Showing results by narrator "Jill Smith" in All Categories

Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, emerges from a wretched night’s sleep to discover him embracing the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. His former mistress! It is shocking, yes, but not so very alarming, for Penelope Taylor is actually there to see Bea. Her dearest friend has been brutally slain, and as Millicent Lloyd happened to be sleeping in the courtesan’s bed at the time, Mrs. Taylor is the only suspect. The magistrate is impatient to cart her off to Newgate and refuses to acknowledge the truth that is glaringly obvious to her: She was the intended victim.

I didn't know he has been watching me all this time. I had a plan to escape. Everything is going perfectly at my wedding rehearsal dinner until he turns up. The Kingpin. Twenty years older. Dark, dangerous, gorgeous. I was going to get out of this arranged marriage, but he steals me away. I want freedom. He wants me. We make a deal. If I can escape, he'll let me go. If I can't, I'll be his to do with as he likes for twenty-four hours. A thirty second head start and a key.

I thought my mafia connections were in the past, and I was alone. But powerful mafia boss Sebastian Laurent hasn't forgotten me. On the night I turn twenty-one, our paths collide. He can't drag his eyes from mine. But even when he says I'm in danger, I know being with him is the greatest risk. He wont give up. Kidnapped, I'm held captive in his luxurious home with him for twenty-four hours and he agrees to teach me anything I want.

From an MIT scientist, mounting evidence that the active ingredient in the world’s most commonly used weedkiller is responsible for debilitating chronic diseases, including cancer, liver disease, and more....

Armon Ellington is nineteen year old kid that always felt out of place. He’s an orphan, a gamer, and a role playing game geek. When he dies after a seventy-two hour gaming marathon, instead of going to an afterlife he’s transported to a new world governed by rules that are eerily similar to the RPG games he loves. On this new world, Terra, he can be anything he wants, a warrior, mage, or even a crafter. Only, Armon wants more than that, he also wants friends and family.

Having solved the two murders that somehow fell in her path, Beatrice Hyde-Clare is on the lookout for a third. Through a absurd quirk of stupid fate, the shy spinster has fallen in love with the thoroughly unattainable Duke of Kesgrave and is desperate for something, anything, to occupy her mind. A dead body would do nicely.

Verity Lark—England's most tenacious gossip, the London Daily Gazette's most dogged reporter—relishes a challenge, which is why she refuses Colson Hardwicke's offer of menial employment. If the infuriating scoundrel really needs the sister of a radical reformer to be distracted with girlish chitchat, he can bloody well erupt into giggles!

Twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is far too shy to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow guest in the Lake District. A spinster who lives on the sufferance of her relatives, she would certainly not presume to search the rooms of her host's son and his friend looking for evidence. Reared in the twin virtues of deference and docility, she would absolutely never think to question the imperious Duke of Kesgrave about anything, let alone how he chose to represent the incident to the local constable. And yet that's exactly what she does.

As much as Beatrice Hyde-Clare relished the challenge of figuring out who murdered a fellow guest during a house party in the Lake District, she certainly does not consider herself an amateur investigator. So when a London dandy falls dead at her feet in the entryway of a London Daily Gazette, she feels no compulsion to investigate. It was a newspaper office, after all, and reporters are already on the case as are the authorities.

Stormy has her hands full with gnome shifters and her old high school nemesis, so a missing person’s case isn’t something she’s looking forward to. She has no choice but to dig, though. Her conscience won’t allow the alternative. Stormy might be new at the magic contest, but she understands winning. When another person disappears, she realizes she’s playing the wrong game.

Despite suffering a few initial setbacks, the former Beatrice Hyde-Clare has settled into her new position nicely. Thanks to Lady Abercrombie’s machinations, she has secured the admiration of society and finally earned the respect of her staff. Even the lessons in defending herself, which her husband, the Duke of Kesgrave, insists she take if she wants to continue in her dangerous avocation, are going well. But then she learns from a most unlikely source that Kesgrave’s malevolent uncle is scheming to destroy her happiness.

Since the new Duchess of Kesgrave cannot be swayed from her unfortunate interest in dead bodies, Lady Abercrombie decides to confront the matter head-on by hosting a murder mystery dinner party. Gathering together several of society’s most influential members, she concocts an amusing puzzle-play, assigns roles, and stands back to allow Bea to impress them all with her ingenuity.

He was given another chance at life and from the infinite possibilities available, he chose to come back as a mechanical man, a Metalman, named Repair. Now he has to contend with a research lab full of gnomes who say he owes them for bringing him back from death, a strange city that is going through a magical industrial revolution, and adversaries that want to see him broken into pieces.

Having long abandoned any hope of making a match, 26-year-old Beatrice Hyde Clare finds herself a little overwhelmed by her engagement to the Duke of Kesgrave. Cloying society matrons clamor for her attention while her aunt reels off an endless list of servants she will have to oversee. Even the most intrepid female would quake at the prospect of managing eight footmen! Fortunately, Bea knows the perfect distraction - an intriguing mystery - and pays a call on the Countess of Abercrombie, who had promised her that very thing only the evening before.    

Having inexplicably nabbed the duke of Kesgrave, 26-year-old spinster Beatrice Hyde-Clare is determined to marry him at once, and no amount of hand-wringing from anxious family members, worried friends, and well-meaning acquaintances will convince her to delay. Except, maybe, she is a little swayed by her uncle’s efforts to make amends for treating her with cold indifference during her childhood.

To be clear: Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, does not think every dead person in London is the victim of a sinister plot. The city is large, after all, and some of its inhabitants had to have died from innocent causes. Like Peter Huzza, who was killed in a horrifying steam engine accident. It is shocking, yes, the way his body was torn apart by the explosion of his very own machine, but not entirely surprising. High-pressure steam is notoriously dangerous to harness. There is no reason to suspect foul play. Nope, none at all.

I signed up for the new Bone-R app for monster dating thinking I’d get a fun one-night-stand out of the deal. Instead, I’m now stranded at the hot kraken’s house at Christmas because of a massive snow storm, and what started as a very hot hookup (who knew tentacles were so…flexible?!) now feels like so much more. But surely it’s too early to be talking about serious things like family and forever, isn’t it?

After the death of a childhood loved one, five best friends reunite in the small coastal town of Five Island Cove. One doesn't expect to find love with a high school crush. Another isn't prepared to find the strength she needs to take control of her life. And none of them are ready for the secrets they'll uncover at the lighthouse.

When Joel Shields dies, Robin Grover's only goal is to get her four best friends back to Five Island Cove to celebrate the life of Kristen's husband. She alone has stayed in the cove while everyone else couldn't wait to get away. Alice Keller comes instantly, because her mansion in the Hamptons and her husband's infidelity is smothering her. Not only that, but Kristen has always been like a mother to her, and she wants to support her.

The intimacy of a cabin at Lake Tahoe provides the combustible circumstances that bring Diana Holland and Lane Christianson together in this passionate novel of first discovery.