Search Results for: mistress-of-mistresses

Edward Lessingham of England is dead, the last chapter of his extraordinary life written.

Edward Lessingham of Zimiamvia is alive: now Lord Lessingham, cousin to the villainous Vicar of Rerek, scourge of King Mezentius in that fabled land.

But the king is dead and his passing has left a dangerous power vacuum and the fate of the three kingdoms in the balance. Lord Lessingham makes valiant attempts to bring peace to the land but is stalled by the vicar’s treachery and the strange ties that bind him to his cousin. Ties that may yet lead to bloody conflict in the three kingdoms . . .

Caroline Watts has accepted a post as games mistress at the prestigious Abbey School in the west of England. She is delighted with the appointment: it’s an excellent private girls’ school. No matter that she was introduced to the post through a tenuous network of family contacts. And that the previous games mistress was found dead in bed from heart failure.

From the moment she arrives at the school, Caroline is beset by fear. But of what? How could a school, owned by two influential ladies and run by the formidable Mrs Nash, threaten harm to a new teacher, eager to start her first job?

Rumour has it that her predecessor died of fright …

She is known as Seeker. Spellbound by the Faerie Queen, she has abducted human children for her mistress’s pleasure for what seems like an eternity, unable to free herself from servitude and reclaim her own humanity.

Seeker’s latest prey is a Merlin. Named after the legendary wizard of Camelot, Merlins are not simply those who wield magic – they are magic. Now, with the Prometheus Club’s agents and rivals from Faerie both vying for the favor of this being of limitless magic to tip the balance of power, Seeker must persuade the Merlin to join her cause – or else risk losing something even more precious and more important to her than the fate of humankind . . .

Mrs Bonnet was renowned for the delicacies she concocted in her semi-basement kitchen, but never did she imagine she would serve up murder to her beloved mistress! But when Mrs Bonnet, who has the lightest touch with pastry, tries her hand at the science of detection, she does so with astonishing results.

A gunman on the run, a seventeen-year-old girl on a family vacation, a jaded working girl, a guilt-stricken widower, an abandoned mistress. All heading fast down a route to sudden death. Then for one horrifying instant their lives are frozen in time, when a Cadillac drives at speed into oncoming traffic.

Lives are lost, and those that survive must endure a violent sequence of events that ensure life will never be the same again – for any of them.

The third title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur is disconsolate: his mistress, the widow of a fellow officer, has recently married another cop; and Ray Street, the young policeman that Colin sent undercover to infiltrate a druglord’s gang, is recklessly endangering himself.

When Street is murdered, Harpur plants evidence implicating the druglord, but a clever barrister sways the jury, and the druglord goes free – free, as it turns out, to meet an altogether more basic kind of justice.

Mark Girland’s problems begin when a beautiful blonde is found lying on a dark deserted quai in Paris – the initials of the top Chinese atomic scientist tattooed on her upper thigh.

The girl is suffering from acute amnesia. Girland, desperate for money, is ordered by the CIA to get any information he can – by posing as her husband.

But the appeal of the mission begins to wear thin when Girland discovers he has involved himself in a life and death race to extract vital atomic secrets from the scientist’s beautiful mistress.

An aristocratic young woman, Denise de Richemont, has murdered an important journalist, Jaques Le Tellier. She is acquitted by a sympathetic jury when she confesses it to be a crime of passion – revenge for the journalist’s indiscreet revelation of his mistress’ sordid family secrets.

But the real reason why Mademoiselle de Richemont killed Le Tellier is far more sinister, and Inspector Gautier pursues the case from the haute monde of fashionable Paris to the seething and dangerous slums, determined to solve the mystery behind the murder.

Who killed Gilbert Worth? The official verdict was suicide, but those that knew him best thought he was not the type to take his own life. Furthermore, before his death, a missing gun, a half-written letter and two ‘accidents’ had convinced Worth that someone was trying to kill him.

