Showing results by narrator "Paul Woodson" in All Categories

David Drummond could not be more satisfied with life. He’s betrothed to the woman he loves, heir to his mother’s lairdship, and his family is both loving and supportive. But a strange attack on his betrothed shakes the foundation of everything he holds dear. Though Anna cannot remember what happened to her, evidence indicates she may have been raped, and her sire immediately cancels the betrothal. Though David is still desperate to marry Anna, he is informed she has been betrothed to another.

The handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting PIs like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Laura Lippman, and many more.

Dedric Hartley wants to make a new life in Scotland after years of service to King Edward I, but the English king insists on one last mission. When Dedric is sent to spy on his mother's clan, the MacLellans, the knight is forced to choose between the oath he swore to the man who stole him from his clan and the country that calls him home but where he knows no one.

Maeve hasn’t left Grant land since she was a small lass. Plagued by nightmares and ridden by grief at her father Alex’s death a year ago, she’s allowed her world to shrink to the size of Grant Castle. It’s big enough for a woman like her, and most importantly, it’s safe. Her father’s dying wish had been for her to marry and make a life of her own, but it’s one she just can’t fulfill. Not with a man like Maitland Menzie, who’s always on the move in the service of clan and country.

Seeing his brothers’ happiness with the women they love, Shaw Matheson realizes he wants the same for himself. And he knows Tara Cameron is the lass for him. But with most of his coin going to a mysterious blackmailer, he can’t in good conscience court the beautiful, kindhearted lass who helped rescue his clan from its curse. He must first lay the ghosts of his past to rest and discover who is demanding payment to keep an old secret that could ruin him and his clan forever.

Tashué’s faith in the law is beginning to crack. Three years ago, he stood by when the Authority condemned Jason to the brutality of the Rift for non-compliance. When Tashué’s son refused to register as tainted, the laws had to be upheld. He’d never doubted his job as a Regulation Officer before, but three years of watching your son wither away can break down even the strongest convictions. Then a dead girl washed up on the bank of the Brightwash, tattooed and mutilated.

Scotland, 1819. Brandt Montgomery Pierce is a bastard - and proud of it. Raised by the Duke of Bradburne, Brandt enjoys an uncommon life of privilege. Despite the mystery surrounding his birth, he has wealth and opportunity, and wants nothing more. Especially not a wife. Lady Sorcha Maclaren, the fiery and scarred daughter of Laird Maclaren, the Duke of Dunrannoch, is desperate to avoid marriage to a loathsome marquess at any cost...even if it means risking a kiss with a handsome stranger at a Scottish border festival.

Jake Ramsay, eldest son of the chief of Clan Grant, has always felt the weight of his sire's shadow. Tales of Alexander Grant's prowess are whispered throughout the Highlands, and Alex's loving marriage to Jake's mother, Maddie, is equally legendary. Jake's not sure he can live up to his birthright, but when he rescues a beautiful, strong-willed lass from a horrible fate, such concerns start to seem inconsequential. He becomes consumed with the need to protect the lass, Aline, and punish the man who hurt her.

At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader. Even astute observers like George F. Kennan concluded that the United States and Great Britain should view Stalin as a modern-day tsarist-like figure whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, not in ideology. Now Robert Gellately uses recently uncovered documents to make clear that, in fact, the dictator was an unwavering revolutionary merely biding his time.

Lady Gillian MacLennan's clan needs a leader, but the last person on Earth she wants as their laird is Fingal Maclan. She can neither forgive nor forget that his mother killed her father, and, by doing so, created Clan MacLennan's current desperate circumstances.

In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed - and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak.

While other lasses dream of handsome Highlanders, Molly wishes for nothing more than to make her adoptive parents proud. When Ranulf MacNiven threatens the Ramsay clan yet again, Molly is determined to catch him for her parents. There's only one problem. The Grants have sent a group of guards to help search for the outlaw, and one of them - a handsome, braw lad who makes Molly's heart pound faster - is as intent on gaining glory as she is.

Until recent years, very little was known of the tens of thousands of foreign nationals from Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Spain who served voluntarily in the military formations of the German army and the German Waffen-SS. In Kaisergruber's book, the listener discovers important issues of collaboration, the apparent contributions of the volunteers to the German war effort, their varied experiences, their motives, the attitude of the German High Command and bureaucracy, and the reaction to these in the occupied countries.

Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage Wars. But the wilderness is not as "empty" as it seems. There are potential friends and rapacious foes.

Napoleon Bonaparte's rise from common origins to the pinnacle of power, as well as his defeat at Waterloo, still influences our daily lives, from the map of Europe to the metric system. Here's the fascinating story of the great soldier-statesman.

Philippe Girard shows how Toussaint Louverture transformed himself from lowly freedman into revolutionary hero as the mastermind of the bloody slave revolt of 1791. By 1801, Louverture was governor of the colony where he had once been a slave. But his lifelong quest to be accepted as a member of the colonial elite ended in despair: he spent the last year of his life in a French prison cell. His example nevertheless inspired anticolonial and Black nationalist movements well into the 20th century.

Her enemy saves her life. Can they learn to trust one another? Two soulmates, Catherine and Graeme, are about to be reborn again, and their new lives will bring them back to Scotland. Only this time, they will find themselves in the midst of a bitter conflict between Scotland and England. With new names and no memory of their connection, will they be able to find each other and stay together?

Though Aedan Cameron would sooner spend his life as a scholar, reading, and watching the stars than assume a leadership role in his clan, his father's untimely death forces his hand. To make matters worse, he's immediately called upon to ride into battle to protect his land and his people. But everything changes for Aedan when a beautiful girl with a mind as curious as his own heals him. Suddenly, he realizes he's capable of becoming the leader his father wanted him to be while still pursuing the stars.

Elshander Grant is a warrior who can no longer fight. His grandsire, the great Alexander Grant, has always insisted that he and his cousins are destined to be great warriors for Scotland, but Els no longer believes it’s true. Memories from battle plague him every time he raises his sword, and he fears one day he’ll hesitate at the wrong moment. He’s almost desperate enough to run from his destiny when Joya, the beautiful spy who caught his attention years before, rides back into his life.

Grinding, bloody, and ultimately decisive, the Petersburg Campaign was the Civil War's longest and among its most complex. Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee squared off for more than nine months in their struggle for Petersburg, the key to the Confederate capital at Richmond. Featuring some of the war's most notorious battles, the campaign played out against a backdrop of political drama and crucial fighting elsewhere, with massive costs for soldiers and civilians alike.