A sentiment the contentious lady of Nimway Hall disputes at every turn. She seems to believe that her work for the war effort is as critical as his. Though the woman’s opinions are seriously wrong-headed, she is as beautiful as she is devoted to her people and he can’t help admiring the firm and resourceful way she manages the estate. Can’t help noticing her fiercely green eyes and the sun-blush of her cheek. Not that he should be noticing such distractions. Not now. Not with a war to win and contact to make with a secret agent named Arcturus.
As the war between the sexes heats up, so does the ancient magic of romance. Josie and Gideon may not be looking for love, but at Nimway Hall they’ll soon discover that love has come looking for them.
A historical novel of 55,000 words, entwining romance, mystery and the magic of love.
Pre-order/Buy & Read 1940: JOCELYN
Further installments will appear in due course!
COMING NEXT FROM STEPHANIE:
The first volume in THE CAVANAUGHS
THE DESIGNS OF LORD RANDOLPH CAVANAUGH
To be released by MIRA on April 24, 2018
#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens returns with a new series that captures the simmering desires and intrigues of early Victorians as only she can. Ryder Cavanaugh’s step-siblings are determined to make their own marks in London society. Seeking fortune and passion, THE CAVANAUGHS will delight readers with their bold exploits.
An independent nobleman
Lord Randolph Cavanaugh is loyal and devoted—but only to family. To the rest of the world he’s aloof and untouchable, a respected and driven entrepreneur. But Rand yearns for more in life, and when he travels to Buckinghamshire to review a recent investment, he discovers a passionate woman who will challenge his ruthless self-control…
A determined lady
Felicia Throgmorton intends to keep her family afloat. For decades, her father was consumed by his inventions and now, months after his death, with their finances in ruins, her brother insists on continuing their father’s tinkering. Felicia is desperate to hold together what’s left of the estate. Then she discovers she must help persuade their latest investor that her father’s follies are a risk worth taking…
Together—the perfect team
Rand arrives at Throgmorton Hall to discover the invention on which he’s staked his reputation has exploded, the inventor is not who he expected, and a fiercely intelligent woman now holds the key to his future success. But unflinching courage in the face of dismaying hurdles is a trait they share, and Rand and Felicia are forced to act together against relentless foes to protect everything they hold dear.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Pre-order/Buy & Read THE DESIGNS OF LORD RANDOLPH CAVANAUGH
ALSO COMING SOON:
The sixth volume in
The Casebook of Barnaby Adair mystery-romances
THE CONFOUNDING CASE OF THE CARISBROOK EMERALDS
To be released on June 14, 2018
#1 NYT-bestselling author Stephanie Laurens brings you a tale of emerging and also established loves and the many facets of family, interwoven with mystery and murder.
A young lady accused of theft and the gentleman who elects himself her champion enlist the aid of Stokes, Barnaby, Penelope, and friends in pursuing justice, only to find themselves tangled in a web of inter-family tensions and secrets.
When Miss Cara Di Abaccio is accused of stealing the Carisbrook emeralds by the infamously arrogant Lady Carisbrook and marched out of her guardian’s house by Scotland Yard’s finest, Hugo Adair, Barnaby Adair’s cousin, takes umbrage and descends on Scotland Yard, breathing fire in Cara’s defense.
Hugo discovers Inspector Stokes has been assigned to the case, and after surveying the evidence thus far, Stokes calls in his big guns when it comes to dealing with investigations in the ton—namely, the Honorable Barnaby Adair and his wife, Penelope.
Soon convinced of Cara’s innocence and—given Hugo’s apparent tendre for Cara—the need to clear her name, Penelope and Barnaby join Stokes and his team in pursuing the emeralds and, most importantly, who stole them.
But the deeper our intrepid investigators delve into the Carisbrook household, the more certain they become that all is not as it seems. Lady Carisbrook is a harpy, Franklin Carisbrook is secretive, Julia Carisbrook is overly timid, and Lord Carisbrook, otherwise a genial and honorable gentleman, holds himself distant from his family. More, his lordship attempts to shut down the investigation. And Stokes, Barnaby, and Penelope are convinced the Carisbrooks’ staff are not sharing all they know.
Meanwhile, having been appointed Cara’s watchdog until the mystery is resolved, Hugo, fascinated by Cara as he’s been with no other young lady, seeks to entertain and amuse her…and, increasingly intently, to discover the way to her heart. Consequently, Penelope finds herself juggling the attractions of the investigation against the demands of the Adair family for her to actively encourage the budding romance.
What would her mentors advise? On that, Penelope is crystal clear.
Regardless, aided by Griselda, Violet, and Montague and calling on contacts in business, the underworld, and ton society, Penelope, Barnaby, and Stokes battle to peel back each layer of subterfuge and, step by step, eliminate the innocent and follow the emeralds’ trail…
Yet instead of becoming clearer, the veils and shadows shrouding the Carisbrooks only grow murkier…until, abruptly, our investigators find themselves facing an inexplicable death, with a potential murderer whose conviction would shake society to its back teeth.
