Showing results by narrator "Amy Scanlon" in All Categories

Rules for professional mourners: Plan your aliases well—no improvising. Wear proper mourning attire. Maintain discretion at all costs. Don't upstage the body. It is 1957, and Hippolyta Halfpenny and her family have mastered the business of bereavement. As professional mourners...

He promised to help her reclaim the memories she lost—no matter what they found. Until she remembered another man. Cornwall, 1913For three years, Merryn has lived without a past—no family, no history, no home that's truly hers. When the threat of being locked away for her own “protection” looms, she takes a desperate chance on AJ Winthrop—a warmhearted, whimsical stranger who offers a hasty marriage of convenience and a promise: he will take her back to Cornwall and help her uncover the truth about who she once was.

Lemon, poppy seed, sun-warmed sand. These visions convince Aoife to quit her job, leave her manipulative boyfriend, and escape to the isolated shores of the Farmstead commune. There, among its charismatic and hedonistic residents, Aoife finds everything she’s been missing: a community that adores her, the freedom to indulge, and the promise to be a part of something miraculous. But darkness underpins her airy new way of life. A disappearing cave looms above an ocean no one dares step foot in, mysterious crying fills the night hours, and a rot is spreading across the island. 

A seemingly idyllic picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes a pair of slayings fourteen years earlier in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Who Cries for the Lost.

In 1892, the grisly murders of Whitechapel prostitutes four years earlier by a killer dubbed Jack the Ripper remain a terrifying enigma. And in a packed Old Bailey courtroom, Superintendent Thomas Pitt’s testimony causes distinguished soldier John Adinett to be sentenced to hang for the inexplicable murder of a friend.

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion, where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful, notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. The distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself.

Fresh from his defeat of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, William of Normandy has returned home in triumph, accompanied by the English nobles he cannot trust to leave behind. For Waltheof of Huntington, however, rebellion is not at the forefront of his thoughts. From the moment he catches sight of Judith, daughter of the King's formidable sister, he knows he has found his future wife. When Waltheof saves Judith's life, it is clear that the attraction is mutual. But marriage has little to do with love in medieval Europe.

When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere—until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first place: He was involved—somehow—in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.

Having grown up at Wedderburn Castle in the serene Scottish Lowlands, Orin Hume is thrust into the dazzling realm of London society and Court circles as Poet Laureate of Britain. But at the height of his fame a former tragedy and his ties to a lass he once loved lead him home to Berwickshire again. When his return is further marred by lost love letters and scheming kin who conspire to keep the pair apart, can Lady Maryn Lockhart, now Duchess of Fordyce, forgive him? Or will the shadows of the past and the complexities of the present rewrite their love story?

Lydia works as translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. They work well together, even if the act of translating his thoughts into English makes her somewhat wobbly on her feet. She’s not the agency’s best translator, but what else is she going to do? She has no qualifications and no discernible talent in any other field. So when tragedy strikes and Lydia finds herself at the center of an intergalactic incident, her future employment prospects look dire—that is, if she can keep herself out of jail!

All theater romances are tragedies. Ella Blythe knows this. Still, she cannot help but hope her own story may turn out different than most - and certainly different than the tragic story of the Ghost of Craven Street Theater. Yet as she struggles to maintain her tenuous place in the ever-shrinking ballet company, win the attentions of principal dancer Philippe, and avoid company flirt Jack, Ella cannot deny the uncanny feeling that her life is mirroring that of the dead ballerina.  

In Victorian England, a divisive election is fast approaching. Passions are so enflamed that Thomas Pitt, shrewd mainstay of the London police, has been ordered not to solve a crime but to prevent a national disaster. The aristocratic Tory candidate—and Pitt’s archenemy—is Charles Voisey. The Liberal candidate is Aubrey Serracold, whose wife’s dalliance with spiritualism threatens his chances.

Despite having signed the Magna Carta and made promises to mend his ways, there is still great dissatisfaction with King John's rule. Among the rebellious nobles is young Nicholas de Caen.

After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Russell and Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes' son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat. Holmes rushes after Damian while Russell, slowed down by a recent injury, stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ grand-uncle, the artist Horace Vernet.

She'll light the fire of resistance—but she may get burned … 1942. Though she survived the bomb that destroyed her home, Yvonne Rudellat’s life is over. She’s estranged from her husband, her daughter is busy with war work, and Yvonne—older, diminutive, overlooked—has lost all purpose. Until she’s offered a chance to remake herself entirely …

In 1715, Lady Blythe Hedley's father is declared an enemy of the British crown because of his Jacobite sympathies, forcing her to flee her home in northern England. Secreted to the tower of Wedderburn Castle in Scotland, Lady Blythe awaits who will ultimately be crowned king. But in a house with seven sons and numerous servants, her presence soon becomes known.

In the search for the truth, the line between fact and fiction is beginning to fall out of focus It is 1903, and Lily Temple is a beautiful silent-film actress who spins fairy tales and plays frivolous roles in front of the cine-camera. But beneath the costumes and stage makeup is a woman with a quick wit, a murky past, and a tantalizing secret. As an underground investigator to the wealthy, Peter Driscoll has been tasked with locating the legendary Briarwood Teardrop, an exquisite sapphire that has been missing for years—and which Lily happens to be wearing beneath her gown.

The man who lies bleeding to death in a London brickyard is no ordinary drifter but a secret informant with details of an international plot against the British government. Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with him, arrives seconds after the knife-wielding assassin—who, in turn, flees on an erratic course that leads Pitt in wild pursuit to picturesque St. Malo on the French coast. Meanwhile, Pitt’s supervisor, Victor Narraway, stands accused of embezzling government funds. 

The Port of Barfleur, 1120. Sabin FitzSimon, disgraced son of an earl, finally has the chance to salvage his reputation when renowned knight Edmund Strongfist asks Sabin to join a journey to Jerusalem. The only thing Sabin must promise is to keep away from Strongfist’s beautiful daughter, Annais. Sabin obeys, but his attraction to Annais’s spirit, courage and her wonderful harp playing become increasingly difficult to resist.

Thomas Pitt is now the powerful head of Britain’s Special Branch, and some people fear that he may have been promoted beyond his abilities. His own self-doubt is fueled by rumors of a plot to blow up connections on the Dover–London rail line, on which Austrian duke Alois Habsburg is soon to travel. But why destroy an entire train to kill one obscure Austrian royal? Are the rumors designed to distract police from an even more devastating plot?