"More goes wrong than could be imagined when Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau are unexpectedly engaged to dig into the past of a suitor of a royal princess in Allison Montclair's delightful second novel, A Royal Affair. In London 1946, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau is just beginning to take off and the proprietors, Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, are in need of a bigger office and a secretary...

It is the early spring of 2016 and Queen Elizabeth is at Windsor Castle in advance of her 90th birthday celebrations. But the preparations are interrupted when a guest is found dead in one of the Castle bedrooms. The scene suggests the young Russian pianist strangled himself, but a badly tied knot leads MI5 to suspect foul play was involved. The Queen leaves the investigation to the professionals--until their suspicions point them in the wrong direction....

"Marion Crawford can remember each of the wonderful sixteen years when she was governess to the little Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. Marion had been a vital part of their lives; someone they confided in, needed, trusted, and loved. These memories will never dim, ever. In her mind, she will always be their Crawfie. But things become increasingly complicated as the young royals navigate adulthood. It is May 1945, and Princess Elizabeth-the...

"London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation in spite of their nation's recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers in the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their bond, along with their nascent hopes for a brighter future, are...

Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety, displacing more than three million young offspring. In The Secret Guests, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in "neutral" Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford,...

Guy the beagle, adopted from a shelter, must find a place for himself in an English palace when his mother marries Prince Harry, whose grandmother is very fond of dogs.