Showing results for "The Beast" in Historical Fiction

Lord Nathaniel Harte, the disagreeable duke of Beswick, spends his days smashing porcelain, antagonizing his servants, and snarling at anyone who gets too close. With a ruined face like his, it's hard to like much about the world - especially smart-mouthed harpies (with lips better suited to kissing than speaking) who brave his castle with indecent proposals. But Lady Astrid Everleigh will stop at nothing to see her younger sister safe from a notorious scoundrel, even if it means offering herself up on a silver platter to the forbidding Beast of Beswick himself.

He bears the name of de Russe, but the bloodlines of six great houses converge in the greatest knight England has yet seen. As the grandfather of Gaston de Russe, the dark one, Sir Bastien de Russe beholds a great and terrible legacy - one that makes him both the target and the leader, the hunter and the hunted. His story is the most powerful of all. Greatness and darkness abide in the man known as the beast.

Lady Augusta Penworthy is in dire straights. Her father has spent every last coin, and she and her sisters cannot even afford coal. One chance encounter and a torn gown changes everything. While one might think a sudden marriage to a wealthy lord a relief if that marriage is to the Duke of Blacktower, one would be vastly mistaken. For no young lady wishes to be that infamous rake's bride.

I am home, yet it does not feel like home. The chains on my wrists and ankles are gone, but those around my heart tighten. Is the world truly black and white, or is it just my vision failing? Does all food turn to ash, or is it merely my mouth forgetting how to taste? When the crows call, and the moon hangs heavy, does everyone else drown their sorrow in pillows, or am I the only one? Urai is hell. A kingdom of devils. Yet hell is my heaven. My dark devil—through these falling eyes—is my angel. I breathe, but I do not exist. I exist, but I do not live.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Alive comes a pulse-pounding horror novel set in 18th century colonial America amid a reimagined French and Indian War, in which a member of the legendary Rogers’ Rangers with indigenous ancestry must protect his father’s homeland from a...

Scarred and tortured during years in captivity, Duncan Ross must come to learn that he can live a normal life and allow himself to be loved. Duncan Ross' inner scars are even more horrifying that the visible ones. Unable to control his rages, he hides himself away from his close-knit family. A normal life that includes a wife and family will never be his, a truth he's accepted. When a beautiful woman decides to tell her family they are courting, the time soon comes for him to make a difficult decision that will break her heart and shatter his lonely soul.

As a young man, Sir Gabriel Winters left behind his status as a gentleman, turning his back on his secret desires and taking a self-imposed vow of celibacy. Now he's a chaste, hardworking vicar, and his reputation is beyond reproach. But, try as he might, he's never forgotten the man he once desired or the pain of being abandoned by his first love. 

October 1912. The inhabitants of Littleton Cotterell emerge from their homes after a week of torrential storms to the gruesome news that one of Sid Hyde’s prized sheep has been mauled to death. As rumours abound of a vicious beast stalking the Gloucestershire countryside in search of prey, Lady Hardcastle and her fearless lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, set out to find what is surely a rational explanation. Then Hyde himself is brutally killed in a similar attack, and the villagers go from curious to terrified.

It is 1917, and Korea has yet to be divided into North and South. With the threat of famine looming, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in cosmopolitan Pyongyang, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. Jade flees to Seoul, where she forms a deep friendship with an orphan boy called Jung Ho, who scrapes together a living begging on the streets. As Jade becomes a sought-after performer with unexpected romantic prospects, Jung Ho is swept up in the revolutionary fight for independence.

'Rich, layered, and deeply thoughtful' - LUCY STEEDS 'A magnificent novel - vivid, moving and utterly convincing' - S.G. MACLEAN In the suffocating summer of 1858, Sir Edwin Landseer faces the monumental task of sculpting the Trafalgar Square lions. The nation is watching, the Royal Academy is...

The year 1894. The monstrous Hound of the Baskervilles has been dead for five years, along with its no less monstrous owner, the naturalist Jack Stapleton. Sir Henry Baskerville is living contentedly at Baskerville Hall with his new wife, Audrey, and their three-year-old son, Harry. Until, that is, Audrey’s lifeless body is found on the moors, drained of blood. It would appear some fiendish creature is once more at large on Dartmoor and has, like its predecessor, targeted the unfortunate Baskerville family.

Alexander, a Jewish doctor loyal to Rome, has his life turned upside down when the evil emperor Nero Caesar launches a horrific persecution of Christians. When Nero discovers that an apostle has written a secret apocalypse about the end of the world, he orders a Roman warrior to hunt down the scroll, destroy it, and kill the author. But a bold Christian woman named Cassandra holds a dark secret that opens the door to a world of spiritual warfare they’re not ready to face.

When the brainy, luminous Louise Vandermeer embarks on a transoceanic quest to marry an aristocrat, she dives into a scorching affair with a stranger on the ship. Their trysts take place in darkness, so Louise does not know her lover is Charles d'Harcourt, the passionate European playboy who just happens to be her intended! Charles is playing a game, but his plan has unexpected results.

In a city drowning in fog, even a monster can be a sanctuary. In the climate-controlled silence of the British Library, manuscript conservator Cordelia Elliston lives a life of careful repairs and quiet order. But the charred diary she finds in a private estate clearance refuses to be fixed. The leather is fever-hot. The ink moves like living shadow. And when the page pulses beneath her fingers, Cordelia is pulled through a crack in the world. She wakes in the sulfurous, batswing-lit London of 1888. It is a city paralyzed by murder, but the killings are merely a symptom.

When Lady Henrietta Sedley declares her 29th year her own, she has plans. Plans to inherit her father's business, to make her own fortune and to live her own life. But first, she has plans to experience a taste of the pleasure she'll forgo as a confirmed spinster. She does not, however, plan to find the most beautiful man she's ever seen tied up in her carriage and threatening to ruin The Year of Hattie before it's even begun.

"A sprawling, seething epic" Lucy Steeds, winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize "As deep and profound as the sea itself" Philip Hoare "Almost hypnotically readable" Guardian "Remarkable" The Times 1741. The crew of Vitus Bering's ill-starred Great Northern Expedition are shipwrecked off...

All of London gossips about the Duke of Montrose. A recluse. Inflicted with a terrible disease. A gargoyle with a terrible temper. But he's also the most important patron of the centuries-old book shop that belongs to Miss Elizabeth Sharpe's family. Now she's been charged with delivering books to the Gargoyle of London herself—or risk their shop falling into ruin. But surely a duke can't be that ghastly . . .

The wicked King Thorn forced the enchantress Zuleika to cast a terrible curse. She fled his court to travel the world, helping those who need her magic most. Until a search for her father's lost ships leads her to an enchanted island, where Prince Vardan, the island's ruler, is afflicted by the most powerful curse Zuleika has ever encountered. She's not sure she can reverse the spell, but she's determined to try. After all, a prince who fights pirates can't be all bad...no matter how beastly his appearance. Together, can the enchanting beauty and the beastly prince break the spell?

A MAN CONDEMNED . . . Falsely accused of murder and mute from a near-fatal beating, Apollo Greaves, Viscount Kilbourne has escaped from Bedlam. With the Crown's soldiers at his heels, he finds refuge in the ruins of a pleasure garden, toiling as a simple gardener. But when a vivacious young...

In USA Today bestselling author Julie Anne Long’s latest installment in the Palace of Rogues series, an estranged couple decide to fake their way through the London season to repair their good name… but neither are prepared for the genuine sparks that begin flying between them. A...