Showing results by narrator "Susan Duerden" in All Categories

After the woman he loves rejects his marriage proposal, Edmund Crenshaw, Viscount Escher, has sworn off women. If he can't marry Mrs. Katherine Brighton, he'll marry no one. When he discovers a daring debutante in his coach, intent on seduction, he'll do anything to protect his bachelorhood. He must remain uncompromised or doom himself and the lady to a loveless marriage. Because his heart always has, and always will, belong to only one woman—his Kat.

Virtuoso pianist Isabette Grüber captivates audiences in the salons and concert halls of early nineteenth-century Vienna. Yet in a profession dominated by men, Isabette longs to compose and play her own music - a secret she keeps from both her lascivious manager and her resentful mother. She meets and loves Amelia Mason, a dazzling American singer with her own secrets, and Josef Hauser, an ambitious young composer. But even they cannot fully comprehend the depths of Isabette's talent.

On the eve of Princess Sophia’s wedding, the Scandinavian city of Skyggehavn prepares to fete the occasion with a sumptuous display of riches. Yet beneath the veneer of celebration, a shiver of darkness creeps through the palace halls. A mysterious illness plagues the royal family, threatening the lives of the throne’s heirs, and a courtier’s wolfish hunger for the king’s favors sets a devious plot in motion.

Colin MacAlistair understands that the worst nightmares are conjured from truth. He is living proof of it. After learning a disturbing family secret, he flees England with one goal in mind: amass enough wealth to prove himself worthy of his beloved's devotion. Over the course of three long and bitter years, Colin indeed amassed a small fortune but his success came at a steep price...his soul. Eve Weston's faith in Colin was shattered by his disappearance and her life turned upside down by the horrific events that followed.

Haunted by his father's sins, Sebastian Montgomery, ninth Duke of Davenport vows never to fall in love or marry - until he encounters Gwendolyn MacAlistair and she consumes his thoughts. Sebastian wants her, and as he learned from his father, what a duke wants, a duke takes. Gwen's father has arranged for her to marry a man she despises, the very man who shattered her fragile family.

After being forced into a brief marriage with an elderly earl, Celia Dorsett is ready to embrace her freedom, and take a lover. A masquerade with the demimonde sounds like the perfect way to find a companion for the evening without revealing her identity. But days after the most perfect evening of her life, she comes to realize her Lord Desire is none other than Christopher Sinclair, Viscount Stormont, her younger brother's best friend. The man who sits with her at the breakfast table nearly every morning making her laugh.

The Red Countess, the lady Valentina Winters. If you see her, it's likely to be the last vision in your life. The Red Countess is on the trail of someone she loves. Unfortunately, the trail is blocked by someone who fears the day she finds out the truth. A truth she is willing to kill to learn. Archie has made a bold move. A move that will accomplish much for his efforts in the conclave. Or give the Assassin a chance to claim his head. You never accomplish great things by risking small amounts. Is Archie willing to risk his life to get what he wants most?

Lady Edith knows the sting of unrequited love, and now she wants only one thing—to marry a man who desires her or to never marry. But at the season's end, her father threatens to provide a husband if she cannot secure one herself. When a family friend saves her from the unwanted advances of one of their suitors, she falls a little bit in love. With his auburn hair and radical ideas about women, Griffin Paxton, the Earl of Eastern, is perfect. Except he doesn't want her back.

When Captain Theodore Dunworthy goes on a dangerous assignment for the Crown, the last person he expects to meet is the women he loved and lost. But seeing her again reminds him of how desperately he loved her, and still does. Olivia Matthews has a secret Theo can never discover, the son he doesn't know she had. Even though her heart longs for him, she knows she can't trust that he won't leave her again. With this second chance at happiness, will choosing love mean betraying their country?

We wish you a steampunk Christmas.... Changed forever after tragedy, a woman must draw strength from her husband's love. A man learns that love isn't always what you expect. A thief steals the heart of a vengeful professor. And an American inventor finds love Down Under. Enjoy Victorian Christmas with a clockwork twist in these four steampunk novellas.

Nothing is fair in love or war, especially when they are one and the same. When the handsome Lord Matthew Blackwood approached her, Serena Fitzwater immediately knew they were meant to be together. Bold and brash, the qualities that made Matthew an excellent soldier made him her soul mate as well. A storybook romance and marriage followed, only to be interrupted by the call for Matthew to return to the frontlines. When Matthew returns months later, he’s no longer the knight in shining armor of Mary’s fairy-tale dreams.

Julian Huntly, Earl of Melville, is being forced into marriage to a proper woman by his dead father. If he doesn't wed before he's thirty, he will lose everything. Even worse, the workers counting on him will be in danger. But he has a year to have one last great adventure before being shackled to someone for the rest of his life. Miss Elaina Bantham has had an exciting existence away from Society as she's traveled the globe and uncovered treasures with her aunt and uncle. It has been a wonderful distraction from her disastrous come out years ago.

Logan Ambrose has endured a tortured existence. After learning how to fend for himself at a young age, he eventually amassed power and wealth. His fortune came at an extreme cost, as rising from poverty often does. Branded, he wears his sins on his marred flesh. Each scar represents a past he doesn't wish to remember, the ruthless man he holds at bay, the tortured soul who would do anything to survive.

The daughter of political philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley had an unconventional childhood populated with the most talented and eccentric personalities of the time. After losing her mother at an early age, she finds herself in constant conflict with a resentful stepmother and a jealous stepsister. When she meets the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she falls deeply in love, and they elope with disastrous consequences.

When Major Jack Washburn receives a letter telling him that the wife he thought was dead is still alive, he moves heaven and earth to find her. But the woman he finds has drastically changed from the woman he loved and lost. Annalise Washburn has gone through hell since she was kidnapped and left for dead. Now she must choose between a whole new life and the life of addiction she's not sure she can give up. If she can only convince herself that she's worth being loved by the man who possesses her heart.

A built-in family is not what Lady Cassandra Worth intended to take on, especially after having sworn never to marry again. But that is what the reckless, destitute special agent for the crown Colonel Quinten Beckham offers. When he inherited the title Earl of Rosemont, he was left not only a rundown estate and a mountain of debts, but his brother's two young children. Now he must find a way to raise his two nieces, keep his estate afloat, and continue his dangerous undercover work.