Stephanie Barron has 12 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 10 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.7★ across 10 ratings. The most-rated is That Churchill Woman.
That Churchill Woman
Summary
The Paris Wife meets PBS’s Victoria in this enthralling novel of the life and loves of one of history’s most remarkable women: Winston Churchill’s scandalous American mother, Jennie Jerome. Wealthy, privileged, and fiercely independent New Yorker Jennie Jerome took Victorian England by storm when she landed on its shores. As Lady Randolph Churchill, she gave birth to a man who defined the 20th century: her son Winston. But Jennie - reared in the luxury of Gilded Age Newport and the Paris of the Second Empire - lived an outrageously modern life all her own, filled with controversy, passion, tragedy, and triumph. When the 19-year-old beauty agrees to marry the son of a duke she has known only three days, she’s instantly swept up in a whirlwind of British politics and the breathless social climbing of the Marlborough House Set, the reckless men who surround Bertie, prince of Wales. Raised to think for herself and careless of English society rules, the new Lady Randolph Churchill quickly becomes a London sensation: adored by some, despised by others. Artistically gifted and politically shrewd, she shapes her husband’s rise in Parliament and her young son’s difficult passage through boyhood. But as the family’s influence soars, scandals explode and tragedy befalls the Churchills. Jennie is inescapably drawn to the brilliant and seductive Count Charles Kinsky - diplomat, skilled horse racer, deeply passionate lover. Their affair only intensifies as Randolph Churchill’s sanity frays, and Jennie - a woman whose every move on the public stage is judged - must walk a tightrope between duty and desire. Forced to decide where her heart truly belongs, Jennie risks everything - even her son - and disrupts lives, including her own, on both sides of the Atlantic. Breathing new life into Jennie’s legacy and the glittering world over which she reigned, That Churchill Woman paints a portrait of the difficult - and sometimes impossible - balance among love, freedom, and obligation, while capturing the spirit of an unforgettable woman, one who altered the course of history. Praise for That Churchill Woman: “The perfect confection of a novel.... We’re introduced to Jennie in all of her passion and keen intelligence and beauty. While she is surrounded by a cast of late-Victorian celebrities, including Bertie, Prince of Wales, it’s always Jennie who shines and takes the center stage she was born to.” (Melanie Benjamin, New York Times best-selling author of The Aviator’s Wife and The Swans of Fifth Avenue)
©2019 Stephanie Barron (P)2019 Random House Audio
Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas
Summary
Christmas Eve, 1814. Jane Austen has been invited to spend the holiday with family and friends at the Vyne, the gorgeous ancestral home of the wealthy and politically prominent Chute family. As the year fades and friends begin to gather beneath the mistletoe for the twelve days of Christmas festivities, Jane and her circle are in a celebratory mood: Mansfield Parkis selling nicely; Napoleon has been banished to Elba; British forces have seized Washington, DC; and on Christmas Eve, John Quincy Adams signs the Treaty of Ghent, which will end a war nobody in England really wanted. Jane, however, discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?
©2014 Stephanie Barron (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor: Being the First Jane Austen Mystery
Summary
For everyone who loves Jane Austen...a marvelously entertaining new series that turns the incomparable author into an extraordinary sleuth! On a visit to the estate of her friend, the young and beautiful Isobel Payne, countess of Scargrave, Jane bears witness to a tragedy. Isobel's husband - a gentleman of mature years - is felled by a mysterious and agonizing ailment. The earl's death seems a cruel blow of fate for the newly married Isobel. Yet the bereaved widow soon finds that it's only the beginning of her misfortune...as she receives a sinister missive accusing her and the earl's nephew of adultery - and murder. Desperately afraid that the letter will expose her to the worst sort of scandal, Isobel begs Jane for help. And Jane finds herself embroiled in a perilous investigation that will soon have her following a trail of clues that leads all the way to Newgate Prison and the House of Lords - a trail that may well place Jane's own person in the gravest jeopardy.
