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Lucy Rayner
This collection includes all three books in Serena Valentino's Villains trilogy.
Fairest of All: A Tale of the Wicked Queen
Why exactly is the wicked Queen so nasty, particularly to Snow White? Perhaps it has something to do with the creepy-looking man in the magic mirror who's not just some random spooky visage.
The Beast Within: A Tale of Beauty's Prince
A cursed prince sits alone in a secluded castle. Few
...The tale is told as if it's happening once upon a dream: the lovely maiden meets her handsome prince in the woods. The story has been told many times and in many ways. But always the maiden finds out that she is a princess—a princess who has been cursed by a dark fairy to prick her finger on a spindle and fall into an eternal sleep. Though her three good fairies try to protect her, the princess succumbs to the curse. But the power of good
...Lady Arabella Blydon has beauty and a brain, and she's tired of men who can see only one without the other.
When a suitor tells Arabella he's willing to overlook her appalling bluestocking tendencies on account of her looks and fortune, she decides to take a break from the Marriage Mart. During an extended stay in the country, she never expects to meet Lord John Blackwood, a wounded war hero who intrigues her like no other man.
Lord
...While fleeing from an unexpected assassin herself, Kendra escapes...
October 1815: There is only one place Kendra Donovan wants to travel—back to her own time period in the twenty-first century. But since that's not happening, she agrees instead to travel with her new guardian, the Duke of Aldridge, to one of his smaller estates in Lancashire. Their journey takes them through Yorkshire,...
When Reginald Lansing, the Earl of Craymore, is found mortally wounded on the Duke of Aldridge's land, Kendra gets the distraction...
In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate.
Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly,
...When one of four potential claimants to the title of Lord Dalrymple dies a sudden, nasty death, the question on everyone's mind is, "was it murder?"
In the late 1920s in England, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is recruited to help her cousin Edgar―i.e. the Lord Dalrymple. About to turn fifty, Lord Dalrymple decides it is time to find out who would be the heir to the viscountcy. With the help of the family lawyer, who advertises
...Lady Dover had plenty...
In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. The three, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of "superfluous women"―brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War.
Daisy and her
...In the Spring of 1926, the corpses of three men are found in shallow graves off the beaten path in Epping Forest outside of London—each shot through the heart and bearing no identification. DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, the lead detective, is immediately given two urgent orders by his supervisor at the Yard: solve the murders quickly and keep his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, away from the case! Thankfully, Daisy's off
...The eighth installment in this cozy mystery series features Daisy Dalrymple at the Museum of Natural History, a place of fascination—and murder
In the summer of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple makes what should be an uneventful research trip to the Museum of Natural History quite an eventful day—with her nephew Derek and her soon-to-be stepdaughter Belinda in tow. But as she interviews the various curators for her article
...In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current
...In the winter of 1924, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher travels to a school friend's house to witness the estate's famous Guy Fawkes celebration. But she gets more than the quiet weekend at the quaint family manse that she was originally hoping for.
The home is the site of some severe family tension. The Viscount and head of the family is a strict and unyielding sort, insisting that everyone—especially his children—meet his own unreasonable
...15) Tavish
But she's here to see the ruins, not Tavish. So she'll just have to show him who's boss at this site. Because under these cliffs...
The inimitable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her husband Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher seem to get a reprieve from their sleuthing duties when they are invited to the wedding of their friend, Lucy Fotheringay.
Lucy's grandfather is hosting the ceremony at his beautiful estate and so it promises to be a typical affair with hordes of gossipy aunts and other colorful but not necessarily pleasant relatives. Daisy meets all these characters
...In September 1925, Scotland Yard DCI Alec Fletcher inherits a large house on the outskirts of London from a recently deceased great-uncle. Fortunately so, as he and his wife, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, are the recent proud parents of twins, and their house is practically bursting at the seams. Though in need of a bit of work, this new, larger house seems a godsend—set in a small circle of houses, with a communal garden and Hampstead
...In late 1926, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard take an ocean voyage to America for their honeymoon. Daisy and Alec are accompanied by Daisy's childhood friend Phillip Petrie, his wife, Gloria, and Gloria's father, American millionaire industrialist Caleb P. Arbuckle, and all are looking forward to a pleasant, uneventful trip. But at the last minute they are joined by Arbuckle's new friend,
...Daisy Dalrymple is back—when a casual outing to the Crystal Palace in London takes a mysterious and murderous turn.
April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it—bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter
...In early 1925, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher—recent mother of twins—resumes her journalistic career by agreeing to write a piece about the Tower of London—the Bloody Tower—for an American magazine.
Invited to observe the centuries-old ritual Ceremony of the Keys, she's spending the night (her first time away from her babies) since the complex is locked and guarded, and the high walls are surrounded by a disused
...