catholic Youth Hostel, a building next door to her Convent, she can see he's been brutally murdered. What she doesn't know is that Jamie had a secret he'd been about to confess. Being forbidden by the Cardinal to contact the police, the nuns at The Convent of the Christian Heart are instructed to contain news of the murder. As Sister Veronica tries to uncover the truth, another murder takes place, plunging her deeper into the mystery.

After Ludwig van Beethoven’s death, a love letter in his writing was discovered, addressed only to his ‘Immortal Beloved’. Decades later, Countess Therese Brunsvik claims to have been the composer’s lost love. Yet is she concealing a tragic secret? Who is the one person who deserves to know the truth? Becoming Beethoven’s pupils in 1799, Therese and her sister, Josephine, followed his struggles against the onset of deafness, Viennese society’s flamboyance, privilege and hypocrisy and the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars.

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of their god. Stripped of her birthright, Altagracia prepares to flee the planet—just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit. Princess Altagracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne...if she can win over the Commander and his distrustful right-hand officer, Anita.

Solve the mystery with the Secret Seven - everyone's favourite detective club! These timeless stories are perfect for young fans of mystery, adventure or detective series. In book five, a sinister-looking man gets George in trouble with the police. The Secret Seven are outraged. Spying on him, the gang are certain he's bad news, but what exactly is he up to? They need to investigate and solve the mystery once and for all.

When Juliet Carlisle returns home to her family's gorgeous, crumbling manor house in the English countryside, she doesn't expect to stay long. But she's intrigued by the new cookery school being launched on the grounds… that is until she meets the guy who's been hired to run it. Though undeniably handsome, disgraced celebrity chef Léo Brodeur immediately strikes Juliet as bossy and rude. Juliet has enough troubles in her life without adding a snooty French chef to the mix.

In 18th-century Spitalfields, London, Esther Thorel, wife of a master silk weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel. She thinks she is doing God's will, but her good deed is not returned. Sara quickly realizes that the Thorel household is built on hypocrisy and lies and soon tires of the drudgery of life as Esther's new lady's maid. As the two women's relationship becomes increasingly fractious, Sara resolves to find out what it is that so preoccupies her mistress.

In this Very Short Introduction Laura Marcus defines what we mean by "autobiography", and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, diaries, and essays. Analyzing the core themes in autobiographical writing, such as confession, conversion and testimony; romanticism and the journeying self; Marcus discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography.

The residents of an apartment block in Central Krakow are trapped in their own building. All windows and doors are sealed, phone lines are down and the internet is off. Seven people, cut off from the world. It quickly turns out that they are participating in a strange game played by the mysterious ‘THEY’. Suspicions are cast, and conflicts break out. Paranoia thickens. Until finally, blood is shed.