Showing results by narrator "Virginia Ferguson" in All Categories

Having traveled much and tried his hand at many jobs, Alexander Kuprin ran into all sorts of people over the course of his tumultuous life. Human Types is a selection of sketches from the vast gallery of portraits he had created as part of his writing.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian playwright, writer, and doctor. Known best for his plays, he had also written a great multitude of short stories for and about people of all ages and all walks of life. Life as It Happens is a selection of just such stories and novellas. From sad to ridiculous, to dramatic, to funny, by way of tragic or bittersweet - there is something here for everyone.

"The Test" is a short, powerful piece that describes a day in the life of a woman, whose past comes to haunt her just as she thinks she is settled and perfectly safe in her life. Faced with memories of long ago as well as considerations and responsibilities of today, she must make a difficult choice she knows will change her life and affect the lives of those around her.

Literary critic, E. A. Koltonovskaya, described the literary style of novelist Maria Krestovskaya as follows, “Her pen, for all its feminine agility, is often remarkable for its nearly masculine reticence. She has none of the chaotic flood of thoughtless emotions, which so frequently plagues the works by female writers. She does not like lyrical diversions and allows her characters to speak and act for themselves. Even during the most dramatic scenes, her tone remains restrained. Her formulation of women’s issues gives one the sense of a broad, universal foundation...."

Katherine is a retired nurse and a retired church organist. The small Hudson River village where she lives in her Victorian “Painted Lady” makes her the neighborhood matriarch. Along with her Maine Coon Cat Robespierre, she guards friends and families. When amoral Rachel moves into the first floor apartment of Katherine’s house, trouble erupts. The murder weapon is one she recognizes and makes her fear for her friends and family. Finding the killer becomes her goal.

Fenella Conyers, a distant Raynham connection, unexpectedly appears at Beaumatin, the ancestral home of the Barons Raynham, with a request and a gift. After a life spent roaming the globe, she wants to settle down in the Cotswolds and asks if her noble cousin has an empty cottage where she could stay until she can find her own place. The gift is an extremely rare snowdrop—a yellow “spiky” that Fenella mysteriously acquired in her travels and which she has named Mystic Mayhem.

Who came up with the idea that if a man is a prince, he must always marry a princess? Things come to a head when one rebellious royal decides to dispute this rule.

The witty, wily princess, Elizabeth Tudor has survived the turmoil of her formative years, and finally, is now Queen of England. Rising to the throne on a wave of popularity, Elizabeth is keen to avoid the mistakes of her siblings, and bring England to a new sense of unity and hope.

Christina Georgina Rossetti is the youngest of four siblings in a close-knit, creative Anglo-Italian family. A spirited child like her brother, Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in adolescence she struggles with being sickly and depressed. She emerges "a dove on a solitary branch," realizing her voice through writing, most exceptionally poetry.

With Christmas fast approaching and the constant threat of closure for Bixton Police Station, Gammon knew he had to get these murders solved. He was under immense pressure in his professional life and his personal life. So many things will change in this latest book for John Gammon.

Another set of vivid, exquisitely detailed stories from all walks of life from the giant of Ukrainian literature Mihailo Kotsubinsky.

Scenes from all walks of life—from a secluded mountain monastery to a troubled Ukrainian village—meticulously documented by the great impressionist of Ukrainian literature Mihailo Kotsubinsky.

When a spate of sudden deaths occurs amongst the elderly in Ellie's home town, the South Australian ambulance officer grows concerned. After a man purporting to be the relative of one of the deceased who clearly is not moves into the old man’s house, she becomes suspicious. She alerts a local cop, Nick, who takes her concerns seriously.

This short collection of Alexander Kuprin's stories and novellas is intended as light listening - to amuse, puzzle, entertain, and enchant.

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.

Murder in the Pachysandra introduces Hattie Moon, an elderly widow, who steps out of her dusty world of cat hair, mixed-up days, and rambling conversations with her dead husband, to solve the murder of her paperboy Jason Meeks. She, along with her friend Muriel Manning, unravel clues the police have missed. Suddenly, the amateur sleuths find themselves swirling in a deceitful, troubling world of marital infidelity, drugs, the dark web, and a diabolical force that hovers, ready to pounce.

Cordelia Honeyfield has been sent to the seaside "for her health" - and the last thing she wants is the meddling nonsense of a country doctor. Her wild spirit is frowned upon by the town, and familial embarrassment now means she's stuck at the beach in a brisk March wind, waiting to meet this doctor as she promised her father. Dr. Timothy Walsingham is about to meet a new elderly patient - a Miss Honeyfield whose letters have had him in stitches. As he waits by the sand, a beautiful woman catches his eye.

When Stella McKenzie is summoned to meet her Great Aunt Bess, her grandmother's sister, on the occasion of that lady's 100th birthday, she keeps the appointment with a great deal of trepidation. All her life she has been told about this mysterious lady, to whom her grandmother has not spoken since the First World War. She has been told that she is mean and spiteful, that she wrecked the engagement of her sister to the man she loved out of spite and jealousy.

Operation Rhubarb was an MI5 and Scotland Yard joint undercover investigation of Brockeln Belland, a city of London bank of impenetrable pedigree that was brought to a violent close 10 ago. One survivor of the blast, now-16-year-old Juliet, is seeking the truth about her parents' death. As the old case notes land on a Scotland Yard detective inspector's desk, Juliet's back-door inquiry opens a deadly can of worms that the Establishment presumed buried.

In 1957, the town of Honeyspoon is ill prepared for a murder mystery. In fact, most of the townspeople have never experienced a violent death until a shocking murder in the small town sets everyone on edge. Mrs. Nancy Peabody is a widow of very limited means. Her life is drab and lonely so she can’t avoid the temptation offered by the party line she shares with two of her neighbors.