Showing results by narrator "Susan Duerden" in All Categories

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.

Lady Sarah Hampton would rather sew up a wound than tend to her own heart. Or matrimonial prospects. When the small hospital she's been volunteering at faces financial peril, she seeks to save them the best way she knows how—one dare, one wager, and one foolish rake at a time. No matter the risk to herself. If her friend's irritatingly handsome and brutish brother doesn't stand in her way.

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.

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?

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.

Persephone Honeyfield is witty, intelligent, and very aware that the only way to escape the monotony of the life she shares with her father and sister in the English countryside—and the wagging, ever-critical tongues of the people around her—is through marriage. She also knows the likelihood of it being a love match is nearly zero.

Alice Perivale saved the world, now she's pleased to make a teacup garden. Seventy-three year old Mrs. Perivale is enjoying time with her grandson when her secret vial of dragon's blood begins to glow brightly, and she fears that things have gone terribly wrong in the magical land of Coreve since she left. Alice loses no time in calling her mighty dragon friend Diovalo out of foreboding, thunderous skies, to land in Hyde Park and whisk her, her six cats, her butler Henderson, and her stunned grandson away.

Valentina has a problem. An assassin competitor shows up unannounced and unappreciated. Never a good situation to find oneself in. The Conclave members are infighting and providing her additional jobs. Now, if those jobs weren't in conflict, life might have been a touch easier to handle. With an assassin on her tail, two powerfully rich competitors vying for her services, and worries about her missing sibling, she is determined to make it all work out in the end. Or several people are going to die.

Tristan MacAlistair hides behind a façade of well-bred manners and charm yet, hidden beneath the surface, lie treacherous secrets he will go to extremes to protect. However, he meets his match in Lady Victoria Montgomery, a woman determined to compel Tristan to notice her at all costs. Having loved Tristan from afar for years, Victoria plans an elaborate ruse in an attempt to make him desire her. Her efforts are successful but Victoria soon learns that Tristan isn't the man she once believed him to be.

Mary Wollstonecraft is widely hailed as the mother of modern feminism. The book that made her famous, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, is a work of worldwide renown. Yet the range of her achievements as a thinker and writer reach far beyond this text. She was a multi-faceted author, and although the condition of women was a constant preoccupation throughout her life, she wrote on a wide variety of topics and in a range of literary forms, some of which she created herself.

Raised to despise the Douglas name, Mared outwardly agrees to the marital bargain for the sake of her family; secretly, she concocts a plan to ensure Payton will not wish to marry her. Seeing the handsome, virile laird Payton face-to-face, however, threatens a centuries-long enmity—and awakens Mared's deepest desires. But she will not be swayed. Choosing to repay her family's debt by working as his housekeeper instead of wedding him, she finds herself inexorably drawn to the man she vowed to resist. Then a profound discovery changes everything . . .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?