Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Knowelden" in All Categories

When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she's sure there's been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern coparenting arrangement: bird's nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down.

One morning while passing through Grand Central Terminal on her way to work, Grace Healey finds an abandoned suitcase tucked beneath a bench. Unable to resist her own curiosity, Grace opens the suitcase, where she discovers a dozen photographs - each of a different woman. In a moment of impulse, Grace takes the photographs and quickly leaves the station. Grace soon learns that the suitcase belonged to a woman named Eleanor Trigg, leader of a network of female secret agents who were deployed out of London during the war.

The Honorable Mr. Jeremy Malcolm is searching for a wife, but not just any wife. As the target of matchmaking mothers and desperate debutantes, he's determined to avoid the fortune hunters and find a near-perfect woman, one who will meet the qualifications on his well-crafted list. But after years of searching, he's beginning to despair of ever finding this paragon. Until Selina Dalton arrives in town. Selina, a vicar's daughter of limited means and a stranger to high society, is thrilled when her friend, Julia Thistlewaite, invites her to London.

In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei. Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom - all because of a reckless bargain her father struck. And since birth, she has been training to kill him. Betrayed by her family yet bound to obey, Nyx rails against her fate. Still, on her 17th birthday, she abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, disarm him, and break the 900-year-old curse he put on her people. But Ignifex is not what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle - a shifting maze of magical rooms - enthralls her.

The war is over, and Arianwyn has discovered the secret of the quiet glyphs, but her troubles are far from over. Her day-to-day work as Lull's witch is tricky enough: winter has set in, bringing bad weather, ice imps and befuddling Yule traditions. But when Arianwyn's grandmother is abducted by the traitor on the Council, our witch faces her greatest challenge yet.

Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy, and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor, and awaiting trial for murder. When Dorothea's charitable work brings her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted by the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets one of the prisoners, the teenaged seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another strange idea.

She wakes up, goes to work. Watches the clock and checks her phone. But underneath this monotony there's something else going on: Something under her skin. Charting the feedback loop of memory, the senses, and modern distractions with wit and precision, our narrator becomes increasingly anxious as the day moves on: Is she overusing the heart emoji? Can drinking eight glasses of water a day really fix everything? Why is the etiquette of the women's bathroom be so fraught? How does she define rape? And why can't she stop scratching?

Rachel Waring is deliriously happy. Out of nowhere, a great-aunt leaves her a Georgian mansion in another city—and she sheds her old life without delay. Gone is her dull administrative job, her mousy wardrobe, her downer of a roommate. She will live as a woman of leisure, devoted to beauty, creativity, expression, and love. Once installed in her new quarters, Rachel plants a garden, takes up writing, and impresses everyone she meets with her extraordinary optimism. But her new neighbors begin to wonder if she might be taking her transformation just a bit too far.

One spring evening in 1884, beautiful young courtesan Lola Deslys discovers the lifeless body of a chambermaid hidden in the gardens of the Hôtel Beau Rivage in Cannes. Even more distressing is that Lola knows the girl well. When the inquiry into her murder fails to reveal a single substantial clue, Lola is persuaded by novelist Guy de Maupassant to delve into the case on her own. Eager to exert her independence and defy conventions, Lola agrees. But she needs help in her investigation, and there’s no better partner in her pursuit - however unlikely - than Miss Gabriella Fletcher, a highborn, well-educated, and currently disgraced English governess.

Occupied Poland, 1942: Despite the constant presence of German soldiers in her village, Emilia is allowed certain freedoms as a midwife—the most precious is innocently cycling past Nazi checkpoints to the homes of expectant mothers on her rounds. But Emilia has a secret: for years she’s also been visiting the hidden Jewish mothers and working for the resistance…until she is betrayed.

Persephone is the youngest Penryn, and she’s always felt like an afterthought. As her siblings ventured out one by one, she was left behind, learning to rely on herself. Now that they’ve all returned and are on a mission to save their home, she’s reluctantly falling in with their plans and keeping her distance, especially when an Oxford-educated intern arrives wanting to learn how to save one’s ancestral home.

Runa will not let her little sister die. Alia traded her voice to the sea witch for a shot at happiness with a prince who doesn’t love her. And his rejection will literally kill her - unless Runa intervenes. Under the sea, Evie craves her own freedom - but liberation from her role as sea witch will require an exchange she may not be willing to make. With their hearts’ desires at odds, what will Runa and Evie be willing to sacrifice to save their worlds?

1887, the Cornwall coast. For years, rumors have flown through the village of Suttonsbury about Ashthorne Hall—that its occupants hoard pirate treasure, that a ghost walks its halls—but botanist Hyacinth Bell only cares about the estate’s extensive one-of-a-kind orchid collection. As an independent woman, she is eager to focus on her career, even if it means waiting to pursue a romantic relationship. After all, love—like an orchid—must be nurtured and tended before it can bloom. What she doesn’t expect is to be swept away by Lucas Harding, the manor’s caretaker, upon their first meeting.

The Penryn family have always been eccentric—living in a dilapidated castle in the wilds of Cumbria with an orchid-mad father and a classicist mother who likes to re-enact Greek myths, who wouldn’t be? Well-heeled Londoner Althea Penryn doesn’t expect a divorce and job hunt over the Christmas holidays, but her husband claims he’s done and the prenup is solid. She packs up her reluctant teenage children and heads home to Casterglass Castle to confront the ghosts of her past—including the real one her mother claims lives in the old guard tower.

If you were one of King Henry VIII's six wives, who would you be? Would you be Anne Boleyn, who literally lost her head? Would you be the subject of rumor and scandal like Catherine Howard? Or would you get away and survive like Anna of Cleves? Meet them and Henry's other queens - each bound for divorce or death - in this epic and thrilling novel that reads like fantasy but really happened.

Stephanie Patrick is devastated after her whole family dies in a plane crash. But when she discovers that the downing of flight NE027 wasn’t an accident but an act of terrorism, Stephanie enters the fight of her life to achieve her one goal: revenge. When she’s recruited by a covert intelligence organization, Stephanie sees a means to an end. Now, with nothing and no one left to lose, Stephanie undergoes rigorous training to become “Petra,” a mercenary terrorist based out of Germany, and “Marina,” an international businesswoman based in London.

Following the death of their matriarch, the lives of Chye Hoon's family are turned upside down. Now that the British have fled and the Japanese have conquered, their once-benign world changes overnight. Amid the turmoil, Chye Hoon's daughter-in-law, Mei Foong, must fend for her family as her husband, Weng Yu, becomes increasingly embittered. Challenged in ways she never could have imagined and forced into hiding, Mei Foong finds a deep reservoir of resilience she did not know she had and soon draws the attentions of another man.

When Beth, Megan, and Joanne meet at university, they become inseparable friends who’d do anything for one another - even agreeing to keep what happens one shocking night a secret. Now in their 40s and outwardly successful, each of the three has dealt with what happened in their own way. But secrets and lies leave their mark. When Megan decides to tell her fiancé the truth about that night, it threatens to ruin the lives of everyone around her. But someone is prepared to do anything to stop that from happening....

I’ve gone by many names, though you most likely know me as Milady de Winter: Villainess. Seductress. A secondary player in someone else’s tale. It’s finally time I tell my own story. The truth isn’t tidy or convenient, but it’s certainly more interesting. Before you cast judgment, let me start at the beginning, and you shall learn how an innocent girl from the countryside became the most feared woman in all of Europe.