Showing results by narrator "Justine" in All Categories

Hardacre is the sweeping rags to riches story of the Hardacre family. This dramatic family saga follows generations of the Hardacres from Victorian times to the 1950s. Set against the backdrop of major historical events, Hardacre traces the family's humble beginnings to their position of great wealth. Sam Hardacre makes a tough yet honest living as a fish gutter. But he has ambitions for a life far removed from the harsh existence on the quays of the north English coast. Through drive and determination he builds a business empire and amasses a fortune.

As the French revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone, and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister, Julie, marries his brother, Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked.

Mary Barnett has never dreamed of marriage and family. Scarred and wary, she's done everything she can to avoid men. Operating her family's vast business is the only future she has ever wanted. Mary had no way of knowing that her father would place conditions on her inheritance. Namely, she will only retain control of her father's empire if she marries. And not just to any man, but a peer of the realm . . .

Pretend Ma told me the terrible things done to me were for the greater good. That I would be a hero and fight for those who can't fight for themselves. I'm not so sure about that. I am sure that my time in this world is drawing to a close. I'm okay with that. I even wish for it some days. Then, I meet him. Mr. Glowy Eyes. I'm also sure I'm a monster, and I'm certain that he's so much worse than that. But he also shows me something important. Very important. Do you want to know what it is?

The beautiful Miss Alison Brooke is the envy of London's 18th-century royal society. When villainy occurs, an unexpected hero comes to her aid. But rumors result, and Miss Brooke finds herself in the center of tawdry gossip. Her rescuer, Robert Anderson, Viscount Charmaine, is preoccupied with troubled finances, an ill father, and defense of the Crown. Problematically, Charmaine's best friend, Marquis Anthony Farrington, is clandestinely helping fund the American Revolution. Miss Brooke's large dowry tempts both men. Her father, however, wants his daughter to marry for love, not money.

Honoria Keyes isn't the gawky, impressionable fifteen year old girl she was when she first met Simon Fairchild. Twelve years have passed, and she's a successful artist, enjoying her independence to the fullest. Simon has changed, too. Gone is the beautiful, gentle boy of Honoria's dreams. In his place is a dangerous, damaged man intent on avoiding human contact—and emotions. It would be unthinkable to fall for this difficult, wounded recluse. But then again, Honoria has never been one to do things the easy way . . .

Once I was a fae princess with sea-magic at my fingertips. Now? I’m a hunted supernatural in a squalid shop, stripped of my power. My only comforts are stale cookies, Elvis records, and my hula-hoop. Then a lethally sexy fae king arrives and rips even those away. After the brutal king throws me in prison, I strike a bargain with him: my freedom in exchange for helping him find a magic blade. What Lyr doesn’t know is that the blade might restore my stolen magic. But as we journey, the gorgeous jerk starts to make me feel things I’ve never felt.

Eden Black walks among humans, protecting them from the murderous evil of other-worlders who abduct and enslave. "Failure" is not in Eden's vocabulary. Neither is "partner" - but that's what she is forcibly assigned after recovering from a disastrous mission. A sexy, steely-nerved human agent, Lucius Adaire enjoys nothing more than sparking the fury - and rousing the desire - of the fiery female assassin. Lucius and Eden find themselves bound in two high-stakes, heart-pounding games: the sensual web of kill or be killed, and the erotic dance of seduction

Lady Henrietta Maclellan longs for the romantic swirl of a London season. But as a rusticating country maiden, she has always kept her sensuous nature firmly under wraps -- until she meets Simon Darby. Simon makes her want to whisper promises late at night, exchange kisses on a balcony, receive illicit love notes. So Henrietta lets her imagination soar and writes "The Letter" - which becomes shockingly public. Everyone supposes that he has written it to her, but the truth hardly matters in the face of the scandal to come if they don't marry at once.

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is one of the most notorious texts in English literature. As recently as 1963, an unexpurgated edition was the subject of a trial, yet in the 18th century John Cleland's open celebration of sexual enjoyment was a best-selling novel. Fanny's story, as she falls into prostitution and then rises to respectability, takes the form of a confession that is vividly colored by copious and explicit physiological details of her carnal adventures.

A warrior owns what he is able to take. And I take her. She's trembling in a closet, hiding from the raiding party invading her human settlement. Hiding from me. I collar her. I own her. She's mine by law. As the Captain of the Imperial Guard, I've sworn a solemn oath to have no mate, sire no offspring. Oath-breakers are traitors, executed without a second thought. Let them try. I'll beat them all for a chance to claim my mate.

Vicki Nelson, formerly of Toronto’s homicide unit and now a private detective, witnesses the first of many vicious attacks that begin plaguing the city of Toronto. As death follows unspeakable death, Vicki, in an attempt to stop these forces of dark magic, is forced to renew her relationship with her former partner, Mike Celluci - along with another, unexpected ally…. Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of King Henry VIII, has learned over the course of his life how to blend with humans; how to deny the call for blood in his veins.

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

After disgracing themselves at a high society New Year's Eve party in Philadelphia in 1944, Madeline Hyde and her husband, Ellis, are cut off financially by his father, a former army colonel who is already ashamed of his son’s inability to serve in the war. Ellis and his best friend, Hank, decide that the only way to regain the colonel's favor is to succeed where the colonel very publicly failed - by hunting down the famous Loch Ness monster.

Nalini Singh steps back into the shadows of her heartbreakingly original world where angels rule, vampires serve, and the innocent can pay the greatest price of all . . . Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux and her lover, the lethally beautiful archangel Raphael, have returned home to New York only to face an uncompromising new evil. A vampire has attacked a girls' school - the assault one of sheer, vicious madness - and it is only the first act.

Ilanna, Master of the Night Guild, has waged a war for eight years to cleanse her city of the rival criminal organization that nearly destroyed it. When she uncovers a ring of slavers trafficking young girls for sexual servitude around the continent, she is forced to venture into the city of Voramis, the seat of her enemy's power, to hunt down the true culprit and put an end to the enslavement of innocents. But her enemies will not be so easily eliminated. She must turn to the one man certain to get the job done: the Hunter, legendary assassin of Voramis.

Twenty-year-old Allison Slater has been in love with her brother's bandmate, Rhys McGowan, since she was 15. But to him, she'll always be Jake's little sister and off-limits. Now a college sophomore, she sets her sights on making Rhys see her as someone he could date. But the night she has been dreaming of turns to heartbreak, and she realizes that she'll never be the one for Rhys. For Rhys McGowan, his nightmare began when he woke up, naked and hungover, next to his bandmate's little sister.

Sinuous new secrets come to life in the wake of Archangel Lijuan's destruction. The war isn't over yet.

One of the most vicious archangels in the world has disappeared. No one knows if Lijuan is dead or has chosen to sleep the long sleep of an immortal. But with her lands falling into chaos under a rising tide of vampiric bloodlust, a mysterious and ancient order of angels known as the Luminata calls the entire Cadre together to discuss the fate of her territory. Accompanying her archangel lover, Raphael, to the Luminata compound, Guild Hunter-turned-angel Elena senses that all is not as it seems.

If you were one of King Henry VIII's six wives, who would you be? Would you be Anne Boleyn, who literally lost her head? Would you be the subject of rumor and scandal like Catherine Howard? Or would you get away and survive like Anna of Cleves? Meet them and Henry's other queens - each bound for divorce or death - in this epic and thrilling novel that reads like fantasy but really happened.