Showing results by author "Sandra Sookoo" in All Categories

Recently retired from the Royal Navy, much acclaimed Captain Bartholomew Grayson has come home to London. He’s looking forward to the Christmastide season, especially now that he’s adopted his 10-year-old former cabin boy. The waif needs a family, and Bart wants to recapture the joy of his own childhood. Too bad the fly in the ointment is a strong-willed harridan with a tart mouth intent on stealing his cargo.

When an impromptu kiss captures the imagination, either a spark will ignite or family interference will snuff the match. Charlotte Darrington adores being adored by the men in her circle. She’s in London at the request of her mother, and though her parent wants her to find an eligible gentleman and start a family, Charlotte delays. In her heart of hearts, she wants a man who can hold his own and won’t be cowed.

It’s Christmastide 1817, and Miss Christiana Smythe, daughter of a squire, is not looking forward to the social obligations of the season. Wanting nothing more than to care for the area’s sick and ailing animal population, doing the rounds in glittering ballrooms festooned with holiday finery makes her lightheaded. Yet, it’s a necessity to realizing the dream of love.

Fearless and impulsive, Lady Anne Eliza Lewis, daughter of the Earl of Doverton, is not the usual ton lady. Nor does she want to be, for she's worked the bulk of her adult life at being a balloonist. Well-read Benedict Giles Urquhart, Viscount Worthington is a man who values peace and order over all else in his life. When a freak accident with a crashing hot-air balloon spooks his horse and throws Benedict, his placid life takes an abrupt turn, to say nothing of the distracting and unrepentant woman manning it.

Sometimes, the greatest truths of life come on a midnight clear. Major Cecil Stapleton is struggling with his new life as a civilian after nearly 20 years in the military. Wounds received in the Battle of Toulouse left him angry, disfigured, and sent him home to England. All he wants now is to retire to the country and be left alone, especially since it’s the Christmastide season. Finding his old lover in his cottage leaves him at sixes and sevens...and perhaps wanting more. Widow Sarah Presley has worked hard to conceal her existence in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Oliver Stuart Colborne, the duke of Scarborough and a man of mixed heritage, needs a false engagement post haste. A parcel of unentailed land, held in his maternal grandmother’s name and potentially harboring Roman ruins, can be his if he marries within two years of taking the title...and he only has a month left. He wants that treasure if only to follow in his revered father’s footsteps.

There is only one path to true love, no matter how fate, fortune, or destiny play. Lady Isabella Fortescue has tired of trying to bring a man up to scratch. At 31, she’s put herself on the shelf and is glad for it, except she wants to have one splendid folly to call her own before that happens. But the unorthodox arrival of a horribly rude man makes her think even a scandal isn’t possible. Captain Peregrine St. John has sworn off women - indefinitely.

Alistair Forsythe, the 12th Earl of Reardon, is the most sought-after man in the ton this Christmastide season. Handsome, of good character, and possessing a large fortune, he finally intends to do his duty to his title after being in India for years. In the market for a wife, he can now easily have his pick of any woman, yet none of them have snared his interest—not since Carole, but she is beyond his reach.

If she were honest with herself, Lady Nora Peacock is done with marriage and romance. They only proved a disappointment. Having suffered through a lukewarm union of twenty years, the last thing she wants is another husband. However, after a sensual dance with a stranger, she wouldn’t mind entering into a torrid affair.

Andrew Charles Storme—ninth Earl of Hadleigh—has been in a monstrous temper for the better part of two years. Unable to join the fight against Napoleon due to the declining health and subsequent death of his father, his rotten mood worsened when his two brothers survived the war with life-changing injuries. Ashamed, Drew retreated to his country estate in Derbyshire to spare them his ire. Why the devil was he not worth more than his title?

Miss Caroline Sloane is on her way to Poughill, Cornwall. In highhanded fashion, her estranged grandfather has arranged a marriage for her to a sea captain she’s met but once, and she wishes to convince him otherwise. She’ll marry for love or not at all, but an accident with the crowded mail coach on which she’s traveling throws her existence into chaos.

Sir Sebastian George Sutcliffe, Baron Wimsley, is a wolf shifter. He’s come to London to demand answers from his half-brother, the Duke of Manchester. On his way to see that austere personage, he spots a shooting star and makes a desperate Christmastide wish. He hopes that it will help him survive his miserable life, but the delicate beauty he finds in Hyde Park might just change everything.

Colin Rowley, Viscount Hartsford, has been given an offer too good to ignore: If he comes home to Lancaster Hall and his family by Christmas morning, he’ll win a coveted racehorse as well as an estate. Trouble is, recollections attached to his ducal father’s castle leave him haunted, especially those regarding the first girl he’s ever loved, the one who rejected him.

He accepts her, but doesn’t love her...Donovan James Arthur Sinclair, 8th duke of Manchester, is cursed to roam the Earth as a wolf-shifter...She loves him, but cannot accept what he truly is... Miss Alice Morrowe, is blind and firmly on the shelf, unloved and unwanted by nearly everyone she’s ever met...A marriage of convenience that’s anything but...In her, Donovan sees a way to break his curse if he can seduce her into love.

Widowed Lillian Fernsby has been buffeted by life’s ills, and the grief is sometimes unrelenting. Keeping sadness at bay by making merry or being an outrageous flirt is all well and good, but what she really wants is to marry again. So, when her brother’s best friend comes back into her life to protect her from a unidentified stalker, she’s intrigued by the mystery and challenge he represents. A flirtatious game of cat and mouse begins between them and desire builds, but so does danger.

The honorable Olivia Beaumont, eldest daughter of Viscount Hereford, wants revenge. Following an ill-advised game of faro with a powerful duke, her father lost everything and then suffered a fatal heart attack. Now, she wants that duke to pay and suffer as much as her father did. But the only way she can do that is to enlist the help of the most shunned man in the ton: the disgraced duke of Skeffington.

Ambrose Colin Heathermore, the fourteenth Marquess of Hereford, wants to be left alone. Now that he’s back in London and has put life as a celebrated spy behind him, he must take up the reins of his real life and attend to his title. Which he will, after a quick tryst with an experienced lightskirt at a ball. If it will help him forget the woman he first loved in France, all the better. Lady Mary Clarke, a daughter of the Duke of Tarkington, is tired of proper ton life. She’s spent more time as a widow than she has as a wife, so she’s ready for excitement and adventure.

Valentine Sean Butler, the 16th Viscount Mountgarret, is cursed to spend half his life as a merman. Though he doesn’t mind his beastly side, he takes exception to warring for the cause of the mers. They hate humans and require his fighting skills, but all Valentine wants is to sail his ship and be left alone in peace.... Then one chance meeting with a lady in Hyde Park bends his plans.

It’s the Christmastide season, and the Hawkins family is at their country estate in Kent. Emmaline, the Countess of Archewyne, is excited, for it’s her first Christmas with her little family, as well as one of the few she’s spent in England. Passing his leisure time with his loved ones gives Miles Lawrence Hawkins, the fifth Earl of Archewyne, great pleasure, as does anticipating their faces when they open his gifts.

Lady Christiana Tremaine lives in the kingdom of Vesance, but ever since her father remarried, her stepmother - Lady Tremaine - has stripped her of everything befitting her station, has reduced her to that of a maid, and forced her to answer to the slur of Cinderella. Though the life of drudgery is horrid, she carries hope circumstances will change, especially when she remembers dancing with the prince who stole her heart. A chance meeting with that same man strengthens her resolve to change...if she can survive that woman’s deadly machinations.