Worth’s family and mistress all had motives and opportunity, and those close to him have their own ideas as to how he was murdered. And one occupant of the house in particular has a good reason for wanting to identify the killer . . .

World-saver, or world-breaker?

The treaty that ended the civil war decreed that the men of science and the followers of the gods would split all of society between them. Yet Guild apprentice Pol was torn between the logic of science and the lure of faith, unaware that destiny had already chosen a very special role for him to play.

For Pol was about to encounter a woman of unique power, the mistress of a mysterious, forbidden castle, who would lead him down the pathways of prophecy to a strange and frightening new world . . .

Elena Vargas is a witness to a homicide, the shooting of a foot soldier in an international mob cartel. But the sultry call girl and sometime-mistress of gang lord Enzo Giardino claims to have seen and heard nothing.
Desperate to make a case against Giardino, the District Attorney offers Vargas protective custody in exchange for betraying her lover. But no one can make her talk.
Going on nothing but gut instinct, New York Police Department cop Christie Opara uncovers something in Vargas’s past that could give them the leverage they need . . .

The Dashkova Ballet Company – a visiting Russian troupe led by Inspector Gautier’s charming Soviet mistress, Princess Sophia – is about to become the toast of Paris when the famous Judge Prudhomme is found with a bullet in his heart in a squalid hotel room. And when the corpse of the beautiful prima ballerina Nicola Stepanova turns up equally cold, the company’s once sparkling future pales considerably.

Gautier has to solve the murders to save the troupe and salvage his great romance – all of which he undertakes with his customary élan, éclat and joie de vivre.

Frank Wimble never doubted his ability to do anything he wanted. When he set out to commit the perfect murder he was entirely confident.

When his wife vanishes the locals all assume Wimble has done it, especially when he starts to go around with his young mistress. But with no body and no evidence the police can’t do much. They can’t do anything, in fact, until Wimble gets unlucky and a most damning piece of evidence suddenly appears. But is it enough to convict Wimble at trial?

Returning to Paris, Inspector Gautier is devastated to learn that his Dutch mistress Ingrid has been brutally murdered. Before he can begin to investigate, the British Ambassador informs Gautier that his daughter has been abducted in England. With the help of Sylvie, a secretary at the French Embassy, the inspector follows the trail to Edinburgh to track down the ambassador’s daughter.

Back in Paris, influential people are being murdered, and the wife of the Minister for War is abducted. Out of these shocking events a political motive begins to emerge, and Gautier, with Sylvie’s help, starts to unravel the conspiracies under the looming threat of war.

It’s 1943, and down-on-his-luck American expat Philip Stark is on the Caribbean island of Santa Teresa. The prewar destination playground is deserted now except for diplomats and oil refinery workers.

When a local correspondent dies, Stark sees a chance to make some money. Having worked for the same company in the past, he is hired to replace the dead man. But Stark doesn’t think his predecessor died by accident. As he looks into the mystery, he encounters a rival correspondent, an enigmatic police officer and the mistress of the dead man – all of whom had a stake in seeing him dead.

They were three: Maq Ancor, the master assassin, Macician Cherry, space illusionist, Sine Anura, mistress of the erotic.

Chosen for the great quest, the journey into the heart of mankind’s greatest creation: Zeus.

Zeus who made the new worlds for Man, endlessly forming, linking, organising the spread of Man into the new Zeus-created lands. So great was the undertaking that it had passed beyond the control of Man. Zeus, obeying with ruthless logic its original program, was lethal in what it deemed to be its own defence.



For Man to regain control he had to understand what he had created.



This was the great quest, the ultimate journey of discovery.

It should have been her sanctuary – until things got murderous…

‘Few authors are better than Margaret Yorke in generating a real sense of fear’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘The mistress of unease’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

Ruth Castle – alone, proud, defiant – is determined to rescue some personal happiness from the wreckage of her life. In Haverbury village, she makes friends with Marjorie and Robert Bretherton, and is soon involved in the affairs of other relatives who come to stay for Christmas.

