Hugo, the Duke of Wynchester enjoys many affaires de coeur and his latest lover, the beautiful but scheming and spoilt Olive Lady Brandon, is trying to blackmail him into marriage by forcing her husband to divorce her.Storming angrily from her house, Hugo finds a strange stowaway aboard his carriage. It transpires that this frail elfin beauty is none other that Janeta Brandon, Olive's step-daughter, and that she is fleeing the marriage her stepmother has arranged to an old man known to beat not only his servants and horses but also his late wife. When the Duke realises that Janeta means to kill herself rather than face a loveless marriage, he is struck by a cunning way to rescue them both by announcing their 'engagement'. They are then married in a quiet ceremony in the Duke's private Chapel.It is only when Janeta saves him from death by poisoning by the hand of her stepmother that the Duke realises that he has been in love with her from the moment he first saw her. But surely...

Strange things are happening in the sleepy Devon spa town of Tawmouth, where women are having increasingly bizarre dreams. Are they the product of unfulfilled sexual yearnings, or do they herald the return of a fantastical prehistoric deity, as Nich Mordaunt, scholar of erotic pagan ritual, believes?Seaside smut meets the deeply perverse as peeping Toms, craven submissives and dastardly doms all face elemental forces far beyond their own imaginings. The perfect beach read!

Three classic novels from the Bard of the BayouThis boxed set includes three novels featuring fan favorite Detective Dave Robicheaux as he does battle with the forces of evil, and with his own soul, in Louisiana's famous bayou country. New York Times bestselling author James Lee Burke is a rare winner of two Edgar Awards and in 2009 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.Jolie Blon's BounceNew Iberia, Louisiana, is reeling from a one-two punch of brutal rape-homicides, and drug-addicted blues singer Tee Bobby Hulin has been tagged as the prime suspect. No stranger to bucking popular opinion, police detective Dave Robicheaux is convinced they've got the wrong man. But while placating a town on fire for swift revenge, Robicheaux must face his own demons in the form of Legion Guidry, a diabolical figure whose hardcore brand of violence left Robicheaux humiliated and addicted to painkillers. With his longtime friend, the...

From the USA Today bestselling author of This Gun for Hire and one of today's "premier western romance writers,"* a captivating new Western historical romance . . . WHAT HE DOESN'T KNOW . . . After a horse drags him through the countryside, Israel McKenna awakes bruised and battered in a field in Pancake Valley, Colorado. He can recall where he came from and where he was going, but the memory of how he came to be on the Pancake homestead eludes him. He's certain he did something wrong to deserve such a harsh punishment—and so is the beautiful woman who reluctantly comes to his aid. . . . COULD HURT HER. Wilhelmina "Willa" Pancake must focus on running her family's ranch. With Israel's hazy memory, she is unsure if she can trust him, let alone handle the budding attraction between them. And as men fight to steal her land and the truth about Israel's past rides toward them,...

Last century Charles Darwin set out on a voyage in the Beagle that would change forever the way human history was viewed. It was on this voyage that Darwin collected the information that gave birth to his controversial Theory of Evolution. MR DARWIN'S SHOOTER is the story of Syms Covington, Darwin's manservant on the Beagle and afterwards. This is a novel of scientific discovery, of religious faith, of masters and servants, and of the endless wonder of the natural world. But its greatest triumph is Covington himself, the boy who looked up at the beckoning figure of a yellow-haired Christian in the stained glass window in his boyhood church of Bedford, and sought to follow. He leaves Bedford as a lad of 13 and goes to sea with the evangelical sailor John Phipps and becomes one of Phipps' 'lads'. But Phipps' catechising can't repress Covington's passage into manhood, nor prevent him chasing the exotic native maidens of Tierra del Fuego. When next he returns to sea it is...

The war is over, but Emma's battles continue at home...Emma Reece is slowly adjusting to her husband's return from the war, even though his appalling injuries mean their marriage is in name only. But then tragedy strikes, and Emma finds she cannot turn to Jack Harvey, her long-standing friend and one-time lover – for while he still loves her, he is now a married man...The final instalment in the 'Emma' trilogy, from Rosie Clarke, the author of The Downstairs Maid(Note: previously published as The Hearts that Hold by Linda Sole)

Empire, the fourth novel in Gore Vidal's monumental six-volume chronicle of the American past, is his prodigiously detailed portrait of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century as it begins to emerge as a world power.