Jayne Fresina

The Book Club Belles Society plays matchmaker when Luke Wainwright, thought dead, returns to reclaim his birthright and meets practical Rebecca, the woman who promised him a kiss years ago.

Sinfully Ever After

When Lazarus Kane answers her ad for a husband in the Farmer's Gazette, Sophie Valentine is enamored by this mysterious stranger, who, unbeknownst to her, has known her for years and has come a long way to find her.

The Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine

Enjoying a salacious romance called Pride and Prejudice with the fellow members of her book club, Justina Penny of the sleepy village of Hawcombe Prior attempts to match a proud newcomer and her sweet sister, with unexpected results.

Once Upon a Kiss

Ellie Vyne finds her secret identity as a mysterious French count who steals from the rich by cheating at cards nearly discovered when her childhood nemesis, James Hartley, investigates after she wins his family jewelry.

The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne

Olivia Monday, an impoverished widow, has taken a position as "secretary" to an eccentric, scandalous rake - a divorced man with a brood of eight children and at least two gun-shot wounds. For one year, against the advice of her remaining family members, she agrees to live in his remote Cornish castle and put pen to paper on his behalf. Despite everything she's heard about him, she's unafraid. Olivia welcomes the distraction this unusual post will provide- as well as the large fee- because the alternative of relying on relatives to put a roof over her head is intolerable. True Deverell has decided it's time to set the record straight. He means to dictate his memoirs to this little widow who, according to the instructions he sent to his solicitor, should merely be plain and have a neat hand. Those are his only requirements. He doesn't want any distractions, has endured his fill of scandal and intends now to leave the "True Story" on paper so that perhaps, one day, people will forgive his mistakes. But when Mrs. Olivia Monday arrives on his doorstep in her leaky boots and crumpled bonnet, True realizes that perhaps his story isn't over yet.

True Story

He was once a boy abandoned, left to make his own way in the world. She was a girl stifled by the demands of her family and constrained by the strict customs of Victorian society; a bird caged and without hope. Raised in two disparate worlds, with one fortune rising while the other tumbled, they might never have known each other. But when a disreputable old rogue dies unexpectedly and in spectacular, explosive style, a chain of remarkable events is destined to draw these two strangers close— to the bemusement of one and the disgust of the other. The last Will and Testament of Sir Mungo Lightfoot Mayferry McClumphy has gone astray, and a large number of claimants are fighting over a vast fortune. She wants nothing to do with it, her grieving heart bereft of hope. He is in the thick of it, a man of ruthless perseverance and— in her eyes— a dark, mercenary, unfeeling heart. Drawn together one Christmas, these two “Mortal Enemies” will have to find a way to put aside the strife and be civil. Whether or not they can survive the season remains to be seen. If they also find hope and love along the way, it will surely be a Christmas miracle.

The Snowdrop

He's been sent from Scotland Yard to solve a case of blackmail in the Yorkshire Dales; she's just opened her own business in York baking bespoke cakes. He wants a peaceful life; she's aiming for revolution. He likes to keep both feet on the ground; she dreams of scandalizing the neighborhood on a bicycle. He prefers to fade in with the wallpaper; she's proud to be a black sheep that stands out in the crowd. He's never getting married again—most women ought to be stamped on the forehead with a danger warning and clapped into handcuffs. She thinks men are simply an obstacle to her ambitions and if it's true that the way to a man's heart is through his digestive system, that explains why a great deal of gaseous waste frequently finds its path out of the wrong end. The two of them might appear to be mismatched flavors in an unlikely recipe, but when blackmail turns to murder, it's the start of a remarkable partnership in crime-solving. And a match made in chocolate. It's late Victorian England and the world may be on the cusp of change, but is it quite ready for this pairing? They're not even prepared for it themselves. Nevertheless, some wayward kind of chemistry keeps drawing them together and it can't be blamed entirely on the cake. Or the corpse in the conservatory.

