Showing results by author "Sandra Sookoo" in All Categories

A proper gentleman. A desperate lady. One little indiscretion that will change their lives. Carew Harcourt Fitzwilliam—Duke of Edenthorpe—is dreadfully dissatisfied with his life. Engaged since childhood to a woman unsuited to him, he feels trapped and hopeless. What he needs is a distraction. Too bad a possible jewelry heist comes with his best friend’s sister, now a beauty he can’t banish from his mind.

It’s the Christmastide season, and the Hawkins family is at their country estate in Kent. Emmaline, the Countess of Archewyne, is excited, for it’s her first Christmas with her little family, as well as one of the few she’s spent in England. Passing his leisure time with his loved ones gives Miles Lawrence Hawkins, the fifth Earl of Archewyne, great pleasure, as does anticipating their faces when they open his gifts.

Sometimes the sweetest things in life don’t have anything to do with dessert. Gwynn Flannigan wants respect from her father and freedom from her big, loud family. The icing on her cake would be to win a decorating competition hosted by her favorite food magazine writer. Cole Marshall's one outlet from the stress of business life is writing his Cooking in the Buff feature. Who cares if he never has time for fun? The answer for them both lies in the deep freeze at Sweet Endings, the struggling ice cream shop Gwynn manages and the one property Cole needs to secure a big promotion.

Widowed Lillian Fernsby has been buffeted by life’s ills, and the grief is sometimes unrelenting. Keeping sadness at bay by making merry or being an outrageous flirt is all well and good, but what she really wants is to marry again. So, when her brother’s best friend comes back into her life to protect her from a unidentified stalker, she’s intrigued by the mystery and challenge he represents. A flirtatious game of cat and mouse begins between them and desire builds, but so does danger.

Sometimes fate doesn’t give you what you want because something better is in the offing. Captain Elias Frampton is a man without purpose. Five months after being jilted, he’s ready for a new chapter of his life. Undecided about whether he should return to the sea or find a position in England, he embarks on a trip up the Cornwall coast, but his coach is caught in a winter storm squall, forcing him to take the last room at a posting inn of a fishing village.

Fearless and impulsive, Lady Anne Eliza Lewis, daughter of the Earl of Doverton, is not the usual ton lady. Nor does she want to be, for she's worked the bulk of her adult life at being a balloonist. Well-read Benedict Giles Urquhart, Viscount Worthington is a man who values peace and order over all else in his life. When a freak accident with a crashing hot-air balloon spooks his horse and throws Benedict, his placid life takes an abrupt turn, to say nothing of the distracting and unrepentant woman manning it.

Recently retired from the Royal Navy, much acclaimed Captain Bartholomew Grayson has come home to London. He’s looking forward to the Christmastide season, especially now that he’s adopted his 10-year-old former cabin boy. The waif needs a family, and Bart wants to recapture the joy of his own childhood. Too bad the fly in the ointment is a strong-willed harridan with a tart mouth intent on stealing his cargo.

Oliver Stuart Colborne, the duke of Scarborough and a man of mixed heritage, needs a false engagement post haste. A parcel of unentailed land, held in his maternal grandmother’s name and potentially harboring Roman ruins, can be his if he marries within two years of taking the title...and he only has a month left. He wants that treasure if only to follow in his revered father’s footsteps.

Ambrose Colin Heathermore, the fourteenth Marquess of Hereford, wants to be left alone. Now that he’s back in London and has put life as a celebrated spy behind him, he must take up the reins of his real life and attend to his title. Which he will, after a quick tryst with an experienced lightskirt at a ball. If it will help him forget the woman he first loved in France, all the better. Lady Mary Clarke, a daughter of the Duke of Tarkington, is tired of proper ton life. She’s spent more time as a widow than she has as a wife, so she’s ready for excitement and adventure.

It’s the year 1819, and as Valentine’s Day approaches, Lady Grace Norrington is still unwed at nearly 30. Tired of the pitying glances, she means to have a husband before her upcoming birthday by hook or by crook, and she’s expected to make a good ton match. Except all her plans are thwarted by the handsome new butler and her disturbing attraction for him. Mr. Harrison Conrad’s livelihood wins him respect in whatever household he manages. What he doesn’t need is scandal in the form of an enchanting daughter of the house.

