Showing results by narrator "Sands Xe" in All Categories

After years prosecuting murderers, Assistant District Attorney Jessie Black doesn't think there's anything that can truly disturb her. She's wrong. When a distraught teenage girl shows up out of nowhere, demanding to talk, Jessie thinks the girl looks familiar but can't quite place her. The girl claims her father was murdered and the police are letting the killer get away with it. Jessie feels for the girl, but investigating murders is the role of the police department.

When she was young, Steffie Wyler always knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life: 1. Make ice cream. 2. Marry the coolest boy in town. 3. Live happily ever after. These days, Steffie is the proud owner of One Scoop or Two, a wildly popular ice cream parlor. But the cool guy left town right after high school, before they could scratch the surface of their mutual attraction to see what, if anything, lay beneath.

Chicago, 1916. Doreen O’Dare is fourteen years old when she hops a Hollywood-bound train with her beloved Irish grandmother. Within a decade, her trademark bob and insouciant charm make her the preeminent movie flapper of the Jazz Age. But her success story masks one of relentless ambition, tragedy, and the secrets of a dangerous marriage.

Sage Jeffries grew up an overachiever. She studied, excelled, and became a mechanical engineer for a firm in San Francisco. Yet, much to her family’s surprise, at age 30, she made a bold move to Los Angeles and became a bartender at The Yard.

Taking a night off from running her successful San Francisco clothing store, Lily attends a local art deco ball where vintage fashions steal the show. But when a young woman at the event falls under a mysterious sleeping sickness, Lily senses that a curse was placed on the woman's corsage. Before Lily can solve the woman's magical ailment, she's asked to assist in investigating a string of poisonings in the Bay Area witchcraft community.

When Lily arrives at an antique jewelry fair, her bargain sensors go off left and right - but she also picks up a faint vibration of magic. Could the hard-bargaining merchant Griselda be a fellow practitioner? It certainly seems that way when a sudden fire sends panic through the crowd, and Lily discovers Griselda murdered in a way that nods to an old-fashioned witch hunt. A crime that hits close to home turns into an unwelcome flash from the past when the police bring in their lead suspect - Lily's estranged father.

Based on in-depth interviews and her workshops for partners across the country, Laura Davis offers practical advice and encouragement to all partners - girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, and lovers - trying to support the survivors in their lives while tending to their own needs along the way. She shows couples how to deepen compassion, improve communication, and develop an understanding of healing as a shared activity.

Long ago, Nathan lived in a house in the country with his abusive father—and has never told his family what happened there. Long ago, Maddie was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t have—and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister walked in the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now, Nate and Maddie Graves are married, and they have moved back to their hometown with their son, Oliver. And now what happened long ago is happening again...to Oliver.

Pepper hasn’t been on a vacation with her husband - without the kids - ever. As in, never ever. On top of that, she still hasn’t told him about her magical water powers yet. Oops. (She meant to get around to it, really.) And now the magic won’t leave her alone, sending one strange emissary after another to interrupt every single supposed-to-be romantic moment. She has her hands full just trying to hide the truth, let alone trying to rekindle the other kind of magic with her husband.

In Anna Clark's full account of this American tragedy, The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail - and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts marriage, divorce, and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life.

Word has spread that contractor Mel Turner can communicate with the spirits of the dead, and she's having a hard time maintaining a low profile. She decides to embrace her reputation for the chance to restore a historic house that calls to her. The new owners, who hope to run a haunted bed-and-breakfast, want Mel to encourage the ghosts that supposedly roam the halls to enhance the house's paranormal charm. The catch: Mel has to spend one night in the house to win the project.

After a devastating loss, Brynn Wilder escapes to Wharton, a tourist town on Lake Superior, to reset, and checks into a quaint boardinghouse. In her fellow lodgers, she finds a friendly company of strangers: the frail Alice, cared for by a married couple with a heartbreaking story of their own; LuAnn, the eccentric and lovable owner of the inn; and Dominic, an unsettlingly handsome man inked from head to toe in mesmerizing tattoos. But in this inviting refuge, a mystery begins to swirl. Alice knows things about Brynn, about all of them, that she shouldn’t.

Even the most skilled sorceress can't ward off a lawsuit, and Lily is not at her enchanting best with her hands full as the temporary leader of San Francisco's magical community. So after her potbellied pig, Oscar, head butts rival clothier Autumn Jennings, Lily tries to make peace without a costly personal injury case.

Lila Bruce Breedlove never quite felt at home in Wesleyan, Georgia, especially after her father’s untimely demise when she was a child. Both Lila and her brother, Henry, fled north after high school, establishing fulfilling lives of their own. In contrast, their younger sister, Abigail, opted to remain behind to dote on their domineering, larger-than-life mother, Geneva. When their elderly mother dies suddenly and suspiciously in the muscadine arbor behind the family estate, Lila and Henry return to the town that essentially raised them.

Laurie Ahmadi has worked as a 911 police dispatcher in her quiet Northern California town for nearly two decades. She considers the department her family; her husband, Omid, is its first Arab American chief, and their teenage daughter, Jojo, has grown up with the force. So when Laurie catches a 911 call and, to her horror, it’s Jojo, the whole department springs into action. Jojo, drugged, disoriented, and in pain, doesn’t remember how she ended up at the home of Kevin Leeds, a pro football player famous for his on-the-field activism.

From the outside, criminal psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Pine’s life appears picture-perfect—she has a beautiful family, a successful mental health practice and a growing reputation as an expert in female violence. But when she's called to help investigate a mysterious death at a boarding school for troubled girls, Madeline hesitates. She’s been through tragic cases before, and the one she was entangled in last year nearly destroyed her… Yet she can’t turn away when she hears about Charley Ridley.

Jay na Thalang is a demanding, driven genius. He doesn't know how to stop or even slow down. The instant he lays eyes on Maria Lopez, he knows that she is a sexy distraction he can't afford. He's done his best to keep her at arm's length, and he's succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Maria has always been cautious. Now that her once-tiny, apocalypse-centered blog is hitting the mainstream, she's even more careful about preserving her online anonymity. She hasn't sent so much as a picture to the commenter she's interacted with for 18 months.

Fifteen years ago, Alice Hoffman received a diagnosis that changed everything about the life she'd been living. Most significant - aside from the grueling physical ordeal she underwent - was the way it changed how she felt inside and what she thought she ought to be doing with her days. Now she has written the book that she needed to read then. In this honest, wise, and upbeat guide, Alice Hoffman provides a road map for the making of one's life into the very best it can be.

Jessie Black's successful prosecution of a serial murderer and rapist put her on the path to stardom at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office. Public defender Jack Ackerman represented the opposition, and his spectacular public breakdown after the trial put him in a mental institution and gave Frank Ramsey a second chance at freedom. When Ramsey petitions the court for a new trial with a claim that Ackerman was ineffective, Black must step up to defend him.