Showing results by narrator "Amanda Friday" in All Categories

According to legend, the Pyncheon family has been cursed by their 17th century ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon, who stole the land from Matthew Maule. Maule was later put to death after being accused of witchcraft and the deed for the land could not be found. Now living in the New England mansion fraught with haunted miseries of the past, Hepzibah Pyncheon opens a small shop to pull herself from the poverty-striken curse she has lived under while her brother, Clifford, was serving a decades-long prison sentence for murder.

Anatol, one of Arthur Schnitzler's earliest works, concerns the life of a shallow and immature playboy, who has multiple dalliances with various women but suffers from a crippling fear of commitment underneath his womanising facade. The play offers sharp social commentary on the themes of toxic masculinity and fidelity, and has been adapted in English to two different musicals: The Game of Love and The Gay Life.

Callum Sterling is a grumpy jerk. A ridiculously hot one, but still. I’ve battled with Callum during our quarterly conference calls over the past year, but now we get to spar in person. And not only are we forced to work together every week, but we have to spend time together outside of work, too. At first, I was ready to fight, but the chemistry between us becomes undeniable, the more time we spend together.

When Sam meets her sister's sexy mechanic, Verlaine, she instantly falls for those gorgeous brown eyes and rugged charms. Soon a steamy romance begins! But unfortunately, there's unfinished business between Sam and her ex-boyfriend, the charismatic billionaire, Marcus. Sam's sister, Gemma, knows that only Marcus can save her vintage-car business from bankruptcy, but Marcus is determined to win back Sam and save the day. He certainly won't let the hired help muscle-in.

An uptight, self-contained college girl, Randi Becker just needed one thing: a room. Somewhere she could study, and keep away from the things that most confuse and frighten her: people.

Rosamond Frankland has married the love of her life, Leonard, who is blind. They have bought Porthgenna Tower, the manor where Rosamond grew up and where her mother died 20 years earlier. What they don't know is the dark secret that hovers over her family, that house, and the stories about a woman's ghost that haunts the north rooms. Is this a ghost story, a love story, a story with a tragic ending, or a lovely one?

Follow the foils and foibles of Bertie Wooster and his devoted man, Jeeves, through all of his wild adventures in The Inimitable Jeeves, the first collection of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series. There are schemes to bet on the clergy's length of sermon, attempts at theatre, communist curiosity, and nearly every chapter finds Bertie's best mate, Bingo, falling in love, all under the watchful eye of Jeeves, who always finds a way to make things just right.

Francis Raven awakens on the eve of his birthday, frightened by the appearance of a woman attempting to murder him. He is continually haunted by this woman and years later marries Alicia Warlock, who looks strikingly identical to the figure from his dream. Is this Dream Woman simply an apparition or will her attempts to kill Francis become reality? Also known as The Ostler in earlier versions, The Dream Woman is another of Collins' finest detective stories.

Written by 18-year-old Mary Shelley, the novel follows scientist Victor Frankenstein as he recounts his story to Captain Walton, who found a gravely ill Victor adrift at sea. Victor tells of his creation of a being so horrible that he abandoned the Creature, much to his own shame. Not to be forgotten, the Creature's quest for revenge and understanding from its master leaves a trail of devastation in its wake.

Cutting Room is set in the "Town Welfare Department" of a town in the Midlands, Burtonwood, during public sector cuts. Four characters (David, Lucy, Ian, and an intern, Anne) have to take calls from members of the public complaining about the loss of public services, with the boss Harry coming in occasionally to offer cheerful but often useless encouragement. As the cuts continue, tensions run high, with Ian in particular taking his anger and frustration out on the secretary, Tilly. At the play's conclusion there is a surprising twist.

When a young child, a traumatic event happens to Duncan which blocks out all memories of the supernatural his family is a part of. When he and his wife Molly are witness to a strange sighting on the Bremerton ferry in the waters of The Puget Sound, he's thrust into the paranormal, whether he likes it or not. In reporting the drowning, Duncan and Molly become uncomfortable with the state trooper sent to question them. That combined with the outrageous nature of what they saw, causes them to not report all they’d witnessed.

Save the dragons, unite the races, no sweat. I'm 19 and wish I had a clue about my future. Instead of my own bed, this morning I woke in the strange land of Lur Neval. My name is Scarlett, but the Nevalese call me Dragon Mage. Seems it's my job to preserve the all-important dragons and oh, while I'm here, bring peace to the warring clans. Piece of cake if I can outwit Madoc, the manipulative, evil seer who wants every dragon destroyed. Whatever it takes, I'm here to fulfill my destiny under the light of the Dragon Moon.

Lorelei is a rising star in Hollywood when she meets Mr. Eisman, a man who compliments her intelligence and convinces her it is much more important to be educated than to be in the cinema. Plying her with books, he encourages Lorelei to write down her adventures in a diary despite her penchant for misspellings and incorrect pronunciation. Growing restless with Mr. Eisman and his simplistic routine of dinner, dancing, and returning Lorelei to her apartment, she longs to stretch her wings and experience more of the world.

This is the second novella detailing the continuing adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, and his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson. In The Sign of Four, Holmes and Watson are hired by Mary Morstan to investigate the mysterious circumstances of her father's death, which will set them on the trail of a lost Indian treasure and in pursuit of two of the strangest criminals in the Holmes canon.

Jay Gatsby is a millionaire who throws extravagant parties that attract famous celebrities, but no one really knows him - no one except for his neighbor, Nick Carraway. Often touted as a Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby is Nick's account of one summer spent with his wealthy friend and Nick's front-row seat to Gatsby's wealth, his dreams, and his impossible quest for love with the enigmatic Daisy Buchanan.

Lucy Honeychurch is a young English girl abroad in Italy for the first time and is ready to experience all the beauty, art, and romance it has to offer. She is hampered by the oppressive attentions of her chaperone, her prim cousin Charlotte, as well as the presence of a substantial British expatriate and tourist community in Florence.

The Three Sisters is Anton Chekhov's 1901 play about the Prosorov family, who are stuck in a provincial Russian town. The sisters - Olga, Masha, and Irina - fantasize about one day returning to Moscow. Meanwhile, their brother Andrey courts village girl Natasha, and the family socializes with the soldiers stationed nearby. Dreams, longing, and illicit love drive the action of Chekhov's comic drama.

The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's most famous and oft-produced play. First performed in 1895, and subtitled "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People", it shows Wilde at his satirical and scathingly witty best. It follows the misadventures of Algy and Jack as they attempt to woo and wed Cecily and Gwendolen under the assumed name "Ernest", much to the disapproval of the aristocratic Lady Bracknell.

The story is told by the clergyman to his brother as a later-life confession concerning a brush with the supernatural which he has kept a secret for many years. Before he joined the church he met and fell in love with Miss Jeromette, a Frenchwoman living alone in London. They enter into a relationship but she tells him candidly she loves another man who has deserted her. Miss Jeromette predicts the man will return to her but that she will die young and miserably.

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Bronte, initially published under her pen name "Ellis Bell". It is about two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's foster son, Heathcliff. It is now considered a classic of English literature, but contemporary reviews were polarized. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality and religious and societal values.