The governess's guide to marriage / Liz Tyner. Believing her grandmother is gravely ill, governess Miranda Manwaring takes leave to care for her, but instead finds herself captive in a rundown cottage with a powerful stranger. Shock number one -- the man is the eligible Duke of Chalgrove. Shock number two -- their captor is Miranda's eccentric grandmother, looking to guide Miranda to a titled husband! Miranda refuses to trick him into marriage, but her grandmother's meddling can't possibly work... can it?

A prim and proper governess... Locked in with a duke! Believing her grandmother is gravely ill, governess Miranda Manwaring takes leave to care for her, but instead finds herself captive in a rundown cottage with a powerful stranger. Shock number one—the man is the eligible Duke of Chalgrove. Shock number two—their captor is Miranda’s eccentric grandmother, looking to guide Miranda to a titled husband! Miranda refuses to trick him into marriage, but her grandmother’s meddling can’t possibly work…can it? “What I love about Ms Tyner’s work [is that] she takes what is a very basic trope and storyline and gives it a twist and it ends up being fresh and new… A lovely and original romance … Imaginative and complex.” —Chicks, Rogues and Scandals on To Win a Wallflower “This is a wonderfully, entertaining and original story… This is definitely a page-turner.” —Chicks, Rogues and Scandals on Saying I Do to the Scoundrel

A convenient marriage... ...an inconvenient passion

A lady turned governess A life-changing proposal!

A Company of Swans is a sweeping tale of romance, freedom and the beauty of dance from award-winning author, Eva Ibbotson, with a new introduction by Joanna Nadin. Weekly ballet classes are Harriet Morton's only escape from her intolerably dull life. So when she is chosen to join a corps de ballet which is setting off on a tour of the Amazon, she leaps at the chance to run away for good. Performing in the grand opera houses is everything Harriet dreamed of, and falling in love with an aristocratic exile makes her new life complete. Swept away by it all, she is unaware that her father and intended fiancé have begun to track her down . . . 'I have binged on Eva Ibbotson . . . her elegantly written, witty and well-observed fables' Nigella Lawson, The Times Rediscover Eva Ibbotson, award-winning author of Journey to the River Sea, in her sweeping historical romances, including The Morning Gift, A Song For Summer and The Secret Countess, originally published as A Countess Below Stairs, Magic Flutes, originally published as The Reluctant Heiress, Madensky Square and A Company of Swans.

As the daughter of a modest minister, Agnes Grey has low prospects in life. After her father loses most of the family’s savings, Agnes is determined to help out and takes a position as governess for a wealthy family. Being a governess turns out to be more challenging than she could have predicted as she has to manage spoiled children and petty parents, while dependent on their approval for her livelihood. Agnes Grey is the first novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1847, and today considered an everlasting classic. Like the famous Jane Eyre, by Anne’s sister Emily Brontë, it deals with the precarious position of the governess and how the young women taking on that role were treated. It is a poignant and insightful novel that explores rigid class structures and the challenges it poses to women. ANNE BRONTË [1820-1849] was an English poet and novelist. She was the youngest of the three Brontë authors, her older sisters being Emily and Charlotte. Anne died young, probably from tuberculosis, having published the novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the latter hailed today as one of the first feminist novels.

The Woman of Colour is a unique literary account of a black heiress’ life immediately after the abolition of the British slave trade. Olivia Fairfield, the biracial heroine and orphaned daughter of a slaveholder, must travel from Jamaica to England, and as a condition of her father’s will either marry her Caucasian first cousin or become dependent on his mercenary elder brother and sister-in-law. As Olivia decides between these two conflicting possibilities, her letters recount her impressions of Britain and its inhabitants as only a black woman could record them. She gives scathing descriptions of London, Bristol, and the British, as well as progressive critiques of race, racism, and slavery. The narrative follows her life from the heights of her arranged marriage to its swift descent into annulment and destitution, only to culminate in her resurrection as a self-proclaimed “widow” who flouts the conventional marriage plot. The appendices, which include contemporary reviews of the novel, historical documents on race and inheritance in Jamaica, and examples of other women of colour in early British prose fiction, will further inspire readers to rethink issues of race, gender, class, and empire from an African woman’s perspective.