A historical novel of 78,000 words interweaving mystery, romance, and social intrigue.
Available for e-book pre-order after March 15, 2018
Click here for further details.
TO BE FOLLOWED BY:
The seventh volume in
The Casebook of Barnaby Adair mystery-romances
THE MURDER AT MANDEVILLE HALL
To be released on August 16, 2018
Click here for further details
RECENTLY RELEASED:
The first volume in Lady Osbaldestone’s Christmas Chronicles
LADY OSBALDESTONE’S CHRISTMAS GOOSE
A lighthearted tale of Christmas long ago with a grandmother and three of her grandchildren, one lost soul, a lady driven to distraction, a recalcitrant donkey, and a flock of determined geese.
Three years after being widowed, Therese, Lady Osbaldestone finally settles into her dower property of Hartington Manor in the village of Little Moseley in Hampshire. She is in two minds as to whether life in the small village will generate sufficient interest to keep her amused over the months when she is not in London or visiting friends around the country. But she will see.
It’s December, 1810, and Therese is looking forward to her usual Christmas with her family at Winslow Abbey, her youngest daughter, Celia’s home. But then a carriage rolls up and disgorges Celia’s three oldest children. Their father has contracted mumps, and their mother has sent the three—Jamie, George, and Lottie—to spend this Christmas with their grandmama in Little Moseley.
Therese has never had to manage small children, not even her own. She assumes the children will keep themselves amused, but quickly learns that what amuses three inquisitive, curious, and confident youngsters isn’t compatible with village peace. Just when it seems she will have to set her mind to inventing something, she and the children learn that with only twelve days to go before Christmas, the village flock of geese has vanished.
Every household in the village is now missing the centerpiece of their Christmas feast. But how could an entire flock go missing without the slightest trace? The children are as mystified and as curious as Therese—and she seizes on the mystery as the perfect distraction for the three children as well as herself.
But while searching for the geese, she and her three helpers stumble on two locals who, it is clear, are in dire need of assistance in sorting out their lives. Never one to shy from a little matchma
king, Therese undertakes to guide Miss Eugenia Fitzgibbon into the arms of the determinedly reclusive Lord Longfellow. To her considerable surprise, she discovers that her grandchildren have inherited skills and talents from both her late husband as well as herself. And with all the customary village events held in the lead up to Christmas, she and her three helpers have opportunities galore in which to subtly nudge and steer.
Yet while their matchmaking appears to be succeeding, neither they nor anyone else have found so much as a feather from the village’s geese. Larceny is ruled out; a flock of that size could not have been taken from the area without someone noticing. So where could the birds be? And with the days passing and Christmas inexorably approaching, will they find the blasted birds in time?
First in series. A novel of 60,000 words. A Christmas tale of romance and geese.
Click here to read an excerpt
Buy & Read LADY OSBALDESTONE’S CHRISTMAS GOOSE
ALSO RELEASED IN 2017:
All three exciting instalments in THE DEVIL’S BROOD TRILOGY
The first volume of the Devil’s Brood Trilogy
THE LADY BY HIS SIDE
A marquess in need of the right bride. An earl’s daughter in search of a purpose. A betrayal that ends in murder and balloons into a threat to the realm.
Sebastian Cynster knows time is running out. If he doesn’t choose a wife soon, his female relatives will line up to assist him. Yet the current debutantes do not appeal. Where is he to find the right lady to be his marchioness? Then Drake Varisey, eldest son of the Duke of Wolverstone, asks for Sebastian’s aid.
Having assumed his father’s mantle in protecting queen and country, Drake must go to Ireland in pursuit of a dangerous plot. But he’s received an urgent missive from Lord Ennis, an Irish peer—Ennis has heard something Drake needs to know. Ennis insists Drake attends an upcoming house party at Ennis’s Kent estate so Ennis can reveal his information face-to-face. Sebastian has assisted Drake before and, long ago, had a liaison with Lady Ennis. Drake insists Sebastian is just the man to be Drake’s surrogate at the house party—the guests will imagine all manner of possibilities and be blind to Sebastian’s true purpose. Unsurprisingly, Sebastian is reluctant, but Drake’s need is real. With only more debutantes on his horizon, Sebastian allows himself to be persuaded. His first task is to inveigle Antonia Rawlings, a lady he has known all her life, to include him as her escort to the house party. Although he’s seen little of Antonia in recent years, Sebastian is confident of gaining her support.
Eldest daughter of the Earl of Chillingworth, Antonia has abandoned the search for a husband and plans to use the week of the house party to decide what to do with her life. There has to be some purpose, some role, she can claim for her own. Consequently, on hearing Sebastian’s request and an explanation of what lies behind it, she seizes on the call to action. Suppressing her senses’ idiotic reaction to Sebastian’s nearness, she agrees to be his partner-in-intrigue.
But while joining the house party proves easy, the gathering is thrown into chaos when Lord Ennis is murdered—just before he was to speak with Sebastian. Worse, Ennis’s last words, gasped to Sebastian, are: Gunpowder. Here.
