Showing results by narrator "Mary Jane Wells" in All Categories

Quirky and fun-loving American heiress Daisy Bowman is the last unmarried Wallflower. Her exasperated father has informed her that if she can’t find a husband by the end of her third London season, she will be forced to marry a man she hates - the ruthless entrepreneur Matthew Swift. Daisy is horrified. A Bowman never admits defeat, so she decides to do whatever it takes to marry someone...anyone...other than Matthew.

It’s 1857, and anxious debutante Beth has just one season to snag a wealthy husband, or she and her mother will be out on the street. But playing the blushing ingenue makes Beth’s skin crawl and she’d rather be anywhere but here. Gwen, on the other hand, is on her fourth season and counting, with absolutely no intention of finding a husband, possibly ever. She figures she has plenty of security as the only daughter of a rakish earl, from whom she’s gotten all her flair, fun, and less-than-proper party games.

After Dominic Kilburn left Lady Willa Ransom at the altar, she vowed never to reveal how badly she was hurt. Following a year abroad, Willa wants to move on with her life, so she accepts an invitation to a house party. When dark secrets from his past surfaced right before his wedding, Dom knew he didn’t deserve Willa. So, he bolted. But he still burns for the only woman who ever claimed his heart. To escape the memories of all he lost, Dom heads to a friend’s estate on an isolated Scottish isle. Yet one of the other guests is the very woman who haunts his every thought.

Now in her late 40s, Harriet is so staggeringly rich and powerful that she fears no one. Along with her sister, she settles down to enjoy her freedom and to live the eccentric life she has always desired, estranged from her disapproving family. An unexpected visit from a family member brings the neglected, timid Philippa into her life, and Harriet makes an impulsive decision which turns both her world and Philippa’s upside down.

Lady Gemma Lively’s life as the darling of London’s fast set was carefree and fun, filled with exciting friends, daring fashions, and scandalous parties. But when the death of her father leaves her family with nothing but a dilapidated coaching inn at the end of the Earth, it’s up to Gemma to change their fate. She needs a rich husband immediately—but the only bachelor in sight is a devilishly distracting barkeep who doesn’t know the peerage from a pint glass.

At the age of sixty-one, Judith Shakespeare, a midwife-apothecary and twin of the long-dead Hamnet, must flee provincial Stratford on horseback to avoid arrest for witchcraft. Her traveling companions are a zealous Puritan woman and child who have been displaced by civil war—the bloody seventeenth-century strife between Royalists and Roundheads. Judith is also leaving her marriage, which has foundered since the wrenching loss of two adult sons to the plague.

It’s been a year since her wretched cad of a husband died and Valencia, the Dowager Duchess of Dedham, is finally her own woman. Flitting from party to party, freedom is sweet and life should be perfect. Until the new duke surfaces. Nothing like the haughty noblemen who populate the ton, Rhain, the newly minted Duke of Dedham, is a big brawny Welshman with an accent that makes Valencia’s knees go weak as he boldly moves into her home with his six wild unwed sisters. The rude and humorless usurper thinks her vain and spoiled.

Former tennis prodigy Scottie Sinclair is a cheat. Or at least, that’s what the world thinks. After all, who would believe she was secretly drugged by her own father before winning the women’s singles title at Wimbledon? The tabloids have called “Game, Set, Match” on Scottie’s career—but an offer at redemption, and more importantly revenge, may give her the chance at a clean serve.

Evie and Thomas experience a very different war. Frustrated by life as a privileged young lady, Evie longs to play a greater part in the conflict - but how? - and as Thomas struggles with the unimaginable realities of war, he also faces personal battles back home, where War Office regulations on press reporting cause trouble at his father's newspaper business. Through their letters Evie and Thomas share their greatest hopes and fears - and grow ever fonder from afar. Can love flourish amid the horror of the First World War, or will fate intervene?

Brookeside, England, 1822 Jemma fielding has always considered herself an independent woman, but to honor her beloved grandmother’s dying wish, she makes a promise that she will marry and fall in love. To fulfill her promise, she turns to the Matchmaking Mamas Society for assistance and is paired with the charming Mr. Bentley. Though he is everything Jemma could hope for in a match, she is clueless about how to win his heart. Desperate to make a good impression, she seeks guidance from her dearest friend, Miles Jackson, a humble rector with a talent for understanding matters of the heart.

Beginning in Cork, Ireland, the novel recounts Perry’s journey from daughter to son in order to enter medical school and provide for family, but Perry soon embraced the newfound freedom of living life as a man. From brilliant medical student in Edinburgh and London to eligible bachelor and quick-tempered physician in Cape Town, Dr. Perry thrived.

France 1734. Alex has only one wish to live with his clan in his beloved Scotland, and one day to lead them as chieftain. But recognising his abilities, his father has more ambitious plans for him, and sends him to study in Paris, hoping that one day he will be able to make the MacGregors legal again. Homesick and unhappy, Alex tries to make the most of his time abroad, eager to please his father and make him proud.

Gareth Fitzallen is celebrated for four things: his handsome face, his notable charm, his aristocratic connections, and an ability to give the kind of pleasure that has women begging for more. Normally he bestows his talents on experienced, worldly women. But when he heads to Langdon's End to restore a property he inherited - and to investigate a massive art theft - he lays plans to seduce a most unlikely lady.

Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive! Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the erstwhile-drowned girl. She’s nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is, or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory.

Grand Duchess Olga Romanov comes of age amid a shifting tide for the great dynasties of Europe. But even as unrest simmers in the capital, Olga is content to live within the confines of the sheltered life her parents have built for her and her three sisters: hiding from the world on account of their mother’s ill health, their brother Alexei’s secret affliction, and rising controversy over Father Grigori Rasputin, the priest on whom the tsarina has come to rely.

In a town in the south of France in the 1960s, a dazzling encounter with Love itself changes the life of infant orphan Marie-Jeanne forever. As a girl, Marie-Jeanne realizes that she can see the marks Love has left on the people around her—tiny glowing lights on the faces and hands that shimmer more brightly when the one meant for them is near. Before long, Marie-Jeanne is playing matchmaker, bringing true loves together in her village. As she grows up, Marie-Jeanne helps her foster father begin a mobile library that travels throughout the many small mountain towns in the region of Nyons.

After a night of fun back in 1992, Abby is responsible for a car crash that kills her beloved brother. It's a mistake she can never forgive, so she pushes away Liam, the man she loves most, knowing that he would eventually hate her for what she's done, the same way she hates herself. Twenty years later, Abby's husband, Nate, is also living with a deep sense of guilt. He was the driver who first came upon the scene of Abby's accident, the man who could not save her brother in time. It's this guilt, this regret, that binds them together. Then, Liam moves into the neighborhood....

When computer game designer Traci Campbell gets too close and personal with a bottle of Glenfiddich while vacationing in Scotland, she whisks her kilt-obsessed sister back to 1689 to prove hot guys in kilts are a myth. Hello, hundred bucks! But all bets are off when she meets Iain, the charming playboy in a to-die-for kilt.

Miss Chloe Fong has plans for her life, lists for her days, and absolutely no time for nonsense. Three years ago, she told her childhood sweetheart that he could talk to her once he planned to be serious. He disappeared that very night. Except now he’s back. Jeremy Wentworth, the Duke of Lansing, has returned to the tiny village he once visited with the hope of wooing Chloe. In his defense, it took him years of attempting to be serious to realize that the endeavor was incompatible with his personality.

Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.