Evan Michael Sedgewyck, ninth Earl of Coventry, is doomed to walk the earth as a dragon-shifter, but it’s his actions that have caused his own personal hell. Beastly half aside, he’s been a widower for seven years, and the moment he decides to attend a ball and perhaps enter the Marriage Mart again, he stumbles into a woman he once thought dead - his wife. Yet the anger he carries doesn’t diminish.

Miss Louisa Harcourt’s life isn’t exactly what she’d envisioned for herself. Widowed by the war, she returned home to protect her younger brother from domestic threats, but that put her into the soup as well. After constantly rebuffing unwanted attentions, she’s wearied of living in fear. Knowing something must be done, she hires someone who can teach her the skills she needs to defend herself - a champion in fisticuffs - but her trust in men has been dented.

Lady Amelia Jane Coventry-Smythe wants nothing more than to shut herself away to mourn in private all the people she lost from her life over the years. Unfortunately, peace is not hers, for the one man she never hoped to see again has just landed in her parlor by mysterious circumstances, with an invitation to her Christmastide house party in hand, and her addiction to him flares anew.

In 1888 London, Miss Eleanor Redding, possessed of a beastly, grouchy attitude, works for Western Union Telegraph Company. It gives her a certain independence and a place to hide from her disappointing past in America. When she accidentally intercepts a Morse-coded message alluding to clandestine and nefarious activity, she accepts the challenge with alacrity. It will take her mind off the fact that she’s once more alone for the Christmas holidays. Why couldn’t a man look past her prickles and scars to fight for her?

The honorable Olivia Beaumont, eldest daughter of Viscount Hereford, wants revenge. Following an ill-advised game of faro with a powerful duke, her father lost everything and then suffered a fatal heart attack. Now, she wants that duke to pay and suffer as much as her father did. But the only way she can do that is to enlist the help of the most shunned man in the ton: the disgraced duke of Skeffington.

When life gives you lemons, use them for lemonade or let them sour your life. Clara Tildon, a cancer survivor, has no time for defeatism. She’s opened the Cute as a Button B & B in Bridgewater, Indiana, and along with her guinea pig, is embracing the lemonade lifestyle. It’s always how she wanted to live. Everything is perfect, except for the nagging sensation that she would still like to fall in love. Jake Yates has returned to Bridgewater, the town he grew up in, for his friend’s wedding, and he’s not happy about it.

The heated dog days of summer are making everyone grumpy. When the biggest gossip in Newburg, Indiana, ends up dead - with Sam Arnold’s dad the prime suspect - things get hotter. It’s been a month-and-a-half since she helped bring down a bad guy. Maybe, it’s time to try her hand at a new case, especially since her boyfriend is out of town.

In the hunt for relics of infinite value, perhaps the greatest treasure of all is family. Three months after the birth of his son, Miles Lawrence Hawkins, the fifth Earl of Archewyne, is attempting to acclimate to fatherhood, but he longs for adventure. Someone is masquerading as the heir to a powerful and ancient ducal title with the anonymous backing of other members of the ton, and Miles is asked to investigate. It would mean leaving his wife and child, yet he refuses to return to London without them.

Sometimes, the greatest truths of life come on a midnight clear. Major Cecil Stapleton is struggling with his new life as a civilian after nearly 20 years in the military. Wounds received in the Battle of Toulouse left him angry, disfigured, and sent him home to England. All he wants now is to retire to the country and be left alone, especially since it’s the Christmastide season. Finding his old lover in his cottage leaves him at sixes and sevens...and perhaps wanting more. Widow Sarah Presley has worked hard to conceal her existence in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Miss Calamity Calloway is the epitome of efficiency as long as she’s typing travel reports, but when she’s out in the world, the troubles start. Tripping over laces, bumping into people on the street, and tumbling into awkward situations is the order of her days, and unfortunately, her handsome neighbor is usually a witness. All she longs for is a bit of trouble-free adventure.