©2020 Stephanie Barron (P)2020 Random House Audio
Jane and the Wandering Eye: Being the Third Jane Austen Mystery
Summary
As Christmas of 1804 approaches, Jane Austen finds herself "[I]nsupportably bored with Bath, and the littleness of a town". It is with relief that she accepts a peculiar commission from her Gentleman Rogue, Lord Harold Trowbridge - to shadow his niece, Lady Desdemona, who has fled to Bath to avoid the attentions of the unsavory earl of Swithin. But Jane's idle diversion turns deadly when a man is discovered stabbed to death in the Theatre Royal. Adding to the mystery is an unusual object found on the victim's body - a pendant that contains a portrait of an eye! As Jane's fascination with scandal leads her deeper into the investigation, it becomes clear that she will not uncover the truth without some dangerous playacting of her own....
©2009 Stephanie Barron (P)2020 Random House Audio
Jane and His Lordship's Legacy
Summary
It's with a heavy heart that Jane Austen takes up a new residence at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire. Secretly mourning the lost love of her life, she's stunned to learn that the late Lord Harold Trowbridge has made her heir to an extraordinary bequest: a Bengal chest filled with his diaries, letters, and most intimate correspondence. From these, Jane is expected to write a memoir of the Gentleman Rogue for posterity. But before she can put pen to paper on this labor of love, she discovers a corpse in the cellar of her new home. The dead man was a common laborer, and a subsequent coroner's examination shows he was murdered elsewhere and transported to Chawton Cottage. Suddenly Jane and her family are thrust into the center of a brewing scandal in this provincial village that doesn't take kindly to outsiders in general - and to Austens in particular. And just as Jane glimpses a connection between the murder and the shattering truth concealed somewhere in Lord Harold's papers, violent death strikes yet another unsuspecting victim. Suddenly there are suspects and motives everywhere Jane looks - local burglaries, thwarted passions, would-be knights, and members of the royal family itself who want Lord Harold hushed...even in death. As the tale of one man's illustrious life unfolds - a life that runs a parallel course to the history of two continents - Jane races against time to catch a cunning killer before more innocent lives are taken. But her determination to protect Lord Harold's legacy could exact the costliest price of all: her own life. Jane and His Lordship's Legacy is historical suspense writing at its very finest, graced with insight, perception, and uncommon intelligence of its singular heroine in a mystery that will test the mettle of her mind and heart.
©2005 Stephanie Barron (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley
Summary
In her seventh captivating adventure, Jane Austen finds her crime-solving mettle put to the test in a confounding case of intrigue, murder, and high treason. Among the haunted ruins of an ancient abbey, Jane is drawn into a shadow world of dangerous secrets and traitorous hearts where not only her life is at stake - but the fate of England. Jane and the Ghosts of Netley As Jane Austen stands before the abandoned ruins of Netley Abbey, she imagines that ghosts really do haunt the centuries-old monastery. But the green-cloaked figure who startles her is all too human and he bears an unexpected missive from Lord Harold Trowbridge, one of the British government’s most trusted advisers - and a man who holds a high place in Jane’s life. Trowbridge tells Jane about a suspected traitor in their midst - and the disastrous consequences if she succeeds. But is Sophia Challoner, a beautiful widow with rumored ties to Emperor Bonaparte, really an agent of the enemy? Dispatched to Netley Lodge, Jane sets about gaining the confidence of the mysterious and intriguing lady even as Trowbridge’s grim prediction bears fruit: a British frigate is set afire and its shipwright found with his throat cut. It’s clear that someone is waging a clandestine war of terror and murder. But before Jane can follow the trail of conspiracy to its source and unmask a calculating killer, the cold hand of murder will fall mercilessly yet again - and suddenly Jane may find herself dying for her country. Elegantly intriguing, Jane and the Ghosts of Netley is a beautifully crafted novel of wit, character, and suspense that transports Jane and her many fans into a mystery of truly historical proportions - and a case that will test the amateur sleuth’s true colors under fire.
