Showing results by narrator "Verona Westbrook" in All Categories

Eda Swanycke is enjoying her first season in London when her debut comes to a crashing halt. Jilted by her cousin, she suffers the indignity of watching Haro's new intended lay claim to his person and position. But when a brutal murder upends the household with Haro as chief suspect, Eda must put her wounded pride aside, match wits with the investigator from London, and try, at all costs, to save Haro Emison's neck from the gallows...

When the out of work governess, Miss Philpott, meets Francine once more, she could never guess how her life could be transformed. In the brand new Edwardian age there are many changes for women. But Miss Philpott is now 40 and feels that all the innovations of the new century have little to do with her. But how wrong she is. With Francine's help she is about to become a modern woman and discover that she has talents she could never have dreamed of. Her abilities are only limited by her imagination, and as an avid reader, Miss Philpott's imagination is prodigious.

Hannah, Lady Beeston, can't say she's sorry that her husband is dead. The past 10 years have been anything but blissful, and seeing as they culminated in her being shot (albeit accidentally), she just can't find it in her heart to be sad. But it leaves her with a bad leg and an uncertain future - two things she isn't sure she can get past. Dr. Graham Alcott is more than happy with his quiet bachelor lifestyle. He spends his days tending to the sick and his nights studying by candlelight.

Author, critic and traveler, Marina Vaizey, in her third lockdown essay, reflects on the books of figures in the changing façade of English society and the establishment. Missing people, even with telephones and emails. And music and theatre even with the incredibly generous digital provision.

Both men and women enjoy thrillers, mystery, and crime. Yet it may still feel not quite respectable, somehow a guilty (sorry!) pleasure. Do these novels so often categorized as genre offer something the literary novel does not? The market is enormous, perhaps the largest in publishing. It is a cliché which may be true that only the Bible – say - outsells Agatha Christie. And then there are films and television, either original or adapted from novels.  

Elias, the handsome Duke of Westhampshire, has courted many women, but not for long. He doesn’t believe in commitment and flits from woman to woman, until he lays eyes on beautiful maid, Maria. Thinking her an easy target, he is shocked when she refuses his advances which angers, yet intrigues, him. Can the duke change his rake ways and open his heart? Will Maria be able to ever trust him?

Meet Lulu the Terrible and find out how she fell from grace; shudder at the menace of the cat who howls in the night and laugh with the irrepressible stationery cat; learn how the ancient Cabriole won his lady love, and how she rewarded him, and listen, with the wide-eyed kitten, to the mew-moirs of the cat who has been here before.

A viewing room by room of Bill Viola/Michelangelo at the Royal Academy of Arts on Monday March 4, 2019. Encounter the video works by Bill Viola on the theme of life, death, and rebirth and the drawings by Michelangelo from the 1530s to 1560s on religious and spiritual themes. 

The reputation of Cecil Beaton hardly rests on the fact that he was the most prolific and productive of official war photographers both on the home front and abroad during World War II; rather, he is thought of as a royal-society- and celebrity-portrait photographer, designer for stage and film - recipient of three Oscars and a Tony - prolific author, and gossipy and fascinating diarist.   

With her third London season drawing to a close, the shy Eliza Malcolm seems unlikely to find any husband, let alone a titled one. But when the hunting-crazed Duke of Brockenhurst invites the Malcolms to visit Harrowhaven, Eliza's father jumps at the chance to gain a wealthy son-in-law. Surrounded by quarreling parents, tactless acquaintances, the aloof dowager, and the unsettling duke, Eliza looks for one person kind enough to help her navigate the murky waters of Harrowhaven's secrets.

She has beauty, poise and intelligence, a diamond of the first water, a prize of great value, but she is not happy. Lady Davina Woodburn feels totally uprooted. A country girl at heart, she is a better judge of horse-flesh than any man, enjoys the wild freedom of her rural life, and is not afraid to attend the births of the farm animals, or patch up a wound in either man or beast. Nineteen-year-old Davina feels quite out of place in London.

Esther Whitton has gladly spent the last few months enjoying the quiet calmness of a Yorkshire winter, devouring books and attempting to keep herself from falling for a man she knows she can never have. But when her Great-uncle Danby announces they're all going to London for the season, she decides it's time to step out of her comfort zone and follow her heart before it's given away to another.