Family conflicts emerge, and one night, turning to Ruth for support in a sudden crisis, Marjorie realises that things are not as straightforward as she thought – and that her very life is threatened …

Clifford Flush founded the Asterisk Club in Chelsea to provide a home for wrongfully acquitted murderers, being one himself. Qualified prospective members need only name the club as beneficiary in their wills in order to avail themselves of its comforts and unique services.

Unfortunately, there isn’t room for Benjamin Cann, a gentleman’s outfitter newly acquitted of murdering his mistress. So Flush arranges for Benjamin to be temporarily quartered next door in a rat-infested house inhabited by two artistic couples. When Benjamin and a female member of the Asterisk Club turn up dead, the two households both have reason to avoid the police and dispose of the bodies …

‘Ingenious and successful farce’ Sunday Times

Mercury Shell, Venus Shell, Earth, Mars, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn. Each shell concentric, studded with artificial planets, each planet embedded in its shell, spinning like a ball-bearing. The whole Zeus-created in the service of Man but now beyond his control.
Now mathematics and space physics, converging, suggested another shell, its existence hidden from Man. A shell of utter darkness, cold and silence where only extreme mutants could survive.
To find that shell, the three were journeying again: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic. Together, daring the all-seeing, all-sensing hostility of Zeus.

PILLAR OF FIRE

Millions of Years before humanity and other intelligent races learned to roam the Milky Way, the Zheltyana had created an empire among the stars – rose, triumphed, and vanished. All that remained were a few ruins, some artifacts, and the knowledge that their powerful scientific secrets awaited rediscovery.

One such secret had been found on the feudal planet Naxos, under the tyranny of the half-mad Idalia Ancanette. Her scientists had tapped its mystery to create a pillar of energy which promised to make Idalia mistress of a hundred worlds – if it did not destroy Naxos before it could be harnessed.

Such an event called for the attention of Earth’s master agent, Cap Kennedy, and his scientific crew. Because that column of atomic fire was a beacon that could herald a millennium or end in A WORLD AFLAME.

Call them the spare parts of people. They chose the risk – jail for convicted crimes or semi-freedom as someone’s bonded servant for the same term. The price was that they were body insurance. If their master lost a leg or an internal organ, they would have to supply the missing part. That was the risk. Sagar used bondsmen in his other-world farm where he raised exotic alien pelts to sell to the rich. He had no thoughts on the bondsmen problem, pro or con. But when Carioca Jones, 3-V star, visited him he met her bonded companion, the lovely girl with the musical talent.

It’s dangerous to fall in love with a bondsmaiden. Doubly so when her mistress is in love with you. Triply so when it might set off the social explosion that had been smouldering beneath the delicately balanced surface of their post-cataclysmic Peninsula.

In the unfettered freedom of Russia’s new-found venture-capital frenzy, Max Borodin can organise anything – so long as the readies are ready. That’s why he’s Moscow’s most successful businessman.

But Max’s life has its downside: his wife, Tanya, nags him, his mistress, Sonya, exhausts him; his brother Evgeny needs him – to help extricate him from yet another shady business fiasco. Then there are always the country’s friendly mafia, keen to lend a helping hand with the profits of Max’s Universal Manufacturing Company – producer of documents, historical and otherwise, to suit every conceivable occasion.

Satire rarely comes more sulphuric than this. Let’s Put the Future Behind Us is the wittiest job of fictional surgery on New Russia since its iron curtain was amputated.

You need to be rich to survive at all. But it’s easier to be dead than poor.

Twenty-first-century New York. It’s a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There’s murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There’s guerrilla war on Long Island.

Seamus O’Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he’s in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer’s mistress, Avalon, probably wasn’t so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family’s crazy rivalries didn’t help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.

Before long, O’Malley’s on the run, and there’s nowhere safe to hide.

To see the stars.

This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris.

Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto…The last shell.

Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.