Showing results by narrator "Saskia Maarleveld " in All Categories

Vienna, 1954 After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Inspired by her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth. She begins passing intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.

Emily had hoped for some peace in the wake of the war. A chance to sit down, relax, and come to terms with everything that happened over the last year. But it was not to be. The post-war world is in chaos, with mundane revolutionary factions clashing with magical supremacists, kings fighting to maintain what remains of their power, magitech changing the world, and shadowy forces preparing themselves to take advantage of the coming conflict… all unaware of a growing threat rising from the long-forgotten past.

Lady Amalia Cornaro knows that this Conclave might be her only chance to smother the growing flames of war, and she is ready to make any sacrifice if it means saving Raverra from destruction. Amalia and Zaira must go behind enemy lines, using every ounce of wit and cunning they have, to sway Vaskandar from war. Or else it will all come down to swords and fire.

In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin–a secluded shack in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death. Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics from her mother’s past and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin.

At any given moment in other people's houses, you can find...repressed hopes and dreams...moments of unexpected joy...someone making love on the floor to a man who is most definitely not her husband.... As the longtime local carpool mom, Frances Bloom is sometimes an unwilling witness to her neighbors' private lives. She knows her cousin is hiding her desire for another baby from her spouse, Bill Horton's wife is mysteriously missing, and now this....

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.

In 2003, 16-year-old Rebecca Winter disappeared. She'd been enjoying her teenage summer break: working at a fast-food restaurant, crushing on an older boy, and shoplifting with her best friend. Mysteriously ominous things began to happen - blood in the bed, periods of blackouts, a feeling of being watched - though Bec remained oblivious of what was to come.

The last person Griffin Shipley expects to find stuck in a ditch on his Vermont country road is his ex-hookup. Five years ago, they’d shared a couple of steamy nights together. But that was a lifetime ago. At 27, Griff is now the accidental patriarch of his family farm. Even his enormous shoulders feel the strain of supporting his mother, three siblings, and a dotty grandfather. He doesn’t have time for the sorority girl who’s shown up expecting to buy his harvest at half price.

Mack begins her training at the mages' academy in the hope that, by complying, the stasis spell will be lifted from her old friend Mrs. Alcoon. However, once there, she finds herself surrounded by unfriendly adults and petulant teenagers, the majority of whom seem determined to see her fail. Feeling attacked on all fronts, Mack finds it harder and harder to keep a rein on her temper. Forced to attend anger management classes and deal with the predatory attentions of Corrigan, the Lord Alpha of the shapeshifter world, her emotions start to unravel.

The Bahamas, 1941. Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the duke and duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? Or so Lulu imagines.

Caitlyn and her friends have returned to Jude’s Sorcerous Academy, but all is not well in the school. The Great Houses of Shallot are on the verge of going to war, and the conflict is spilling into the school; in the background, powerful and secretive forces prepare to finally reveal their plans to reshape the world. Caught in the middle, torn between her family and her friends - and burdened with a secret she dares not share - Cat must unlock the secret of the Zero Equation...or watch helplessly as her family, friends, and school are destroyed by war.

With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit in. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home - medallions that belonged to her father...who may have gone to Wellsworth.

Jacob fears their time is running out. The full focus of Belldorn and Bollwerks tinkers is centered on the construction of the carriers. While Jacob is concentrating on overseeing the work, he worries for Alice who faces a dire challenge of her own. They need to launch an attack on Ballern, but their forces cannot cross the Crystal Sea without the new warships. To deploy their ground forces they must secure a base, requiring a strengthened alliance with the forest city of Karn.

Mason Kade is the dream. He is the promise. He's offering what so many would fantasize about, and it's not that I don't want it/him/us. It's the opposite. There might be ghosts haunting me, but this man who's my soul mate is asking me for forever. How can I say no to someone who already gave me my happily ever after?

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then, natural disaster creates an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

Lost between the timeless lines of Homer’s epic, the women of Troy finally stand to be counted. Their story is one you’ve never encountered, and it will change the fate of Troy forever.

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people from other hostile kingdoms. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire - a dangerous gift for the future queen of a land where magic is forbidden. Now Denna has to learn the ways of her new kingdom while trying to hide her growing magic. To make matters worse, she must learn to ride Mynaria's formidable warhorses before her coronation.

Thanks to the help of Jacob’s Titan Mechs, much of Belldorn survived the battle that ravaged its shores. But the war is far from over. Demands to chase Ballern’s surviving forces across the sea meet more resistance than Jacob could have imagined when Lady Katherine ignores her allies’ protests and shifts her focus to reinforcing the city.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a picket fence, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn't exist. The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she's given a name and location by her mysterious boss Mr Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn't privy to Mr Smith's real identity, but she knows this job will be different.

"Once a cheat, always a cheat," they say. Marcie Maddox has worked hard to get where she is after the illicit affair that started her new life a few years ago. But her world of country clubs, yachts, and sumptuous houses in Savannah, Georgia, isn’t easy to maintain, no matter how hard she tries. Nor is keeping her husband, Jason, truly interested.