Showing results by narrator "Jayne Entwistle" in All Categories

Sharing personal stories, Nancy offers guidance on advance care planning, grieving, and forgiveness as well as green burial. Through her own close encounters with the specter of death, the author shows how to follow the ancient wisdom of "learning to die before you die" and find a seaworthy passage to the far shore.

Could one night off a year save a marriage—or destroy it? In this bold and sexy debut, a young couple agrees to open their marriage, but they soon discover that a little freedom has surprising consequences.

For years, Harris Hayes has taught his daughter, Aggie, the ways of the northern woods, where she sketches nests of wild birds as an antidote to sadness. Then her depressed, unpredictable mother forbids her to climb the trees that give her sanctuary and comfort. Angry, ten-year-old Aggie accidentally lights a tragic fire and flees downriver. She lands her boat near untamed forest, then hides among trees and creatures she believes are her only friends—determined to remain undiscovered.

Young dairymaid Begonia has lost her cow Alfalfa. So she has set off on a search across the countryside even though she has nothing but a magical map to guide her. Along the way she meets a mother and baby, a woodcutter, a very dirty young man, and an eight-foot ostrich. Meanwhile, the emperor has gone missing from the royal palace in a most mysterious manner. Was it murder? Was it magic? It will take all of Begonia's wits to save the empire and get Alfalfa home safely.

When eight-year-old Nora arrives at the Park Ridge School for Girls in 1932, she is sure there’s been some mistake. She can’t imagine why she and her little sister, Patsy, were torn from their mother only to be subjected to the cruel whims of the house matron, Mrs. Morris. When their mother fails to rescue them week after week—and Mrs. Morris drops hints that their mother may be a “fallen woman”—Nora begins to doubt they will ever see her again.

All fans of Jane Austen everywhere believe themselves to be best friends with the beloved author and this book shines a light on what it meant to be exactly that. Jane Austen's Best Friend: The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd offers a unique insight into Jane's private inner circle. Through this heartwarming examination of an important and often overlooked person in Jane's world, we uncover the life-changing force of their friendship.

When a close relative falls ill, Hannah Larson and her young son, Nicky, join him for the summer at Ashton Hall, a historic manor house outside Cambridge, England. A frustrated academic whose ambitions have been subsumed by the challenges of raising her beloved child, Hannah longs to escape her life in New York City, where her marriage has been upended by a recently discovered and devastating betrayal.

Jacqueline Finch is a lifelong book lover, which is why it was a literal gift from the Universe when she inherited Three Tomes Bookshop. But she's had a few adjustments to make along the way, including the fact that her bookshop seems to be a haven for literary characters to come alive and to stick their noses into things that aren't any of their business. And then there are the three old ladies down the street, whose resemblance to Macbeth's Witches Three cannot be ignored.

Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian Era, a period of industrial, cultural, scientific, and political change that was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. But Victoria was raised under close supervision and near isolation until she became Queen of the United Kingdom at the young age of 18. She married her first cousin, Albert, and had nine children who married into families across Europe.

As Rome prepares for its Carnivale, the new leader of the city's vampire hunters, Lady Victoria Gardella Grantworth de Lacy, must prove herself as never before. For, in order to gain access to the secrets of a legendary alchemist, Rome's vampires have allied themselves with creatures as evil and bloodthirsty as they are. Reluctantly, Victoria must turn to the enigmatic Sebastian Vioget for help—just as Max Pesaro arrives to help his fellow slayers, no matter what the price.

After receiving a desperate letter reporting her father to be gravely ill, inveterate matchmaker Melody Merriweather leaves college and rushes back to her small hometown of Merriweather, Wisconsin—only to discover that she’s expected to take over the running of her family’s general store, the Merc, until he recovers.

Spring is in full swing in lakefront Button Cove, and Jacqueline is embracing her new life—her friends, her new home, the crones down the street, and especially the detective with a hot-Viking vibe. It's not half bad. But when an old book falls off the shelf, signaling the arrival of yet another literary character Jacqueline has to deal with, and strange accidents and thefts begin to happen in Button Cove, Jacqueline once again finds herself in a big, fat mess.

The War of Spanish Succession is over, many sailors are out of work, and the thriving American colonies are quickly becoming the place of opportunity. For Sam Bellamy it is the opportunity to become the captain of his own ship.

Young, ardent Dorothea Brooke defies her sister by wedding the much older Reverend Edward Casaubon, blindly hoping to assist in his scholarly pursuits. Tertius Lydgate, a progressive doctor, new and unwelcome in provincial Middlemarch, is charmed into marriage with the selfish and shallow Rosamond Vincy, a disastrous mismatch of his own. Soon blatant stubbornness, unruly jealousy, blind idealism, and calculated blackmail threaten to upend the Midlands village and lay waste to happy endings.

This collection includes: Dark Embrace by Hannah Howell The Guardian by Michele Sinclair, and A Knight Beyond Black by Jackie Ivie.

Contains three novellas: The Beast Within by Hannah Howell, The Vampire Hunter by Heather Grothaus, and Laird of Midnight by Victoria Dahl.

At forty-eight, Jacqueline Finch has a nice, easy life with few responsibilities: she's been a librarian in Chicago for twenty-five years and she's just coasting along. That is, until the Universe (helped by three old crones) has other ideas. All at once, Jacqueline's staid (and boring) life is upended, and the next thing she knows, she's heading off to Button Cove to start a new life as the owner of Three Tomes Bookshop.

Minerva Peniston, intrepid spinster and book lover, is determined to capture the villain who tried to shoot a duke at a book auction—imperiling her father's position and the only home she's ever known. And now the same wealthy bibliophiles are gathering at Wycliffe Manor . . .Paul Upton, overeducated and impoverished curate, has volunteered to assist the residents of Wycliffe Manor in preparing for a book auction to save the village and the manor's future. When an intriguing wallflower drags him into aiding her quest to find a potential killer, he agrees for her safety.

Wycliffe Manor has been neglected for decades. Its new heirs are determined to create a welcoming home. Yet soon after the latest family moves in, bones are uncovered in the orchard . . . and odd strangers arrive. When her curate father returns his family to Gravesyde for the marriages of the manor's heirs, gawky spinster Patience Upton has high expectations—until her father is murdered. Shock at learning her father had a mysterious past leads to alarm that the killer may have been after his notebook, which she now possesses.

Spinster and secret novelist Clarissa Knightley and her gruff American engineer, Captain Huntley, along with their friend and cousin, the Honorable Jack de Sackville and Lady Elspeth, are to wed at last! In anticipation of the double wedding, friends and family are gathering at moldering Wycliffe Manor—until a dying stranger is discovered on the neglected grounds. Despite the tragedy, aristocratic wedding guests and their retinues, foreign and domestic, continue to arrive, not all by invitation.