Gunpowder? And here, where? With a killer continuing to stalk the halls, side by side, Sebastian and Antonia search for answers and, all the while, the childhood connection that had always existed between them strengthens and blooms…into something so much more.
First volume in a trilogy. A historical romance with gothic overtones layered over a continuing intrigue. A full length novel of 99,000 words.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Buy & Read THE LADY BY HIS SIDE
The second volume of the Devil’s Brood Trilogy
AN IRRESISTIBLE ALLIANCE
A duke’s second son with no responsibilities and a lady starved of the excitement her soul craves join forces to unravel a deadly, potentially catastrophic threat to the realm - that only continues to grow.
With his older brother’s betrothal announced, Lord Michael Cynster is freed from the pressure of familial expectations. However, the allure of his previous hedonistic pursuits has paled. Then he learns of the mission his brother, Sebastian, and Lady Antonia Rawlings have been assisting with and volunteers to help by hunting down the hoard of gunpowder now secreted somewhere in London.
Michael sets out to trace the carters who transported the gunpowder from Kent to London. His quest leads him to the Hendon Shipping Company, where he discovers his sole source of information is the only daughter of Jack and Kit Hendon, Miss Cleome Hendon, who although a fetchingly attractive lady, firmly holds the reins of the office in her small hands.
Cleo has fought to achieve her position in the company. Initially, managing the office was a challenge, but she now conquers all in just a few hours a week. With her three brothers all adventuring in America, she’s been driven to the realization that she craves adventure, too.
When Michael Cynster walks in and asks about carters, Cleo’s instincts leap. She wrings from him the full tale of his mission—and offers him a bargain. She will lead him to the carters he seeks if he agrees to include her as an equal partner in the mission.
Horrified, Michael attempts to resist, but ultimately finds himself agreeing—a sequence of events he quickly learns is common around Cleo. Then she delivers on her part of the bargain, and he finds there are benefits to allowing her to continue to investigate beside him—not least being that if she’s there, then he knows she’s safe.
But the further they go in tracing the gunpowder, the more deaths they uncover. And when they finally locate the barrels, they find themselves tangled in a fight to the death—one that forces them to face what has grown between them, to seize and defend what they both see as their path to the greatest adventure of all. A shared life. A shared future. A shared love.
Second volume in a trilogy. A historical romance with gothic overtones layered over a continuing intrigue. A full length novel of 101,000 words.
Click here to read an excerpt.
Buy & Read AN IRRESISTIBLE ALLIANCE
The thrilling third and final volume in the Devil’s Brood Trilogy
THE GREATEST CHALLENGE OF THEM ALL
A nobleman devoted to defending queen and country and a noblewoman wild enough to match his every step race to disrupt the plans of a malignant intelligence intent on shaking England to its very foundations.
Lord Drake Varisey, Marquess of Winchelsea, eldest son and heir of the Duke of Wolverstone, must foil a plot that threatens to shake the foundations of the realm, but the very last lady—nay, noblewoman—he needs assisting him is Lady Louisa Cynster, known throughout the ton as Lady Wild.
For the past nine years, Louisa has suspected that Drake might well be the ideal husband for her, even though he’s assiduous in avoiding her. But she’s now twenty-seven and enough is enough. She believes propinquity will elucidate exactly what it is that lies between them, and what better opportunity to work closely with Drake than his latest mission, with which he patently needs her help?
Unable to deny Louisa’s abilities or the value of her assistance and powerless to curb her willfulness, Drake is forced to grit his teeth and acquiesce to her sticking by his side, if only to ensure her safety. But all too soon, his true feelings for her show enough for her, perspicacious as she is, to see through his denials, which she then interprets as a challenge.
Even while they gather information, tease out clues, increasingly desperately search for the missing gunpowder, and doggedly pursue the killer responsible for an ever-escalating tally of dead men, thrown together through the hours, he and she learn to trust and appreciate each other. And fed by constant exposure—and blatantly encouraged by her—their desires and hungers swell and grow…
As the barriers between them crumble, the attraction he has for so long restrained burgeons and swells, until, goaded by her near-death, it erupts, and he seizes her—only to be seized in return.
Linked irrevocab
ly and with their wills melded and merged by passion’s fire, with time running out and the evil mastermind’s deadline looming, together, they focus their considerable talents and make one last push to learn the critical truths—to find the gunpowder and unmask the villain behind this far-reaching plot. Only to discover that they have significantly less time than they’d thought, that the villain’s target is even more crucially fundamental to the realm than they’d imagined, and it’s going to take all that Drake is—as well as all that Louisa as Lady Wild can bring to bear—to defuse the threat, capture the villain, and make all safe and right again. As they race to the ultimate confrontation, the future of all England rests on their shoulders.
Third volume in the trilogy. A historical romance with gothic overtones layered over an intrigue. A full length novel of 129,000 words.
Click here to read an excerpt.
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