Showing results by narrator "Christine Rendel" in All Categories

Kate gave up her dreams of being a painter years ago. But six little words pinned to the bulletin board of her local café could change her path forever. “To be, or not to be …”—printed on an orange card with no explanation—appears one morning. Each day, a new line from a different Shakespeare play is added, sparking curiosity throughout the café. Among the regulars is Bardy, a retired English teacher grappling with writer’s block.

The untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and of the conference’s fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II. Tensions during the Yalta Conference in February 1945 threatened...

Pursuing the family name as the finest silk producer in Lyon, the young Huguenot Rachelle Dushane-Macquinet is thrilled to accompany her famous couturier Grandmere to Paris, there to create a silk trousseau for the Royal Princess Marguerite Valois.The Court is magnificent; its regent, Catherine...

Adora's mahogany hair and violet eyes captivated young Prince Murad the moment he saw her in a convent garden, and their love flowered like the peach blossoms surrounding them. But Orkahm, Grand Turk of an empire, claimed Adora for his bride, tearing her from her young love as she wept bitter tears. Destiny might carry them to other lands and other loves, but Murad and Adora were meant only for each other - forging a magnificent love that lies forever in the pages of history....

The House of Arden is a timeless tale of adventure, fantasy, and mystery for children (and adults) of all ages.

In their lovely old Cotswolds village, Janet and Susan are known to all the other villagers as “the girls”—a fixture. Partners in love and work, co-proprietors of a picturesque shop specializing in the work of local artisans and farmers, they lead an enviable, enviably settled life. So it’s no catastrophe when Sue, the younger of the two, feels the need to take a month to travel on her own, leaving Jan alone to run their stall at the Inland Waterways Rally Craft Fair.

Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, Europeans are increasingly airbrushing from history their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But this legacy lives on in some of Europe's most recognizable buildings, from Notre-Dame Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament.

Adam Faramond, Earl of Rothbury, needs to find a wife -immediately! - or his beloved grandmother swears she'll leave him penniless. But Adam, an unrepentant rake, would only renounce a life of scandalous pleasure for one woman, the woman he's lusted after - and loved - for years. It's rather unfortunate, then, that Miss Charlotte Greene, a shy but beautiful blonde of impeccable manners and breeding, would never consent to be the blushing bride of a rogue...or so he thinks. But Charlotte believes that the earl, the only man whose touch leaves her trembling with desire, would never want a woman like her.

In this fascinating account, Margarette Lincoln charts the impact of national events on an ever-growing citizenry with its love of pageantry, spectacle, and enterprise. In addition to events at court and in parliament, she evokes the remarkable figures of the period, including Shakespeare, Bacon, Pepys, and Newton, and draws on diaries, letters, and wills to trace the untold stories of ordinary Londoners. Through their eyes, we see how the nation emerged from a turbulent century poised to become a great maritime power with London at its heart—the greatest city of its time.

Hannah Shah is an Imam's daughter. She lived the life of a devout Muslim in a family of Pakistani Muslims in England, but behind the front door, she was a caged butterfly. For many years, her father abused her in the cellar of their home. At sixteen, she discovered a plan to send her to Pakistan...

At a reunion of old school pupils and friends, recently retired Belle Harrington overhears a story about a gang of seven bullies, who blighted her life decades earlier. Over the course of 25 years, six of the seven have died or disappeared. One every five years, three months after each reunion. All seemingly accidental. Co-incidence...or something else?

In the summer of 1897, Fiona MacGillivray and her 11-year-old son, Angus, arrive in Vancouver in time to hear the news gold discovered in the Klondike! Fiona immediately sets off for Skagway, Alaska, intent on opening a theatre. After one encounter with infamous gangster Soapy Smith and his henchman Paul Sheridan, she decides to pursue her ambitions on the other side of the border in Dawson City. As a dying man breathes his last, he passes on to Sheridan a map pointing due north to the fabled Gold Mountain, where hills of gold keep the heat from hot springs contained in a valley as warm as California.

Harding’s Luck tells the exciting story of brave Dickie Harding, a little disabled boy and his many adventures. One day, Dickie accidentally discovers an old magic that allows him to travel into his own past across 500 years. There he meets Elfrida and Edred Arden (as told in The House of Arden), and together they seek a long-lost treasure. It’s a story of injustice, poverty, deformity, magic, romance, suspense, sacrifice, and eventual triumph over adversity.

Julie Carter was celebrating her high school graduation with five friends on a rainy weekend in 1985. Her murder is the third case that Andrew Cheatham presents to his cold case unit. One of the five people at the cottage with Julie killed her, but, more than a decade later, no one has ever been...

In 1981, just nine years old, Jennifer Cardy was abducted and murdered, her bicycle found standing where she had left it. There followed dark days for the Cardy family, days of searching for their missing daughter, grieving her death, wrestling with the questions. It would be thirty years before they would find any answers; thirty years before her killer, Robert Black, would face any kind of justice.

The Return of the Soldier is the powerful debut novel of the prolific English novelist Rebecca West. First published in 1918, the novel opens with the return of the shell-shocked Captain Chris Baldry from the trenches of the First World War, and grapples with the devastation of mental trauma from that war and its effects on families. Recounted from the perspective of his cousin Jenny, the story examines the relationship between Chris and the three women in his life.

London, 1890. In Victorian London, reporter Jennie Quinn employs deception as a weapon. Going undercover to seek justice for a murdered informant, she's drawn into a powerful criminal's seductive game of cat and mouse. Enigmatic former lawman Matthew Colton is as dangerous as he is clever, but the passion in his kiss is too tempting to resist. She aches to trust him, but she will not abandon her quest for the truth. Colton is a man with secrets of his own. Thirsting for vengeance, the disgraced Scotland Yard detective has infiltrated the criminal world he's vowed to destroy.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard is a collection of short stories about Molly Robertson-Kirk, an early fictional female detective. First published in 1910, Orczy's female detective was the precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn. As well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy's outstandingly successful and brilliant police officer preceded her real-life female counterparts by a decade.

One of the world's most multicultural cities, 20th-century Cairo was a magnet for the ambitious and talented. During the 1920s and '30s, a vibrant music, theater, film, and cabaret scene flourished, defining what it meant to be a "modern" Egyptian. Women came to dominate the Egyptian entertainment industry - as stars of the stage and screen but also as impresarias, entrepreneurs, owners, and promoters of a new and strikingly modern entertainment industry.

Royal French Court intrigue surrounds a beautiful young couturiere and her dashing nobleman-husband as Queen Mother Catherine de Medici unfolds her devious scheme to preserve her reign. Rachelle Macquinet, couturiére from one of France’s most celebrated silk-making families, is under palace...