Showing results by narrator "Davina Porter" in All Categories

Isabel Dalhousie thinks often of friends, sometimes of lovers, and on occasion of chocolate. As an Edinburgh philosopher, she is certain of where she stands. She can review a book called In Praise of Sin with panache and conviction, but real life is...well, perhaps a bit more challenging....

Author Peter Ackroyd has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Whitbread Novel of the Year, and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Based on Geoffrey Chaucer’s immortal work, this retelling of The Canterbury Tales follows a party of travelers as they tell stories amongst themselves about love and chivalry, saints and legends, travel and adventure. Through allegory, satire, and humor, the tales help pass the time during their journey.

St. Michael's College, Cambridge, is prestigious, stately - and in frightful disrepair. To replenish its dwindling coffers, the College's Master holds a fundraising weekend for wealthy alums. But all goes awry when the glamorous - and despised - Lexy Laurant is found strangled on the grounds. There's a lengthy list of likely suspects: Lexy's debt-ridden Latino lover, her titled ex-husband who left her for another woman, and a garrulous oil-rich Texan with something to hide, among others.

This is the story of the unhappy family of Anna Karenina. The novel contains much concerning Tolstoy's spiritual crisis and his search for the meaning of life. But it is also chiefly about marriage, and the growth and death of love.

In the eighth installment of Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling Isabel Dalhousie series, the inquisitive heroine helps a new friend discover the identity of her father. Jane, a visiting Australian philosopher on sabbatical in Edinburgh, has more questions than answers. Adopted at the age of six, she knows little about her father, other than he was a student in Edinburgh years ago. Always up for a challenge, Isabel is more than happy to help.

Elizabeth has a plan for how she and her boyfriend Cameron can spend the summer together in Scotland. While Cameron researches the migratory patterns of seals, Elizabeth will join an archaeological dig on the nearby island of Banrigh. But Elizabeth's plans don't include a devastating plague which starts killing off her fellow crew members.

Iceland, AD 1000: Freya knows that her people are doomed. Warned by the Fates of an impending disaster, she must embark on a journey to find a magnificent gold necklace, one said to possess the power to alter the course of history. But even as Freya travels deep into the mountains of Iceland, the country is on the brink of war. The new world order of Christianity is threatening the old ways of Iceland's people, and tangled amidst it all are two star-crossed lovers who destiny draws them together.

Newbery Medal winner Laura Amy Schlitz's gothic novel in the grand Victorian tradition, Spledors and Glooms, is set in London and centered around the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl, who goes missing. Two children realize it is their guardian, a Venetian-born puppeteer and magician, who has kidnapped her and used his dark powers to imprison her mind and body in the form of a puppet and strive to return her to human form.

Hamish Macbeth—Lochdubh’s one-man police force—has suddenly become a prime murder suspect when a belligerent newcomer turns up dead. To save his career, Macbeth must delve into this macho man’s unsavory past. Suddenly, suspects are everywhere: a salty fisherman, a reclusive romance writer, a respectable matron, a restaurateur’s wife, and even Hamish’s ex-fiancée Priscilla Halburton-Smythe and her newest boyfriend.

Martha's Vineyard has been home to Victoria Trumbull for most of her 92 years. Its magic, history, and picture-perfect calm are part of her very being. But one evening, Victoria hears something that doesn't quite belong: a scream followed by a splash and a sound of a car speeding away. She investigates and discovers a body on the outgoing tide.

Lou Witt - the future Lady Carrington if she behaved herself - was 24 and, in her mother’s words, "beyond management". When Lou’s family bought the splendid stallion named St. Mawr and moved to Arizona, Lou learned quite a lot about horses, men, and herself.

The prize-winning historian’s fresh look at the people and events that decided America’s struggle for independence. Its suspenseful climax is the 500-mile march undertaken by General Washington to surround Cornwallis at Yorktown.

In her third outing as amateur sleuth, Elizabeth MacPherson has the chance to revel in the rites of the old country at the annual Glencoe Mountain Games. But the innocent ethnic fair is cursed when the loathed Colin Campbell is found murdered. When a second reveler is found dead, Elizabeth lays to hunt and untangles all....

Captain Hepburn had a wife he didn’t love and a mistress who made hand-crafted dolls; in fact, she’d made one in the image of the captain, resplendent in his military uniform, and now his wife wants to buy it. In this taut tale, love is a complicated battle, and the soldier is outflanked.

Victoria Trumbull, 92-year-old native of Martha's Vineyard, is savoring the sea air over Vineyard Sound with her granddaughter, Elizabeth, when she spots a person who seems in trouble near the top of a cliff. Elizabeth goes for help, but it's too late - the man dies before he can be rescued.

Emma Bovary is not content to be the mere dutiful wife of a French country doctor. She yearns for excitement and a sense of romance that pulls at her so strongly she is powerless to resist, even though pursuing her dreams will exact a terrible price. Learn why Gustave Flaubert's compelling heroine has enchanted and puzzled readers for centuries.

From best-selling author Brenda Rickman Vantrease comes The Heretic's Wife, a magnificent tale about the power of love and the perils of faith. Tudor England is a precarious place for booksellers Kate Gough and her brother John, who offer forbidden translations of the Bible. Caught between warring factions—led by English opponents of the Lutheran reformation and Henry the VIII himself—Kate embarks on a daring adventure that will lead her into a dangerous marriage and a web of intrigue that pits her against powerful enemies.

With each passing day, Kelsea Glynn is growing into her new responsibilities as queen of the Tearling. By stopping the shipments of slaves to the neighboring kingdom of Mortmesne, she crossed the Red Queen, a brutal ruler whose power derives from dark magic, who is sending her fearsome army into the Tearling to take what is hers. And nothing can stop the invasion.

Lydia was never the most upstanding of the Bennet sisters, but who ever said that moral rectitude was fun? At least she bested her elder sisters and was the first to get married. She never could understand what all the fuss was about after she left Brighton with her gallant. It is a shame, though, that Mr. Wickham turned out to be a disappointing husband in so many aspects, the most notable being his early demise on the battlefields of Waterloo. And so Lydia, still not yet twenty and full of enterprising spirit, is in urgent need of a wealthy replacement.

Inviting 25 former classmates to a reunion dinner, Isabel sees an opportunity to finally resolve age-old differences among her classmates. But when damaging secrets and long-held resentments surface, Isabel finds the path to true forgiveness runs along a very slippery slope.