Showing results by narrator "Elisabeth" in All Categories

In the wake of her husband's inexplicable suicide - and the equally mysterious deaths of scores of other exemplary individuals - Jane picks up the trail of a secret cabal of powerful players who think themselves above the law and beyond punishment. But the people bent on hijacking America's future for their own monstrous ends never banked on a highly trained FBI agent willing to become the nation's most wanted fugitive in order to derail their insidious plans.

As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, 20-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer - his "Keltjin potatoes" are justifiably famous - has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own.

Sometimes the journey home is its own reward. Once upon a time, Rick Sullivan had a promising future. One of Jewell Cove's star athletes and reigning heartthrobs, he joined the Marines and had the world in the palm of his hand - until it all came crashing down. His honorable discharge doesn't make him the hometown hero everyone wants him to be, and there's little reprieve from the demons that haunt him at night. Still, even though it seems that all hope is gone, fate has something else in store.

It's Valentine's Day, and Ellie Knight finds herself eating Nutella in the bar stock after a no-show date. But single doesn't have to be the loneliest number, does it? She goes back home to her flatshare and weird flatmates. It's okay there's black mould everywhere, right? With a hangover from hell, she goes to the office job she thought she would have quit by now. Doesn't everyone hate their job? Maybe Ellie isn't following the official life plan, but perfect is overrated.

Labor Day 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar - married with three children - are happily preparing for a family birthday celebration when they learn that the unimaginable has occurred: There is no more money. More specifically, there's no more money in the estate of Fern's recently deceased parents, which, as the sole source of Fern and Edgar's income, had allowed them to live this beautiful, comfortable life despite their professed anti-money ideals.

In a trio of popular gender rituals—sorority rush, beauty pageants, and the Confederate Pageant of the Natchez (Mississippi) Pilgrimage—young white southern women have readily ditched contemporary modes of dress and comportment for performances of purity, gentility, and deference. Clearly, the ability to "do" white southern womanhood, convincingly and on cue, has remained a valued performance. Based on ethnographic research and taped interviews, Southern Beauty goes behind the scenes of the three rituals to explore the motivations and rewards associated with participation.

It’s been said that at the core of every legend lies a seed of truth. For four American tourists vacationing in Greece, this is a lesson learned the hard way. When the group sets out to find a subterranean pool that’s rumored to be the one by which the demi-god Narcissus once wasted away in self-obsession, what started as a fun excursion quickly escalates into a full-blown nightmare.

After the loss of her beloved sister and both of her parents, overworked talk show assistant Olivia Banks sets off on a Paris adventure to fulfill the dreams she and her sister once had as little girls. Olivia only has one day to devote to the City of Light before she must return to her demanding job back in Manhattan. But when she steps out of the cab onto the cobblestoned streets of Montmartre and meets a sexy boulanger who wants to help her make all of those dreams come true, Olivia realizes that Paris may have more in store for her than she ever could have imagined.

Mapping the Heavens provides a tour of the "greatest hits" of cosmological discoveries - the ideas that reshaped our universe over the past century. The cosmos, once understood as a stagnant place filled with the ordinary, is now a universe that is expanding at an accelerating pace, propelled by dark energy and structured by dark matter. Priyamvada Natarajan, our guide to these ideas, is at the forefront of the research - an astrophysicist who literally creates maps of invisible matter in the universe.

Eine Frau will mit ihrer Cousine und deren Mann ein paar Tage in einem Jagdhaus in den Bergen verbringen. Abends unternimmt das Paar noch einen Gang ins Dorf. Am Morgen stellt sich heraus, dass die beiden in der Nacht nicht zurückgekehrt sind. Zusammen mit dem Hund macht die Frau sich auf den Weg, um sie zu suchen. Doch plötzlich kehrt der Hund mit blutender Schnauze zu ihr zurück, und dann stößt sie selbst an ein unsichtbares Hindernis.

Esmay Suiza wasn't a member of a great Navy family like the Serranos. She'd had to make her way on grit alone, which meant it wasn't likely she'd ever make admiral and "hoist her own flag." Well, that was fine with her: all Esmay wanted was a secure berth where she could be part of something greater than herself, and otherwise just live her life in peace.

Snake Creek is a shabby little Texas town ruled by a mean-tempered outlaw who fancies himself a king — King Petty. He and his gang do what they want, when they want, and right now what Petty wants is the pretty wife of a farmer he just shot in cold blood. But Sam Two Wolves just can't stand by and watch as this King Petty drags the widow down the street and before long he and Matt find themselves in the fight of their lives. It's a fight they never meant to start, but they sure as hell are going to finish it.

With $1,500 and no business experience, Mel and Patricia Ziegler turned a wild idea into a company that would become the international retail colossus Banana Republic. Reimagining military surplus as safari and expedition wear, the former journalist and artist created a world that captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to the creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone.

Companies spend billions of dollars annually on diversity efforts, with remarkably few results. Too often diversity efforts rest on the assumption that all that's needed is an earnest conversation about "privilege." That's not enough. To truly make progress with diversity, equity and inclusion, we must focus less on documenting the problem and more on just stopping the transmission of it.

San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wrestle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner who put her own career on hold to support her husband, but Jack doesn't see it that way...until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly charmed, Charmian's eyes open to a world of possibilities.

Fifty-something Kathleen used 23andme to identify her biological mother, who is rumored to have a child with a priest. Kathleen believes that her father is Angie's great-uncle Ed, a beloved monsignor. Couldn't it be one of the other seven priests in the family? Despite initial reluctance, she is drawn full force into the mystery. Angie visits archives around Wisconsin, creating dossiers on the potential priest fathers. Kathleen discovers articles online with tantalizing clues hidden in plain sight.

Told by four women whose stories nest together, She Never Told Me About the Ocean is an epic about a rite of passage that all humans undergo and none remember: birth. Eighteen-year-old Sage has been mothering her mother for as long as she can remember and as she arrives on the shores of adulthood, she learns a secret: before she was born, she had an older brother who drowned.

When Manhattan attorney Ella Carlyle gets a call that her beloved grandmother is dying, she rushes to Paris to be by her side, against the wishes of her overbearing boyfriend. Ella would do anything for her grandmother and jumps at the chance to fulfill her dying wish. But things take a mystical turn when Ella is transported to a swinging Parisian jazz club full of alluring strangers…in the year 1927! As the clock runs out on her one night in the City of Light, Ella will attempt to rewrite the past...and perhaps her own destiny as well.

In the twenty-first century, we meet Verity Frazier, a disillusioned history professor who sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminated artwork in Christine de Pizan’s medieval manuscripts was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the exquisitely-rendered medieval backdrop of moral disaster, political intrigue, and extraordinary creativity, Verity finds her career on the brink of collapse by her efforts to uncover evidence of the lost artist’s existence.

Liv’s smart, shy, and a total control freak, but she’s ready to throw away a future in veterinary medicine to become a jockey. Nate’s good on a horse and good with people. Except Liv. He can’t quite crack Liv. Chique, though? He’s got that filly wrapped around his little finger.