Showing results by narrator "Kate Reading" in All Categories

The American Commonwealth is caught in a deadly arms race with the USA, its parallel-world rival. And the USA’s technology is decades ahead. Yet the Commonweath might self-combust first – for its leader has just died, leaving a crippling power vacuum. Minister Miriam Burgeson must face allegations of treason without his support, in a power-grab by her oldest adversary. However, all factions soon confront a far greater danger.... In their drive to explore other timelines, hi-tech USA awakened an alien threat.

In Stornas, Reinar is feeling strong, working and training with vigor, imposing his authority on those around him, though internally, he is beset by fears. The threat of Alari grows each day, and though he carries himself with confidence, wanting to assure his people of their safety, Reinar knows it is only a matter of time before the goddess makes an appearance. Far away from Reinar, Alys is trying to turn her life around, though a terrible secret preys on her mind.

James Cordier is a master of intrigue, a brilliant thief, a first-class lover, and an intimate friend of danger - all for King and Country - and thoroughly sick of it. He just has to complete one last mission, and then he can retire peacefully, and resume his aristocratic life in Regency London, where his most dangerous task will be courting sweet, respectable heiresses. But first, James must charm a set of incriminating letters from a woman who is anything but quiet or respectable: the notorious Francesca Bonnard.

The Pink Carnation, history's most elusive spy and England's only hope for preventing a Napoleonic invasion, returns in Lauren Willig's dazzling, imaginative new historical romance. The Masque of the Black Tulip opens with the murder of a courier from the London War Office, his confidential dispatch for the Pink Carnation stolen.

Alydian has shattered her prison and returned to the rebellion, arriving in time to ensure victory at Skykeep. The people now look to her as high oracle, but she is haunted by her escape … and the power she has unlocked. She is not alone in hiding the truth. Her enemies have their secrets, but it’s those of her allies that she should fear. With the Empire’s might at her command, Teriah gathers her forces for a final battle, but her plan is more sinister. With the aid of a hidden master, she has prepared a devastating plague, one that will bring the rebellion to its knees.

Lauren Winner shares the spiritual practices she has adopted in her quest to reconcile Judaism and Christianity. Despite her conversion from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, Lauren Winner finds that her life is still shaped by the spiritual essences of Judaism - rich traditions and religious practices that she can't leave behind. In Mudhouse Sabbath, Winner illuminates eleven spiritual practices that can transform the way we view the world, and God.

With the island of Avalon far behind them, Meredith and her companions continue their search for Candidate One in the hope of finally discovering the secrets behind why they were brought to this strange, future-version of Earth. Wild adventures, mysterious technologies, and new friends will help Meredith on her journey. But the Adversary has its own plans for her, and soon she finds herself fighting for survival against an enemy unlike anything she has encountered before. There is only one hope for the future of humanity. Can Meredith handle the burden?

I wish more of the nudges that shaped history were the gentle kind—the signing of a treaty, the commitment to protect the weak, the spreading of a story that would enlighten minds. Alas, humans are more prone to stagnate than to change willingly, and so most nudges are given with force and terror and blood. Most nudges come at the slicing of a blade or the searing of a flame. The final chapters of Sable’s beginning certainly did. More blades than I hope to see again, and the fire…who could ever forget the fire?

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” Jane Austen at her witty, observant, intelligent, and sympathetic best, in this collection of her letters written to family and friends. Compiled by her niece Fanny Knight’s son Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne), and edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, this collection includes a preface written by the editor and notes from Lord Brabourne. It was originally published in 1892.

As "Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective," Charlotte Holmes has solved murders and found missing individuals. But she has never stolen a priceless artwork - or rather, made away with the secrets hidden behind a much-coveted canvas. But Mrs. Watson is desperate to help her old friend recover those secrets and Charlotte finds herself involved in a fever-paced scheme to infiltrate a glamorous Yuletide ball where the painting is one handshake away from being sold and the secrets a bare breath from exposure.

Gretel's latest investigation goes less than smoothly after a dead man is found in her rooms with her hunting knife sticking out of his chest in the whimsical second Brothers Grimm-inspired novel. Gretel (yes, that Gretel) is now 35, very large, still living with her brother Hans, and working as a private investigator.The small, sleepy town of Gesternstadt is shaken to its pretty foundations when the workshop of the local cart maker is burnt to the ground, and a body is discovered in the ashes. It is Gretel who notices that the cadaver is missing a finger.

The mysterious and powerful Starseers have Captain Alisa Marchenko's daughter, and she will do whatever she must to get her back, even if it means traveling to their stronghold and confronting them personally. Unfortunately, her strongest ally, the cyborg Leonidas, may become a liability since the cyborgs and the Starseers have a long history of hating each other. It doesn't help that Leonidas and Dr. Dominguez have a mission of their own, one that could jeopardize all that Alisa is fighting for.

Lady Kathryn Lambert must marry a titled gentleman to claim her inheritance and has finally gained the attention of a duke. Yet she is unable to forget the scandalous second son who aided in her achievement - or his betrayal. Lord Griffith Stanwick is tormented by the bitter truth that as a “spare”, he will never be able to give Kathryn what she yearns to possess. But when his father is found guilty of treason, Griff detours into the dark and dangerous corners of London, haunted by memories of the woman lost to him forever.

Meredith Gale has to make contact with the Architect before the Adversary’s agent, the transformed Abernathy, reaches her and ruins the millennia of planning designed to save the Earth. In order to accomplish this, she and her ragtag band of friends have to unify the scattered survivors of the multiverse to oppose the Adversary. Along the way, new allies will be made while new opponents do their best to stop her. If she fails, not only will the last of humanity be wiped away, but the Earth won't survive the collapse of the universe.

Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears.

Abandoned by the sun, shunned by the Father of the Gods himself, the North is a wild place; a brutally cold land, where ambitious lords keep their followers warm with tales of how they will be the one to claim the prized crown of Alekka. Stories woven on stormy nights, sung around blazing fires over cups of ale, tell of the one who will unite the two halves of the broken land. They whisper of the Bear Stone, where the prophecy of that man’s coming was etched two thousand years ago.

Magic has protected Tarsynium for a thousand years, shielding its people from a world ravaged by bloodthirsty demons. When a young ranger's apprentice named Owyn Lund discovers that the Arc of Radiance has been breached, he tries to warn anybody who will listen. But legends aren't supposed to be real. When a village is mysteriously destroyed, rangers, mages, and rebels all point the finger, blaming each other for the demons' brutality. However, Zara Dennel, a mage's ward, has heard Owyn's tale - and she's inclined to believe him.

They say it's not the fall that kills you. For Josette Dupre, the Corps' first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back. On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend with a crew who doubts her expertise, a new airship that is an untested deathtrap, and the foppish aristocrat Lord Bernat, a gambler and shameless flirt with the military know-how of a thimble. Bernat's own secret assignment is to catalog her every moment of weakness and indecision.

Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them.

Left suddenly penniless, the Honorable Sophia Grafton, a viscount's orphaned daughter, sails to the New World to claim the only property left to her name: a tobacco plantation in the remote wilds of colonial Virginia. Enlisting the reluctant assistance of a handsome young French spy - at gunpoint - she gathers an unlikely group of escaped slaves and indentured servants, each seeking their own safe haven in the untamed New World.