M. C Beaton
61) Our Lady of Pain
Lady Rose Summer, the wayward Edwardian debutante who keeps getting mixed up in disreputable adventures, would swear she is not a jealous woman. After all, she knows her engagement to private detective Captain Harry Cathcart is only a ploy to keep her parents from shipping her off to India. But then Harry's latest client, Dolores Duval—a vision of curves with a seductive French accent—starts appearing everywhere at his side. In a fit
...62) Annabelle
It's a maiden's miracle! Annabelle Quennell, daughter of a poor country parson, gets a chance at a London season to snare a wealthy husband. But before she sets off, Mad Meg the gypsy predicts trouble ahead, and it is nothing but woe that Annabelle finds. Godmother Lady Emmeline sponsors Annabelle's spree—and demands she wed the oafish Captain MacDonald. But things get worse when Annabelle fears she is losing her heart to Lord Varleigh—elegant,
..."Since there is no hope of my securing an eligible partner due to sad lack of looks, I am running away."
So writes the sixth of the famous Armitage sisters. For how could colorless Frederica withstand a season's scrutiny after the five beauties before her had married so magnificently? Disguised as a chambermaid, Freddie finds her way into the household of the fashionable Duke of Pembury. That wild gentleman is soon onto her tricks
...65) My Dear Duchess
Handsome, dashing Henry Wright, the Duke of Westerland, needed a wife in a desperately short period of time. If he could not find a wife, he would lose the legacy he so desperately desired.
Young, lovely, but sheltered Miss Frederica Sayers needed a husband just as much as Henry Wright needed a wife, only she needed a husband to save her from the life of shame that almost certainly awaited her when she fled the callous cruelty of her family.
Marriage
...66) Pretty Polly
Blessed with beauty, Mrs. Manners never bothered with the lesser skills of grammar and spelling. So, in order to entrap a second husband, namely the dashing Duke of Denbigh, she needed Miss Verity Bascombe. Surely the modest chit would be honored to write her love letters.
Poor Verity! Her old schoolmate was as selfish as ever. But the lovely girl's gilded pen soon had the duke most intrigued by the poetic Mrs. Manners!
But alas, what
...His kiss left her flushed and disconcerted—perhaps men were best avoided after all ...
The Earl of Tredair has had his fill of balls, routs, and silly misses, and he despairs of finding someone extraordinary—that is, until he meets Miss Fanny Waverley.
Most unique and intriguing, Fanny and her two sisters are the adopted daughters of the reclusive bluestocking Madame Waverley. They have been raised as her disciples
...68) Sweet Masquerade
The tenth Earl of Berham does not know what to do. An attractive thirty-two-year-old bachelor, he has been appointed guardian of the young Freddie Armstrong, the eighteen-year-old grandson of his late father's dear friend. That's bad enough. Then he discovers that the boy is really a girl! It is against all convention and against his personal code to keep a young lady concealed in his own home. He must find a solution.
The earl's frequent
...69) The Adventuress
Another tenant for London's infamous house for the season, from the New York Times bestselling author
Followers of the series will notice in this volume some personality changes in the odd assortment of retainers who keep the house at 67 Clarges Street, in London's Mayfair, at the ready for whatever entrepreneur will rent it as a launching pad into the London social season. This time the renters are an unlikely couple, the Goodenoughs, apparently
...Life is not easy for the poor relations of England's upper crust, but fate and clever schemes bring them together.
Lady Fortescue and Colonel Sandhurst hatch a plan: What if they were to transform her decrepit Bond Street home into a posh hotel, offering their guests the pleasure of being waited upon by nobility? With the help of other down-and-out aristocrats, they do just that, and London's newest hotel, the Poor Relation, is born.
The
...A unique spin on the romance genre from New York Times bestselling author M. C. Beaton
I am going to die, Polly thought. The crowd clamored for a speech. Polly raised her hands, and they fell silent. From the foot of the gallows, she asked the spectators why she, a poor woman, should hang for theft, while the abbess of Covent Garden can commit murder on the souls of innocent country girls over and over again and yet go free—and then
...When Amy and Effy Tribble, two charming but impoverished spinster sisters, lose out on a much needed inheritance, they place an advertisement in the Morning Post and hire themselves out as professional chaperones. Vowing to prepare even the most difficult misses for marriage, the Tribble sisters will spend a London season on each client in this delightful Regency series, the School for Manners.
Felicity Baronsheath, their first assignment,
...From the New York Times bestselling author of the Agatha Raisin novels, the charming second installment in the Traveling Matchmaker series
A dead employer's legacy of £5,000 allows spinster Hannah Pym to resign from housekeeping and find adventure traveling the English countryside by coach. But the adventure soon finds Miss Pym in the form of runaway brides, spirited heiresses, and international refugees, who continue to test her expert
...74) The Banishment
Could she ever love a gentleman as much as she loved her magnificent home?
Isabella Beverley is blessed with unparalleled beauty but, unfortunately, has been raised in the most snobbish and haughtiest of families. When her father gambles away their fortune—including Mannerling, the exquisite family mansion—Isabella discovers there is very little sympathy for her plight.
As the eldest, Isabella is chosen to court Mr. Judd,
...The oddly assorted group met some time ago. All of them were poor relations, the genteel paupers of society, living on little more than their dignity. They banded together and started the Poor Relation hotel, hoping to be bought out by their embarrassed relations. Though as the hotel prospered, they began to enjoy the fruits of their labor. But once more they are in need of funds.
To stoop to crime in their days of poverty was one thing,
...London was all on edge and astir to have in its midst the exquisite Princess Felicity of Brasnia. What scandal would ensue should society discover that the bejeweled heir to a royal throne was in truth Miss Felicity Channing of Cornwall, fleeing a match she did not want and that had been arranged by her conniving stepfather!
It was questionable how long Felicity could carry off this lively masquerade before she would falter, especially since
...A former employer's legacy of £5,000 has allowed charming spinster Hannah Pym to give up her housekeeping work and to travel the English countryside, where she encounters adventure and many opportunities to ply her expert matchmaking skills.
Lady Beatrice Marsham has quite the problem. No sooner is she widowed from a brutish gambling husband than her heartless family is forcing her into another horrid marriage. Fleeing by stagecoach to the
...What clever woman would want a man like Lord Harry Desire? Why, he is clearly a lummox—languid, vain, and bland. Not even his beautiful face could redeem him. But he stands to inherit a vast fortune, and that's good enough for Deirdre's father, a spendthrift vicar who arranges the match to rescue himself from imminent financial collapse.
Leave it to Deirdre to contrive an escape, a quick elopement with her one true love, the dashing
...79) The Homecoming
Will the last Beverley daughter marry for Mannerling?
Lizzie is the sixth and youngest daughter of the late Sir Beverley, the patriarch who gambled away their beloved estate, Mannerling. Each of Lizzie's sisters had been entrusted by their ambitious mother to cast lures for the various owners of their former home. Instead, each one married for love.
Now it's Lizzie's turn to save Mannerling. But the new owner, the Duke of Severnshire,
...Miss Annabelle Armitage is pea-green with envy. What a cruel world it is when her spinster of an older sister can enchant the dashing Lord Sylvester Comfrey! Annabelle's own passionate nature is surely better suited for such a one as Sylvester.
Alas for Annabelle, Comfrey seems to care for her not a jot. Determined to get a bit of her own back, even if it means marrying another, Annabelle finds Peter, Marquess of Brabington, a most attentive
...