©2003 Stephanie Barron (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
Jane and the Genius of the Place: Being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery
Summary
In three highly diverting mysteries, Jane Austen has shown herself a clever hand at unraveling the deadly knots woven by the unscrupulous. Now, in her latest engrossing adventure, Jane is called upon to solve a shattering crime that may begin and end in one man's heart - or encompass the fate of an entire nation. In the waning days of summer, Jane Austen is off to the Canterbury Races, where the rich and fashionable go to gamble away their fortunes. It is an atmosphere ripe for scandal. But even Jane is unprepared for the shocking drama that ensues when a raven-haired wanton in a scarlet riding habit takes center stage. She is Françoise Grey, a flamboyant French beauty who has cast a spell over the gentlemen of Kent...and her unbridled behavior at the races invites the most scandalous speculation. What can Mrs. Grey be thinking, Jane wonders, to so brazenly strike a gentleman with her whip? And what recklessness then spurs her to leap the rail on her fleet black horse and join the race? Only hours after Mrs. Grey has departed the race grounds in triumph will Jane realize the full import of her questions. For in a shabby chaise less than 100 feet from where Jane sat, the impossible is revealed: Mrs. Grey's lifeless body, gruesomely strangled, her ruby riding habit nowhere to be found. As those around her rush to arrest the owner of the chaise - a known scoundrel with eyes for Françoise - Jane looks further afield to find a number of others behaving oddly, including the dashing military man caught rifling through the dead woman's desk, the widower who does not appear to be grieving, and the shy governess curiously overpowered by the horror of the Frenchwoman's death. As rumors spread like wildfire that Napoleon's fleet is bound for Kent, Jane begins to suspect that Françoise Grey's murder was an act of war rather than a crime of passion. The peaceful fields of Kent have become a very dangerous place...and Jane's thirst for justice may exact the steepest price of all - her life. Deliciously sinister and splendidly wrought, Jane and the Genius of the Place is a stylish puzzler that only the incomparable Jane Austen could hope to crack. And in her capable hands, the solving of it is a pleasure to watch.
©2009 Stephanie Barron (P)2020 Random House Audio
Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House
Summary
In her sixth engrossing outing, Jane Austen employs her delicious wit and family ties to the Royal Navy in a case of murder on the high seas. Somewhere in the picturesque British port of Southampton, among a crew of colorful, eccentric, and fiercely individual souls, a killer has come ashore. And only Jane can fathom the depths of his ruthless mind....Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House “I will assert that sailors are endowed with greater worth than any set of men in England.” So muses Jane Austen as she stands in the buffeting wind of Southampton’s quay beside her brother Frank on a raw February morning. Frank, a post captain in the Royal Navy, is without a ship to command, and his best prospect is the Stella Maris, a fast frigate captained by his old friend Tom Seagrave. “Lucky” Tom - so dubbed for his habit of besting enemy ships - is presently in disgrace, charged with violating the Articles of War. Tom’s first lieutenant, Eustace Chessyre, has accused Seagrave of murder in the death of a French captain after the surrender of his ship. Though Lucky Tom denies the charge, his dagger was found in the dead man’s chest. Now Seagrave faces court-martial and execution for a crime he swears he did not commit. Frank, deeply grieved, is certain his friend will hang. But Jane reasons that either Seagrave or Chessyre is lying - and that she and Frank have a duty to discover the truth. The search for the captain’s honor carries them into the troubled heart of Seagrave’s family, through some of the seaport’s worst sinkholes, and at long last to Wool House, the barred brick structure that serves as gaol for French prisoners of war. Risking contagion or worse, Jane agrees to nurse the murdered French captain’s imprisoned crew - and elicits a debonair surgeon’s account of the Stella Maris’s battle that appears to clear Tom Seagrave of all guilt. When Eustace Chessyre is found murdered, the entire affair takes on the appearance of an insidious plot against Seagrave, who is charged with the crime. Could any of his naval colleagues wish him dead? In an era of turbulent intrigue and contested amour, could it be a case of cherchez la femme...or a veiled political foe at work? And what of the sealed orders under which Seagrave embarked that fateful night in the Stella Maris? Death knocks again at Jane’s own door before the final knots in the killer’s net are completely untangled. Always surprising, Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House is an intelligent and intriguing mystery that introduces Jane and her readers to “the naval set” - and charts a true course through the amateur sleuth’s most troubled waters yet.
©2001 Stephanie Barron (P)2001 Books on Tape, Inc.