Bespoke

Persephone "Persey" Foyle, the Dowager Marchioness of Holbrooke, leads a happy, busy existence, tending her garden, overseeing her charitable missions, feuding with her stepson's wife and vetting potential suitors for her stepdaughter. As far as this lively widow is concerned, her life lacks nothing. But when a young, famously-talented designer is hired to "improve" the grounds of Holbrooke estate—a task she has managed for eight years—Persey's comfortable world is threatened. It doesn't help that he's hired by her nemesis, the new marchioness, or that his talents are all the mode among England's Georgian aristocracy. He has no chance of impressing Persey. No chance at all. Josias Radcliffe has worked hard for his success, and although he's been warned about the dowager, no "meddlesome old crone" will stand in the way of his latest triumph. Until he runs into a pretty maid on his first day and talks her into showing him through the Holbrooke maze. Soon his course is altered, his plans changed forever. Because the dowager has secrets and Joss is the one person who could expose her as a fraud. He knew her when she was Long-Legged Meg—a scullery maid who spun tall tales, and, so it is rumored, used her knowledge of herbs and plants to dispatch her enemies. Folk say she used those long legs to carry her away from the gallows. Have they carried her far enough?

The Peculiar Folly of Long Legged Meg

Some men are born to make dynasties and some women are born to make trouble. Hellbent on arranging a pardon for her exiled cousin, Madolyn Carver will stop at nothing to achieve her aim, even if it means seducing the mysteriousEarl of Swafford. So what if he's known as "The Beast" and is immensely powerful? Plucky Maddy isn't frightened off easily. Returned home after too long abroad, The Beast also has a mission. He must remove his younger brother and heir to the vast Swafford estate from the clutches of a most unsuitable woman. When a misunderstanding leads him to mistake Maddy for his brother's cunning mistress, he takes her captive under the guise of The Beast's manservant. Now she can longer be a threat to his misguided brother's future, or so he thinks. And surely, The Beast's infamous iron will can resist the charms of one particularly disobedient, witty, intriguingly stubborn young woman. But there is a far greater danger. A deadly assassin has come to the Swafford estate, and The Beast's fear of falling in love might just be his downfall. Maddy, the woman he won't trust, is the one innocent soul who can save his life-and his heart.

Seducing the Beast

Slowly Rising is a house that slumbers with one eye open—a lantern that flickers with watchful amber flame in a second floor window. But like a cat hunched before a mouse hole, it is never fully and deeply asleep. Just pretending. Once in a while it stretches; its tail languidly unfurls to give a single, sultry sweep from side to side before it lies still again. With an ear to the wall you can hear the wattle and daub vibrating with a low, throbbing purr. The woman who sings in the walls of the house is waiting. * * * * Amalie McKenna, the new lady's maid at Slowly Rising, is ambitious, hard-working and devoted to her job. Nothing can distract her and she has no time for mischief. This house might have a macabre history and more than a few wayward spirits, but Amalie is unimpressed. The supernatural has been a part of her world since before she was born and there's not much left that can surprise her, or make her heart beat faster. Gideon Jones has also come to Slowly Rising with a job to do. Unlike anything she's ever encountered before, he's a straightforward, plain-speaking, fearless cockney with rough edges and an irrepressible smile. He claims to be an ordinary valet, but Amalie doesn't believe that for a minute. Because nothing that lives within the walls of Slowly Rising is quite what it seems. * * * * Despite their differences, there is one thing the house's residents have in common: they're brave souls who came on a long journey, ready for adventure. And if they are bold enough to ignore the warning scratched into the doorframe, the menacing sentry of crows, and rumors of a man once scared to death within, then they're welcome to stay a while. At their own risk. Now the woman who sings in the walls of the house waits for you. Are you ready to step inside?

Slowly Rising

When Emma Chance met her best friend's elder brother, she knew instantly that he needed somebody to put the bounce back in his boots. But it couldn't be her, of course. She wouldn't know where to start. Against the odds, Emma Chance survived a childhood of cruelty and neglect. She's never had time for fairytales or Prince Charming and, as a young woman with a logical mind, her preference is for tidy facts over messy feelings. But with one glance from his dark eyes, Captain Guy Hathaway causes poor Emma a bundle of the latter and turns her cautious world on its head. To him she is nothing more than his little sister's shy, awkward friend, and she wouldn't know what to do with herself, in any case, if he ever looked at her as anything more than that. But there's something about Captain Hathaway... * * * * The charismatic captain has a reputation for trouble. Brawls, duels and dangerous women litter his past. With a mischievous sense of humor, a hot temper and a reckless impulse to leap in with both feet, he has always sailed along at a steady clip, determined never to be anchored too long in one place and never risking his heart. But lately he's felt a strange emptiness, a yearning for something he cannot identify. It began a few years ago, about the time he escorted his younger sister and two of her friends to a ball. Did he lose something there, or did he find it? Until he gets to the bottom of this mystery, he knows he won't be whole again. In the meantime, while he seeks out the source of this discontent, he can make himself useful, initiate some changes in his life and do a few good deeds for once. Why not? For instance—timid, plain little Miss Chance, his sister's droopy best friend, could surely benefit from a helping hand. The first time he met her she was a mess of nerves, covered in a red rash and itching as if riddled with fleas. But he can't help feeling there is more to the strange creature than meets the eye. Yes, indeed, there is something about Emma Chance...

