Showing results by narrator "Madeleine Brolly" in All Categories

She is a girl three inches tall with eyes like drops of dew. Her clothes are cut from handkerchiefs and stitched with spider silk. For half of her life, she has been trapped in a birdcage while her giant kidnapper sits beside her, writing a leather-bound book the size of a house. Her name is Lily, and tonight she is escaping. She is going home. To Lilliput. Inspired by Gulliver’s Travels, Lilliput is an exhilarating adventure filled with cunning escape plans, evil clockmakers and very talkative parrots.

190 AD Pecunia: an insignificant town in west Britain. Romano-Briton Lucretia is determined that her get-rich-quick scheme will not be undermined by minor things like her husband’s death, dubious imposters, or her married daughter’s fascination with a celebrity gladiator. But when the bodies start to mount up, wise-woman Tryssa starts to ask questions. Certain that a forgotten goddess cannot be blamed, Tryssa needs to uncover the truth before another life is lost.

Charity Baxter is trapped in a cage of her own making. After being the tyrant of society for years, she fell from grace—and fell hard. Now, she is overlooked at the best of times and openly despised at the worst of it. Though troubles have a way of changing a person for the better, no matter how she tries to repair her reputation, no one is willing to believe her change of heart. And matters are only made worse when an irritating naval officer appears in town, determined to pester her. Odious man! Why can he not leave her be?

Evelyn Finch has given up on love. Finding a man to dance with her was difficult enough; finding one to spend his life with her was impossible. Better to embrace spinsterhood and rid herself of that false hope. No man will see her in a romantic light. But when a dashing gentleman sweeps into her life, reigniting her dreams, Evelyn can’t help but wonder if her greatest wish will finally come true.

Felicity Barrows is no fool, though the fortune hunters pestering her must believe differently. What other reason could they have for hounding her every step, showering her with honeyed words and false compliments, expecting her to fall straight into their calculating arms? Better to remain a spinster than marry unhappily—if she could only get some peace from their incessant overtures.

Romance ought to be that simple. But with no dowry, Victoria cannot marry a pauper. Nor can Oliver wed the daughter of the woman who nearly ruined his parents’ life 30 years ago. Surely, a marriage based on mutual affection and friendship is enough.

Lily Kingsley accepts that she is destined to be a spinster - but not until she gets her first kiss. And she knows the perfect gentleman to enlist. Unfortunately, she kisses the wrong one and ends up in the arms of an overbearing and exceptionally frustrating merchant. When busybodies catch them in their illicit embrace, an engagement is the only solution, but Lily doesn’t want a fiancé who’s only doing his duty. And she certainly doesn’t want a gentleman far too used to getting his own way. She simply must make him see how ill-suited they are.

In the sleepy town of Lost Maidens Loch, people sometimes disappear.... Down a quiet lane in town sits a little shop full of oddities you’d probably miss if you weren’t looking for it. This is Love’s Curiosities Inc., and its owner, Temerity Love, is sought by experts all over the world for her rare and magical gift: The ability to find lost things and learn their stories. When Lost Maidens’ pretty local school teacher is found murdered by a poisoned cup of tea, a strange antique hand mirror is discovered nearby.

Six years ago, tragedy tore Eloise and Patrick apart. Shouldering the burden of his brother’s death, he spent years drinking himself into oblivion. Now freed from that darkness, Patrick Lennox returns to reclaim the heart of the young lady he left behind. Eloise Andrews has enough troubles in her life without Patrick stirring things up. Her mother is a heartless beast who controls every aspect of her life, and Eloise is determined to break free of her - even if it means destroying the perfect reputation her mother is desperate to save.

A widower ought to mourn his wife, yet Hamilton Baxter feels only relief after her passing. After enduring thirty years in a miserable marriage, he is finally free to spend his days hidden in a library. But when his son begs for his help distracting his sweetheart’s diligent chaperone, Baxter can’t help but agree—only to discover that the spinster aunt is too appealing for his good.

Hunting pirates is hard…especially when your only assets are an unarmed ship, two ex-naval officers, a makeup artist, and a couple of pistols. But that’s exactly what Brad Mendoza and Jessica Lin have signed up to do on the edge of the Fringe: to help a bunch of farmers on a dead-end planet fight the pirate threat! Quickly, they find that they really don’t know what they’re doing…and not everything is what it seems.

Seven years ago, Lady Lydia Whiting married for the good of her parents, and widowhood was supposed to mark the beginning of her freedom. But when her husband spurns her from beyond the grave and cuts her from his will, her parents are determined to force her into another wretched marriage of convenience. Fleeing is the only option. Robert Bradshaw has a good, quiet life. Work and his daughter are all he needs, even if others think he ought to remarry. Why should he? His beloved wife was an angel among men, and no other could compare—especially a young widow who is more mouse than woman.

Irish Luck, Chinese Medicine is about improbable allies: an Irish single mother and a Chinese physician. Set against the backdrop of the Catholic Church in 19th Century America, it’s the story of how entrepreneurship and strength become a gateway for family survival despite injustice, tragedy, and ill-fated love. Follow the journey of a woman finding her strength as she rescues her sons from child labor and saves her family’s inheritance, only to risk everything for the man she loves.

Everyone in town knows Nancy Jones. She loves her cats. She loves her tumbledown house by the sea. She loves her job in the local school where she tries to help the children who need help the most. Nancy tries hard not to think about her past loves and where those led her.... Nancy never shares her secrets - because some doors are better kept locked. But one day she accepts a cat-sitting request from a local woman, and at the woman’s house Nancy sees a photograph in a bright-red frame. A photograph that opens the door to her painful past....

Having three generations of her family living under the same roof was once part of the Italian dream for Rosie. But when her party-loving, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing 85-year-old mother moves over from Ireland to Italy, Rosie’s longed for dolce vita in Umbria is anything but sweet.

With a new roof and working electrics in place on her villa in Italy, Rosie is ready for the next phase of turning the 22-roomed derelict Italian villa into a home. It needs to be ready in time for her elderly Irish parents to move in and her daughter to finally visit after being separated for so long.

Courageous or foolish? Marian Wakefield hadn’t thought herself either, but when she confessed her love to her closest friend, Marian discovered she had a hearty helping of both. And a broken heart to boot. No man shall ever secure her affection as he had, but with spinsterhood looming, her father gives her a choice—find herself a husband or he will do it for her. Must Marian settle for a marriage of convenience? Why does fate hate her so?

With Lucretia’s family busy arguing about money, any possibility that an old ring bought in the forum might be important is pushed aside until Lucretia’s cousin is poisoned and the local magistrate Amicus starts to raise questions. As the past starts to catch up with the present, Tryssa must help Amicus discover who would kill rather than reveal long-buried truths...and what those truths actually are.

When a battleship and its escorts mysteriously disappear near a contested area of space, they leave no clues behind, and their own Navy is preparing for war and can’t spare the resources to find them. Which wouldn’t really matter to ex-Navy Captain Brad Mendoza. He finally has all he ever wanted: a ship, a crew, and the most beautiful woman in the galaxy as his girlfriend. Seriously, can life get any better? But that’s when Carla Mendoza, his ex-wife, appears, begging Brad for help to find the missing task force and its flag captain, the man she left Brad for.

When Silas Byrnes married, he wasn’t expecting a happy ending for him and his wife. Theirs was a union of duty and not love, but fourteen years of marriage had been a misery for them both. Luckily the navy rarely allowed him time ashore. Now widowed, Silas has no choice but to return to a house that doesn’t feel like home and reclaim his children, who are determined to hate him as their mother did.