Touch Not The Cat

'A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors.' Harriet Evans Ashley Court: the tumbledown ancestral home of the Ashley family, all blessed with 'the gift' of being able to speak to each other without words. When Bryony Ashley's father dies under mysterious circumstances, his final words a cryptic warning to her, Bryony returns from abroad to uncover Ashley Court's secrets. What did her father's message mean? What lies at the centre of the overgrown maze in the gardens? And who is trying to prevent Bryony from discovering the truth? Tell Bryony. The cat, it's in the cat on the pavement. The map. The letter. In the brook. Tell Bryony. My little Bryony to be careful. Danger.

Bryony Ashley knows that her family's grand estate is both hell and paradise -- once elegant and beautiful, yet mired in debt and shrouded in shadow. Devastated by her father;s sudden strange death abroad, she is nonetheless relieved to learn the responsibility of running Ashley Court has fallen to a cousin. Still, her father's final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams.

An ancient curse that only love can conquer... Catherine MacClelland, as strong-minded as she is beautiful, is hiding a terrible secret. Predestined to carry on an ancient curse, Catherine knows she must live isolated from the world and resigns herself to a life devoted to her clan. But powerful forces are gathering around her, and she alone will have the chance to break the curse that has plagued the MacClelland clan for centuries. Nicholas Efington, the Dark Duke, has abandoned his wicked life in an attempt to heal the physical and emotional wounds he'd suffered in the past. Now he has only one task on his mind: find a wife and beget an heir. But when Catherine MacClelland's father blackmails him into marrying her, he's drawn into a dark mystery where ancient myths come alive, while finding a lass who brands his very soul with passion. As Nicolas and Catherine come closer to understanding the secret that could destroy them forever, betrayals and ominous forces threaten their only chance at happiness. Will they overcome the curse of the grimalkin or surrender to it as so many before them?

Scottish-American genealogy mystery novel set in Victorian times and 2011, reveals why Alexander Stewart emigrated to America in 1895 and what moved laird Gordon Macpherson to protect his Highland values. Women's suffrage, racism and social division are at the heart of this gripping mystery. Climaxes at clan gathering in Scotland.

Experience the uplifting, "unforgettable" New York Times bestseller about an abandoned kitten named Dewey, whose life in a library won over a farming town and the world -- with over 2 million copies sold! (Booklist) Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. On the coldest night of the year in Spencer, Iowa, at only a few weeks old--a critical age for kittens--he was stuffed into the return book slot of the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility (for a cat), and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most. As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming community slowly working its way back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

This quirky book explores our often fraught relationships with cats. Anna Blandford's easy humor points out cat behaviour at its best, and worst, and why humans still find cats irresistible. Because let's be honest, we're obsessed: if a cat lover is presented with a choice of products and one of them has a cat on it, hands down that will be the one selected. And as Anna asks, 'If it doesn't have a cat on it, is it even worth owning?' Cat lovers worldwide will relate to Anna's whimsical drawings and hilarious insights.

Reporter Nadia Maverick takes an adventure through the underbelly of her town where she discovers that even the criminal life she had been reporting on isn't quite like it seemed. Things turn bad for Nadia when in the middle of an investigation the tables are turned and she becomes the one under the watchful eye of Mr. A. Everyone becomes a suspect when Nadia turns up missing. Who will be there to set her free? Read and see.

In the year 1570, at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his château to brood on his own private grief - the deaths of his best friends, his father, his brother, and most recently his first-born child. But finding his mind agitated rather than settled by this idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the Essays - short prose explorations of an amazing variety of topics. And gradually, over the course of his writing Montaigne began to turn his back upon his stoical pessimism, and engage in a new philosophy of life, in which living is to be embraced in all its sensory, exuberant vitality - the smell of his doublet, the pleasures of friendship, the intelligence of his cat and the flavour of his wine. Saul Frampton offers a celebration of perhaps the most joyful and yet profound of all Renaissance writers, whose work went on to have a huge impact on Shakespeare, and whose writings offer a user's guide to existence even to the present day.