Showing results by author "M. C." in All Categories

The upper class of the social circle regarded Sir Benjamin Wright with utmost honor and respect. Yet Lady Emma knew her husband was in fact a drunken jealous brute who delighted in humiliating her both in and out of the bedroom.

Blessed with beauty, Mrs. Manners never bothered with the lesser skills of grammar and spelling. So, in order to entrap a second husband, namely the dashing Duke of Denbigh, she needed Miss Verity Bascombe. Surely the modest chit would be honored to write her love letters. Poor Verity! Her old schoolmate was as selfish as ever. But the lovely girl's gilded pen soon had the duke most intrigued by the poetic Mrs. Manners!

When Amy and Effy Tribble, two charming but impoverished spinster sisters, lose out on a much needed inheritance, they place an advertisement in The Morning Post and hire themselves out as professional chaperones. Vowing to prepare even the most difficult misses for marriage, the Tribble sisters will spend a London season on each client in this delightful Regency series, The School for Manners. Felicity Baronsheath, their first assignment, turns out to be more of a challenge than they ever imagined.

Lady Jane Lovelace has conceived the idea of approaching the most notorious man-about-town, Lord Charles Welbourne, with a most unique proposition. When he counters her offer with a condition that he thinks will halt her impudence, much to the surprise of both, she accepts. A novel of passion and intrigue, The Westerby Inheritance is a thrilling installment in an emotionally charged romantic saga, all played out against a backdrop of elegant 18th-century society.

Agatha Raisin, retired PR supremo, has been spurned at the alter by the man of her dreams - her attractive neighbor James Lacey. So temporarily deserting the sleepy Cotswold village of Carsely, she pursues her fleeing fiancé to north Cyprus where, instead of enjoying a romantic honeymoon, they witness the killing of an obnoxious tourist in a disco. Can the duo forget their differences and resume their strangely successful sleuthing partnership?

Fanny and her groom had been tricked! Parents on both sides, all impoverished, had decided to recoup their families' losses by marrying their children to the progeny of a wealthier neighbor. The joke was on them, however, when it was outed that neither family had a penny to its name.

Poor Ginny Bloggs! She had inherited a fortune, a magnificent country estate, and her benefactor's disgruntled relatives, a quartet of querulous schemers horrified to find themselves at the mercy of a low, common girl, a total stranger - the coal merchant's daughter!

When Private Investigator Agatha Raisin learns that her friend and one-time lover Charles Fraith is to be married to a mysterious socialite, Miss Mary Brown-Field, she sees it as her duty to find out what she can about the woman. Coming up empty, Agatha - out of selfless concern for Charles, of course - does the only sensible thing she can think of: She crashes their wedding, which ends in a public altercation. Nursing a hangover the next morning, she gets a phone call from Charles, with even more disturbing news: Mary has been murdered.

Suffering from bald patches thanks to a hair conditioner spiked with depilatory cream - supplied by the murderess in her last investigation - Agatha escapes to the coastal resort of Wyckhadden to allow her crowning glory to recover in privacy. A local witch provides her with hair tonic and Agatha’s lost locks begin to grow - but then the witch is found bludgeoned to death. The elderly residents at Agatha’s faded hotel seem innocuous enough, if a little odd. But, as she enquires into the murder she turns up an alarming number of secrets....

By the Fall of 1966, Syracuse had become a city at the crossroads–literally and figuratively. Situated at the geographic heart of New York and the intersection of two all-new interstate highways, the city found itself on a collision course with not only time, but circumstance.

For lovely young Miss Patricia Patterson, life seemed a delightful dream - until the specter of her guardian, Lord Charles Gaunt, cast a shadow over her carefree days of idleness and enchanting evenings of dazzling balls and delicious flirtations. Lord Charles demanded she act the part of a proper and perfectly boring young miss. Even worse, he insisted she devote her waking hours to cultivating her mind rather than captivating her swarm of admirers. Thus, the battle was joined - between the handsome, arrogant aristocrat who had Patricia in his lawful power, and Patricia, who vowed to turn this hateful tyrant into her lovelorn slave.

Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth's life is going to pot. He has - horrors! - been promoted, his new boss is a dunce, and a self-proclaimed traveler named Sean and his girlfriend have parked their rusty eyesore of a van in the middle of the village. Hamish smells trouble, and he's right, as usual. The doctor's drugs go missing. Money vanishes. Neighbors suddenly become unneighborly. The tension only explodes after the itinerant Sean is found brutally beaten to death in his camper.

The local society could only speculate how a pair of turtledoves would cope as the guests of the scandalous Lady Dacey. Surely she would attempt to corrupt them - an act that both Pamela Perryworth and Honoria Goodham would see as welcome entertainment in their rigid, joyless lives. Though Mrs. Perryworth is married - most unhappily - and the young Honoria has a cloying tendency to read too much scripture, the purity and loveliness of both ladies nonetheless inflames the senses of two notorious lords.

This is a collection of 15 essays on a variety of occult-themed topics, covering the full spectrum of classic esoteric and related subjects, which include Hermeticism, magic, ancient wisdom and philosophy, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, Theosophy, spiritualism, metaphysics, and New Thought by some of the most notable and prominent names in the history of those subjects.

The idyllic Cotswolds village of Thirk Magna is best known for the medieval church of St. Ethelred and its bells, which are the pride and glory of the whole community. As the bell-ringers get ready for the visit of the dashing Bishop Peter Salver-Hinkley, the whole village is thrown into a frenzy. Meanwhile, Agatha convinces one of the bell-ringers, the charming lawyer Julian Brody, to hire her to investigate the mystery of the Bishop's ex-fiancee: a local heiress, Jennifer Toynby, who went missing years ago and whose body was never found.

In the tradition of Robin Cook, Michael Crighton, and Samuel Shem, The Long White Coat is a story of medicine’s power, arrogance, and fallibility, based on real and painful clinical experience, told with humor and compassion. One editor, James O’Shea Wade, said, “The Long White Coat may convince the appalled and enthralled listener to never, ever go near a hospital again unless, like all the patients and doctors in this compelling narrative, they have no choice.

FBI Agents Jade Monroe and J.T. Harper are on the trail of their most recent serial killer, but they know his whereabouts only by the carnage left in his wake. By the time they reach his most recent location, he’s long gone. Without a clear description of the man, they’re chasing a shadowy figure that people see from a distance—a ghost—that’s killing at an alarming rate.

Nightmares of horrific murders has North Bend's local psychic, Kate Pierce, frantic with worry. Robert Lynch, a knife-wielding lunatic, is about to be released from an Atlanta prison after being incarcerated for 10 years. The connection between Kate and Robert is deeply personal, and she remembers his threats. When word gets out a killer with a fascination for knives is heading their way, North Bend's finest finally take notice. In order to stop this murderer in his tracks, Sergeant Jade Monroe has a dangerous plan to save Kate's life, even if it means putting her own in harm's way.

The only thing Gryph wanted when he entered the Realms was to find his missing sister. Then he pissed off a power-hungry god, got stuck in the undead hell dungeon known as the Barrow and nearly had his soul consumed. Then things trended upwards, and with the help of a ragtag group of companions, Gryph escaped to a verdant paradise of magic and wonder. But when his exposed secrets lead to betrayal and murder, Gryph is forced to accept an insane quest or his new friends will face the headsman's axe.

"I am Miss Lamberton. Miss Constance Lamberton. I hoped that you would employ me as your companion." So it was that quiet, reserved Constance came to the household of the haughty but beautiful Lady Amelia. She would serve as the lady's chaperone throughout the season's many festivities, finding herself an unwitting accomplice in Lady Amelia's scheme to trap the very eligible Lord Philip into marriage. But it was not Lady Amelia who won Lord Philip's heart. It was the pale, golden-eyed Constance herself.