Showing results by narrator "Saskia Maarleveld" in All Categories

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is 24 years old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary's hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life.

Thirty years after the Great Fatigue infected the globe—and the treatment regressed most of the human race to a primitive state—Seth Keller makes a gruesome discovery in his adoptive father’s makeshift lab. This revelation forces him to leave the safety of his desert home and the only other person left in the world…at least, as far as he knows. In the jungles of Costa Rica, Sarah Peoples has made her own discovery—just as horrific, and just as life-changing. It will take her far from the fledgling colony of New Haven, yet never out of reach of its ruthless leader.

When Harriet McKenna's own relationship goes up in smoke, her ruthless boss, Alex Katona, challenges her to take a leaf out of his book and embark on an illicit affair with him! This means being at his beck and call beyond office hours, and in return Alex promises to show Harriet how pleasurable life can be....

On a peace mission, desperately trying to hammer out a settlement that will keep the radicals and reactionaries from starting yet another civil war, Emily is attacked by Marah, a young woman rescued by her enigmatic master and turned into a living weapon to start the chaos. Seeing something of herself in the girl, Emily takes her as an apprentice both to give her a better chance at life and to use her to track down her master, who appears to have plans of his own...

Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, abruptly leaving her stable but unfulfilling life in Manhattan. As her husband scrambles to figure out what happened to her, Elyria hurtles into the unknown, testing fate by hitchhiking, tacitly being swept into the lives of strangers, and sleeping in fields, forests, and public parks. Her risky and often surreal encounters with the people and wildlife of New Zealand propel Elyria deeper into her deteriorating mind.

Maisie Murray’s sweet, docile exterior masks the courageous spirit of a firebrand determined to champion women’s suffrage with like-minded friends. But fighting for her principles has swept her directly into harm’s way - and into the arms of a man she cannot resist. A trained officer with the Royal Highland Regiment, Niall Campbell has spent his life serving the Crown. Battle-weary and searching for peace, he nothing to do with trouble - until he meets Maisie.

In Melissa Larsen's The Lost House comes the mesmerizing story of a young woman with a haunting past who returns to her ancestral home in Iceland to investigate a gruesome murder in her family.

Jodi and Todd are at a bad place in their marriage. Much is at stake, including the affluent life they lead in their beautiful waterfront condo in Chicago, as she, the killer, and he, the victim, rush haplessly toward the main event. He is a committed cheater. She lives and breathes denial. He exists in dual worlds. She likes to settle scores. He decides to play for keeps. She has nothing left to lose. Told in alternating voices, The Silent Wife is about a marriage in the throes of dissolution, a couple headed for catastrophe, concessions that can’t be made, and promises that won’t be kept.

After escaping the claws of Corrigan, the Lord Alpha of the Brethren, Mack is trying to lead a quiet lonely life in Inverness in rural Scotland, away from anyone who might happen to be a shapeshifter. However, when she lands a job at an old bookstore owned by a mysterious elderly woman who not only has a familiar passion for herbal lore but also seems to know more than she should, Mack ends up caught in a maelstrom between the Ministry of Mages, the Fae and the Brethren.

Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are on the run from coven, kingdom, and church - fugitives with nowhere to hide. To survive, they need allies. Strong ones. But as Lou becomes increasingly desperate to save those she loves, she turns to a darker side of magic that may cost Reid the one thing he can’t bear to lose. Bound to her always, his vows were clear: where Lou goes, he will go; and where she stays, he will stay.

Vanja Schmidt knows no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love. Abandoned to Death and Fortune as a child, she has scraped by as a lowly maidservant with her quick wits and the ability to see her godmothers’ hands at work in the world. But when they demand her lifelong servitude in exchange, Vanja decides that gifts not given freely...can always be stolen. A wicked retelling of “The Goose Girl", Little Thieves is a delightfully witty YA fantasy about the fickle hands of fate, and changing the cards we’re dealt.

Half-werewolf, half-Aedh Risa Jones is beginning to believe that the only way to find the keys she’s been searching for and save her friends is by dying. And when Wolfgang Schmidt, the lover of her boss at the vampire council, is found dead, her worst fears are confirmed. With the first portal of hell permanently open, the energies of the dark path are leaching into the world. Searching for Schmidt’s killer and the keys at the same time, Risa and reaper Azriel track a shape-shifting spider spirit capable of changing her form into a seductive woman. But when they finally find the second key, the Aedh Lucian snatches it and disappears.

Cora Dove and her sisters’ questionable legitimacy has been the lifelong subject of New York’s gossipmongers and a continual stain on their father’s reputation. So when the girls each receive a generous, guilt-induced dowry from their dying grandmother, the sly Mr. Hathaway vows to release their funds only if Cora and her sisters can procure suitable husbands—far from New York. For Cora, England is a fresh start. She has no delusions of love, but a husband who will respect her independence? That’s an earl worth fighting for.

In 1850, an impoverished twenty-five-year-old named Fredericka Mandelbaum came to New York in steerage and worked as a peddler on the streets of Lower Manhattan. By the 1870s she was a fixture of high society and an admired philanthropist. How was she able to ascend from tenement poverty to vast wealth? In the intervening years, “Marm” Mandelbaum had become the country’s most notorious “fence”—a receiver of stolen goods—and a criminal mastermind.

London, 1895: Trapped by oppressive marriages and societal expectations, three women receive a mysterious invitation to an afternoon tea at the home of the reclusive Lady Duxbury. Beneath the genteel facade of the gathering lies a secret book club—a sanctuary where they can discover freedom, sisterhood, and the courage to rewrite their stories.

The Black Land is a myth: Centuries have passed since that Great Enemy was slain. Yet old fears linger, and on the longest night of the year, people in the South still light ritual bonfires to banish the dark. In her village, this duty falls to Solveig, a girl favored by the gods with powerful fire magic. But when her brother kills a Northern lord’s son during the ritual, it is Sol who faces punishment, by being weregild—part hostage, part guest—in the North for a year and a day.

After a hurricane destroyed their city, Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah Mikaelson have rebuilt New Orleans to even greater glory. The year is 1766. The witches live on the fringes in the bayou. The werewolves have fled. But still Klaus isn't satisfied. He wants more. He wants power. But when Klaus finally finds a witch who will perform a spell to give him what he desires most, she secretly uses Klaus to unleash a curse - one that brings back hundreds of her ancestors - and begins a war to reclaim New Orleans.

Fifteen years ago, Frida and her brother Gabriel escaped from a cult. Once so close they were able to finish each other’s sentences, a sudden, unspeakable tragedy caused them to drift apart. Now, on holiday at the stunningly luxurious Ara Hotel, they finally have a chance to reconnect between dips in the pool and hikes on spectacular desert trails. It all feels like paradise – until a young woman is found dead.

Candle Enys is no longer human. A demon owns her soul, and the only way to set things right is to travel to the one place no human should ever go: the Night Nation. Where the dead roam, and spirits flood the sky. Where monsters hold court and the very land itself might wake at any moment. With her wings, her magic, and her wits, Candle must find the demon and kill him, all the while contending with the denizens of the Night. New friends, foes, and complicated family history await—if only she can catch her breath.

A mission she doesn’t want, to protect and defend a dwarf she can’t forgive, in a city full of enemies.... Sentinel Marshal Sabira d’Deneith has her work cut out for heras she searches for a killer whose methods seem eerily familiar.... Blending adventure fantasy and hardboiled noir fiction, The Shard Axe brings the broader world of Eberron to the setting of the immensely popular game, Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited.