Wanda McCaddon
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 27
Pub. Date
2005
Description
The acclaimed author brings us crime at a country-house Christmas party in "one of her best and most baffling mysteries" (Daily Express).
It's the Christmas season in 1972, and Agatha Troy is at a house party, enjoying the local holiday pageant and also painting the host's portrait. The painting's coming along fine, but the pageant goes a little pear-shaped when one of the players disappears. Could one of the eccentric guests have been involved?...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 8
Pub. Date
2011
Description
In their Dorset village, neither Miss Campanula nor her friend Miss Prentice are known as lovable little old ladies. They're waspish, gossiping snobby little old ladies, passionate only about their amateur theatrical productions, their narrowly defined opinions about how everyone else should behave ...and, perhaps, about the local vicar. But could one of them have been sufficiently unpleasant to provoke a murderer? For Miss Campanula has perished...
23) Emma
Author
Appears on list
Formats
Description
As daughter of the richest, most important man in the small provincial village of Highbury, Emma Woodhouse is firmly convinced that it is her right--perhaps even her "duty"--To arrange the lives of others. Considered by most critics to be Austen's most technically brilliant achievement, "Emma" sparkles with ironic insights into self-deception, self-discovery, and the interplay of love and power.
Author
Pub. Date
2005
Description
Lord Pastern fired his revolver. The figure in the spotlight fell and the coup-de-theatre had become murder. Could Inspector Alleyn believe Pastern had let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far?
When Lord Pastern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and His Boys, his disapproving wife Cecile has more than usual to be unhappy about. The band's devastatingly handsome but roguish accordionist, Carlos Rivera, has taken a
...Author
Pub. Date
1993
Description
This is the work that introduced Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the Western world. Malcolm Muggeridge paints a profound and moving portrait of a lady whose love for Christ and the needy has deeply impacted many a life-including the author's. "For me," says Muggeridge, "Mother Teresa of Calcutta embodies Christian love in action. Her face shines with the love of Christ on which her whole life is centered, and her words carry that message to a world which...
26) Cranford
Author
Formats
Description
Step into the charming world of "Cranford" by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. This delightful novel invites you to a quaint English village, where the lives of its eccentric and endearing inhabitants are interwoven in a tapestry of humor, heartwarming moments, and social observations.
Set in the early 19th century, the narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary Smith, an outsider welcomed into the close-knit community. As she navigates the idiosyncrasies...
27) Adam Bede
Author
Formats
Description
George Eliot takes the well-worn tale of a lovely dairy-maid seduced by a careless squire and out if it creates a portrait of the lives of ordinary Midlands working people their labors and loves, their beliefs, their speech.
Author
Series
Description
Originally published in 1902, this is a story of deceit and betrayal, as well as of forgiveness. Milly Theale is an heiress with a short time to live and a passion for experiencing life to its fullest. Merton Densher is the man she loves, and the magnificent, predatory Kate Croy is the woman he loves, and will conspire with against Millie.
29) The Duchess
Author
Pub. Date
2008, c1998
Description
Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time. But Georgiana's public success concealed an unhappy marriage,...
Author
Description
Considered one of George Eliot's finest achievements, "The Mill on the Floss" is famed for its unsurpassed description of English rural life and for its striking, superbly drawn heroine, Maggie Tulliver. This novel's unsentimental evocation of childhood stands as an enduring triumph.
Author
Formats
Description
This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the...
33) July's people
Author
Appears on list
Description
When South Africa is riven by war and the Smales, a white couple, take refuge in the village of their former servant July, their relationships are completely transformed.
34) Vanity Fair
Author
Description
Thackeray's best-loved work, "Vanity Fair, is a satire of epic proportions, and proves that deep-seated cynicism and heartfelt morality don't have to get in the way of a good story. Filled with exceptionally drawn characters, biting social humor, and Thackeray's own illustrations, "Vanity Fair is not only one of the great English novels of the nineteenth century, its title has become synonymous with the follies of high society. Nicholas Dames is Assistant...
Author
Series
Appears on list
Formats
Description
'Miss Dashwood had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Marianne was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister's ... was more striking' As the title of Jane Austen's first published novel suggests, the difference between two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, lies not only in their appearance but also in their temperament. Yet Sense and Sensibility not only contrasts Elinor's good sense,...
Author
Pub. Date
2010
Description
What Philippa Gregory has done for Tudor England, Jeanne Kalogridis does for Renaissance Italy. Her latest irresistible historical novel is about a countess whose passion and willfulness knew no bounds-Caterina Sforza
Daughter of the Duke of Milan and wife of the conniving Count Girolamo Riario, Caterina Sforza was the bravest warrior Renaissance Italy ever knew. She ruled her own lands, fought her own battles, and openly took lovers whenever she...
37) Beautiful lies
Author
Pub. Date
[2012]
Description
A tale inspired by a true story follows the experiences of Scottish aristocrat's wife Maribel Campbell, a self-proclaimed Chilean heiress who in late Victorian London finds her husband's career threatened by a notorious journalist's investigation into her true past.
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
A royal birth, a nobleman's death, a scarlet woman's murder... In March, 1279, Edward I takes a break from hammering the Welsh and bearing down on England's Jews to vacation in Gloucestershire. The royal party breaks the journey at Woodstock Manor. And there one life begins as Queen Eleanor labors to birth a new daughter, and one draws to an end when apoplexy fells Baron Adam Wynethorpe. Hotfoot to the baron's deathbed comes his elder son, Hugh, a...
39) Nine Lessons
Author
Series
Josephine Tey mysteries volume 7
Pub. Date
2017.
Description
Called to the peaceful wooded churchyard of St-John's-at-Hampstead, Detective Chief Inspector Archie Penrose faces one of the most audacious and unusual murders of his career. The body of the church's organist is found in an opened grave, together with a photograph of a manor house and a cryptic note. The image leads Archie to Cambridge, where the crisp autumn air has brought with it bustling life to the ancient university and town. Mystery author...
Author
Series
Scarlet Pimpernel series volume 3
Description
In Baroness Emma Orczy's 1905 novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel", the year is 1792 and the French Revolution is complete. People die by the guillotine every day, often unjustly. Stepping in to right these wrongs and rescue the innocent is the elusive "Scarlet Pimpernel", a mysterious agent named for the red flower that is his signature. Meanwhile, foppish Sir Percy Blakeney and his French actress wife Marguerite are having marital difficulties when Marguerite...