The Bounce in the Captain's Boots

Venetia Warboys, by most accounts, a mild-mannered, generous, church-going woman, had reached her thirty-fifth year with little out of the ordinary happening in her life. Until she decided, one evening, to rise from her neatly-laid dinner table, fetch an axe from the woodshed, chop her husband into pieces and bake his gristle into some pies. "That's the last time he'll criticize mypastry," she said calmly when apprehended in the act of selling her grisly wares. Although her husband had been an infamous philanderer— or as much of one as an oily, simpering blob of a man could be in a small, rural market town—nobody knew what had really happened, on that last day, to cause a deadly fissure in his wife's sanity. I was the only soul to whom she gave any clue, but the six words she once whispered into my ear left me, a girl of twelve at the time, with more questions than answers. Suffice to say, after Venetia's axe swinging rampage in the autumn of 1882, the men of Withering Gibbet took greater care of what they said and did to their wives. We had all learned some important lessons: everybody harbors dark truths; there is no such thing as "ordinary", and never buy a savory pie at the county fair, especially when the contents are described as "revelation meat". For many years Venetia was our town's sole claim to infamy. And then there was me. * * * * So begins a story of silence and noise, secrets and lies, sisters and lovers, murder and redemption. Gemma Groot grows up in the long shadow cast by an old sin, but she is about to step out of the dark and shine the light on a few startling truths about her family. With the help of a man who falls out of the sky, she will finally discover the strength she needs to revisit the past and unleash the spirit of a wronged woman. But will she find that some skeletons are better off left buried?

An Unlikely Romance

The Mutinous Contemplations of Gemma Groot

How do you take your tea? The Beast of Whitherward Fell has been blamed for a great many mysterious events and gruesome murders on that wildest, perilous stretch of the Yorkshire Moors. But what, or who, is the real monster? And can there be only one that has stalked this place since the beginning of time? Detective Inspector Ptolemy Deverell does not believe in mythical beasts or supernatural phenomena. He’s a quiet, unassuming, pragmatic fellow, who seldom falls prey to emotion. Nobody pulls the fleece over his eyes. So if anybody can shed light on the rampaging fiend behind the bloody history of this place, surely, he can. But when the detective embarks upon three cases at once, he has no idea how tightly they are entwined, or that this tangle will lead him into the darkest part of Whitherward Fell. To face the Beast head-on. With a lady in search of vengeance; a gentleman on a mission for truth, and a little girl waiting for justice, the detective already has his hands full. On top of everything, he— the most unromantic fellow in the world—is in love. Will he ever get around to proposing marriage to the very modern, bicycle-riding, baker-extraordinaire, Miss Lucy Greenwood? And, if he does, will she laugh in his face and try drowning him in raspberry jam? Not only that. A ghost from his own past has returned to haunt his nightmares, and he cannot get on with his life until she’s finally at rest. Tolly Deverell might not believe in the Beast of Whitherward Fell, but he is preyed upon by a scavenging creature that lurks in the bleakest shadows of a dream, waiting to tear him apart. The great shadow of its wingspan falls from above when he is most susceptible. It comes to him when he’s alone in the dark. It comes to him when all but his mind is quiet. It comes in the deadliest shades of night. And with words clawed into the wall, it asks, How do you take your tea?