Jane and the Stillroom Maid
Summary
Jane Austen as sleuth continues to delight in her latest adventure (after Jane and the Genius of the Place), which sheds new light on the author's travels in 1806. While enjoying a ramble in the Derbyshire hills near Bakewell (a town Eliza Bennett visits in Pride and Prejudice), Jane discovers the mutilated body of a young man. Jane's suspicions are roused when her escort, Mr. George Hemming, prefers to remove the unidentified corpse to Buxton, rather than Bakewell, and they increase when the body proves to be that of a woman dressed in men's clothing. Moreover, the corpse is identified as Tess Arnold, a servant at one of the area's great houses, whom Mr. Hemming should have recognized. As the compounder of stillroom remedies, Tess had a reputation as a healer, until accused of witchcraft. Rumors of ritual murder by Freemasons - who include most of the neighboring gentry - excite the local populace and jeopardize the investigation of the justice of the peace, himself a Mason. When Mr. Hemming disappears before the inquest, Jane and the justice turn for help to Lord Harold Trowbridge, a guest at the nearby ducal house of Chatsworth. Barron catches Austen's tone amazingly well. Details of early 19th century country life of all classes ring true, while the story line is clear, yet full of surprises. The "editor's notes" that punctuate the text and old cures for various ills that open each chapter add to the charm. (Aug.)
©2000 Stephanie Barron (P)2000 Books on Tape, Inc.
Jane and the Man of the Cloth
Summary
For everyone who loves Jane Austen...the second tantalizing mystery in a new series that transforms the beloved author into a dazzling sleuth! Jane and her family are looking forward to a peaceful holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. Yet on the outskirts of town an overturned carriage forces the shaken travelers to take refuge at a nearby manor house. And it is there that Jane meets the darkly forbidding yet strangely attractive Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth seek to hide? Jane suspects the worst - but her attention is swiftly diverted when a man is discovered hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea. The worthies of Lyme are certain his death is the work of “the Reverend”, the ringleader of the midnight smuggling trade whose identity is the town's paramount mystery. Now, it falls to Jane to entrap and expose the notorious Reverend...even if the evidence points to the last person on earth she wants to suspect...a man who already may have won her heart.
©2009 Stephanie Barron (P)2020 Random House Audio
Jane and the Waterloo Map
Summary
The 13th installment in Stephanie Barron's fan favorite Being a Jane Austen Mystery series. Between novels, Victorian England's most beloved author doubles as a sleuth in often idyllic locales. November 1815. The Battle of Waterloo has left the British economy in shreds; Henry Austen, Jane's favorite brother, is about to declare bankruptcy. The crisis destroys Henry's health, and Jane flies to his London bedside. While she is there, the Reverend James Stanier Clarke, chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, invites Jane to Carlton House, the Prince's fabulous London home. Jane only accepts because many of Henry's bad loans were given by the Prince Regent's cronies. She hopes to intercede with the Regent on Henry's behalf, but before she can speak to him, she stumbles upon a dying man in the library - Colonel Ivor MacFarland, who, with a knife in his entrails, utters a single failing phrase: "the Waterloo map"...and Jane is on the hunt for a treasure of incalculable value and a killer of considerable cunning.
©2016 Stephanie Barron (P)2016 Recorded Books
The Usual Santas
Summary
Sixteen delightful holiday short stories by some of your favorite Soho crime authors! Featuring short crime fiction by: Helene Tursten, Mick Herron, Martin Limon, Timothy Hallinan, Mette Ivie Harrison, Colin Cotterill, Ed Lin, Stuart Neville, Tod Goldberg, Henry Chang, James R. Benn, Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis, Gary Corby, Cara Black, Stephanie Barron, and Peter Lovesey. This captivating collection of short mysteries and crime capers - which features New York Times best-selling authors, Crime Writers Association Gold and Diamond Dagger winners, and Edgar Award nominees - contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming reminders of the spirit of the season. Nine mall Santas must find the imposter among them. An elderly lady seeks peace from her murderously loud neighbors at Christmastime. A young woman receives a mysterious invitation to Christmas dinner with a stranger. Niccolo Machiavelli sets out to save an Italian city. Sherlock Holmes' onetime nemesis Irene Adler finds herself in an unexpected tangle in Paris while on a routine espionage assignment. Jane Austen searches for the Dowager Duchess of Wilborough's stolen diamonds. And other adventures will whisk listeners away to Christmases around the globe, from a Korean War POW camp to a Copenhagen refugee squat to a Thai street child's quest for the perfect gift for her friend.
©2017 Soho Press, Inc. (P)2017 Recorded Books