Improbable Fictions
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Large print versions are available for selected novellas, including all of Elizabeth Leydin's Trengrouse Ball series.
Novellas by Elizabeth Leydin
The Trengrouse Ball is a series of six charming romance novellas, centering around a ball at the Earl of Trengrouse's family estate.
The Captain and the Lady
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 1
Petroc Trengrouse has come home from Waterloo missing his right leg. Family friend Lady Beatrice Marlowe has been thrown out of her home on the deaths of her father and brother.
When Petroc comes to stay at Beatrice’s mother’s seaside house to recover from his wounds, he has no idea that he’s causing severe financial problems.
He feels he’s not fit to marry; she knows she’s too poor to attract an aristocratic suitor. Will the Trengrouse Ball prove both of them wrong?
The Youngest Son
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 2
When Ives Trengrouse hijacks his friend Den’s coach after the Trengrouse Ball, he thinks it’s no more than a prank. But Den isn’t inside. Instead, its his sister Katie, going home early with a migraine.
Compromised beyond saving, the two must marry immediately—and do so. Katie’s dreams of a big London Season are gone. Ives can’t go on his light-hearted, care-for-nothing way now he’s a married man.
Neither of them wants to be in this marriage: can they turn childhood friendship into something deeper and everlasting?
Second Chance at Christmas
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 3
Widowed, pregnant Lady Demelza Mandeville returns to her family home, Trengrouse Hall, after her husband’s recent death, dreading meeting family friend, Sir Denzell Kelynack, who jilted her in her first Season.
Denzell looks forward to the meeting—he wants to know why Demelza had jilted him eight years ago. And what role did his needy, unstable mother play in that?
Finding out the truth, and finding a path to a new life, is complicated by Demelza’s pregnancy. If the baby is a boy, she’ll be bound to the Mandeville estates until he’s an adult; if a girl, she’s free to live her own life while a Mandeville cousin inherits the estate.
The Trengrouse Ball is a promise of things to come, but will the promise come true at Christmas?
The Baboon at the Ball
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 4
A forbidden love story with animal antics to upset the normal order of things! (Or, a Cinderella story with a difference…)
Val Muffet is a Cit—a rich, well-educated, beautifully-mannered man, but definitely not one of the ton, despite being invited to the Trengrouse Ball.
Lady Kerenza Trengrouse’s family is amongst the great and the good of the land, and she expects to marry a lord. An earl, at least!
What could bring these two to care about each other? Enter Genevieve, the lost, forlorn but definitely challenging baboon, given to the Muffets by the Prince Regent himself.
Genevieve is not invited to the ball, but she comes anyway, and life will never be the same again for Val or Kerenza!
My Earl, the Spy
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 5
An exciting ace romance with a twist of espionage!
Lady Melissa Trengrouse can’t imagine being married to anyone but Charles Goddard, Earl of Westholm, for whom she decodes secret French dispatches.
Although she hates the idea of marriage or children, for Charles, Melissa would endure it all. They’re perfect for each other: but when she proposes to him at the Trengrouse Ball, he refuses her without explanationp.
Charles has his reasons. He hates hurting her, but it’s a relief when he has to ride off on a secret mission for the Crown.
Melissa realises he's riding into a trap. Can she save him and discover his secret reasons for denying that he loved her all along?
A sweet Regency romance with an atypical couple!
The Lion and Miss Lamb
The Trengrouse Ball: Book 1
Sarah Lamb doesn’t have a family; Endellion Trengrouse has never fit in with his.
Immediately attracted, the two have a brief flirtation at the Trengrouse Ball, which ends disastrously when Endellion—known as Lion—finds out the truth behind Sarah’s birth. Sarah isn’t surprised by his reaction: she knows no respectable man will marry an illegitimate orphan.
But there’s more to Sarah’s parentage—and Endellion’s—than either of them know. Can they find the truth…and will that truth bring them together, or drive them apart?
Novellas by Stephen Hart
The Exciseman
A Cornish Regency Romance
Charity Hope is the vicar’s daughter in a Cornish village full of smugglers.
Hector Penhaligon is the exciseman tasked with bringing those smugglers to justice.
But is there a difference between what is right and what is lawful?
When the smuggling comes close to Charity’s home, Hector must choose between his duty and the love of his life. And Charity must decide if she can love someone who threatens everyone she holds dear.