A Deadly Shade of Night

"We're not going to get along, you and I, are we?" "Good god, I hope not." Thus begins the acquaintance of Damon Deverell and a young woman he finds under his feet one evening, at a ball to which he isn't invited. She reminds him instantly of someone he knew before, but that would be impossible, of course, because she—the girl from his past—was entirely a construct of his own imagination. Wherever this disturbingly real woman came from, he's determined to maintain a cautious distance. But when he's hired to keep an eye on her, Damon's resolve to keep it "merely business" is soon threatened by some fresh-baked muffins, a pair of ankles he wishes he'd never seen, and a certain bold, independent American woman who boasts of a "very efficient right hook". Miss Epiphany "Pip" Piper has been sent into exile abroad, where her father hopes she'll learn to cool off her hot temper, acquire some elegant manners, and, hopefully, find a titled husband. Mr. Prospero "Smokey" Piper, of Louisiana and various other parts unknown and best unmentioned, claims to be the first ambitious and wealthy American businessman to think of this idea, but just like his very first boyhood attempt at building a whiskey still behind the family outhouse, this plan doesn't exactly turn out the way he expects either. And although explosions are inevitable, it's not his grandmother's drawers in danger this time. When these two stubborn young people— Damon the "merciless shark" of a lawyer, who likes his world in order, and the utterly disorderly Miss Piper, a "despicable girl of whom nothing could be made" find themselves thrown together by mischievous fate, it's not just a battle of the sexes or even a comedy of errors… It's a chemical reaction that will change both their worlds forever.

Damon Undone

HOW TO RESCUE A RAKE: Reject his marriage proposal Nathaniel Sherringham has returned to Hawcombe Prior a changed man. Gone is the reckless rake who went out on a limb to propose to Diana Makepiece three years ago. Now Nate's mysterious new wealth has the town's rumor mill spinning. To stir things up (and get Diana's attention), Nate boldly announces his plans to marry "any suitable girl" under the age of 25. Run away Diana, now 27 and still single, is acutely aware of Nate's return. When her mother suggests a trip to visit a cousin in Bath, Diana leaps at the chance to escape the heartbreak and regret she can't help but feel in Nate's presence...and avoid his irritating charade to find a bride. But for Nate, Diana has always been the one. He might just have to follow her to Bath and once again lay his heart on the line to win her attention-and her heart. The Book Club Belles Society: Before the Kiss: A Book Club Belles Society Novella Once Upon a Kiss Sinfully Ever After How to Rescue a Rake Praise for Once Upon a Kiss: "Feisty dialogue and strong-willed characters make for...a winning love story."-Booklist "Deliciously funny."-RT Book Reviews "[A] witty romp."-Publishers Weekly

How to Rescue a Rake

Her tailor-made temptation has him coming apart at the seams Carver Danforthe, Earl of Everscham, has a reputation of being a wild rogue-not for indulging the ambitions of his sister's maid. But Molly Robbins' unique dress designs have caught the eye of society's elite, and if it means her own dress shop, Molly will make a deal with the devil himself-or his proxy, the notoriously naughty earl. But becoming his mistress is not a part of their arrangement. It's right there in the contract's small print: No Tomfoolery. Until he proposes a scandalous new addendum to their contract...

Miss Molly Robbins Designs a Seduction

Successful matchmaker Lady Mercy Danforthe can't seem to help one of her clients, an ex-husband who still has designs on her.

Lady Mercy Danforthe Flirts with Scandal

It's Christmas 1877 and Anne Follyot— of little beauty and no fortune, but sturdy spirit and an excess of imagination— is invited to stay with her favorite aunt in Cornwall. She's all anticipation, waiting for the man chosen to escort her on this journey. According to her aunt, she met him before, many years ago, but Anne cannot remember him and she's positive that he must long-since have forgotten her. She's never been memorable. But J.P. Deverell, Esq. is now a grown man with a dangerous reputation, of which her aunt cannot possibly be aware. And Anne means to make the most of her aunt's mistake and this adventure. She considers herself a modern, independent woman, for whom a little scandal is well overdue. If she doesn't seize this chance now, she might never have another. As Charles Dickens wrote, "No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused." * * * * He's in no temper for eggnog and mistletoe; no mood to tolerate the painfully polite company of some plain spinster, in a carriage, for three days. It's probably a contrivance to get him home for Christmas. Remember Anne Follyot? He doesn't care to remember himself sixteen years ago, let alone recall the dull vicar's five year-old niece. He'd planned to spend his Yuletide working, alone and in peace. But a letter from his mother has guilted him into this act of begrudging chivalry, aided by the whispers of his best friend's mischievous ghost. "Bah, Humbug!" As Charles Dickens also wrote. * * * * But this journey will not turn out quite the way either traveler expects, for when these two opposites collide, so do ghosts of the past, the present and the future. It will be a holiday season with all the usual fare—peril, pandemonium, family quarrels, mulled wine and bodily injury. Certainly a Christmas adventure never to be forgotten this time. At least, by one of them.

Jayne Fresina

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