Showing results by narrator "Ann Etter" in All Categories

Fencing prodigy Jess Kidman has always been ahead of her peers. At the age of 13, she made the varsity team, won a state championship, came out, and fell head over heels in love with her team captain, Lauren Standish. After being gently rebuffed by the high school senior, young Jess vowed she would return for her some day when their age difference became irrelevant and her own accomplishments made her not merely an equal, but an Olympian.

Kye Manchester is no stranger to ambition. She sacrificed more than she cares to admit to become a highly acclaimed actress. Now more than a decade after her big break, her prospects are waning, and in a moment of desperation, she tells a lie that sends her spiraling back to where she started, and to the one woman she swore she’d never let herself need again. Fletcher Bouchard isn’t just Kye’s first love and her greatest heartbreak, she’s also a world-champion mounted archer in a unique position to help Kye gain the skills she needs with a horse and bow, only she has no inclination to do so.

Henrietta Cochran has spent nearly 40 years dealing with the effects of the polio she contracted in 1945. Her braces and crutches restrict her, define her, but they also give her independence. Almost. She hates that she has become increasingly reliant on a series of live-in companions to help her. For some reason, the companions never seem to want to stay very long. So Henrietta retreats further and further into her art, where her physical limitations don’t matter.

From a young age, Cobie Galloway made a career of playing the girl-next-door on the silver screen. Only, she's not a teenager anymore. Pop star Lila Wilder built a multimedia empire by always having her finger on the pulse of what's hot. However, as she struggles to produce her next smash hit record, she's finding it hard to keep her name in the public eye. Both women tentatively agree to a headline-grabbing fauxmance, with two simple rules: Always stick to the script, and never forget that on the stage of public perception, nothing is real.

Small-town woodworker Ava Collins and big city doctor Bex Leone both love Christmas. Some might go so far as to call them obsessed. They love Christmas music, Christmas food, Christmas carols, and Christmas movies. When the two women meet over a Thanksgiving dinner, it seems for a second they might have finally found their mistletoe match, but their initial connection goes wildly awry when they realize their versions of what constitutes an ideal Christmas differ as drastically as the places they choose to spend their holidays.

Mira Collins has her life together. She’s built a solid career as a financial planner, a comfortable home, and an uncomplicated and regimented routine…until her wayward sister, Vannah, shows up unexpectedly and drops a bomb on her orderly world. Ever dependable Mira reluctantly accepts temporary custody of her 10-year-old nephew, Ben, then quickly learns that not all responsibilities can be handled with a color-coded calendar system, and that being a substitute parent is terrifying.

Max Lauren made a mistake that shattered her pride, heart, and career in one fell swoop. Relegated to covering the lowly game of curling - she already resents the so-called “sport" - she steps onto the ice, where things get infinitely worse. She’s been knocked down before, and she’s always gotten back up, but a frosty resolve goes only so far in a world of people who thrive on ice.

As Olympic snowboarder Corey LaCroix and skier Elise Brandies ride the razor's edge between victory and defeat on the slopes, they also face a heat neither of them is prepared for in their safe worlds of snow and ice. The stakes become steeper than any mountain either of them will ever face when legacies and hearts collide at breakneck speed.

A one-way stage ticket to the frontier leaves a young woman penniless and alone in Long Grass, Wyoming. With no other hope than to survive another day, she takes up the only profession open to her. Years later she encounters a one-of-a-kind cowboy she can love, and her first taste of pleasure—and happiness.

After a publicly humiliating divorce, best-selling author Emma Volant runs away to hide in the seaside English village of Amberwick, where she doesn’t know another living soul. She wants nothing more than to surrender to her broken heart in private. However, when the locals discover their newest resident is world famous, they gather at the local pub and hatch a plan to draw Emma out of her self-imposed isolation, hoping her celebrity status will elevate the village’s reputation to something more than a holiday hotspot....

Claire Weaver’s only goal is to climb the ladder of success. After winning an unwinnable toxic tort case and securing a 90-million-dollar verdict, she’s a shoo-in for a judgeship at Kansas City’s circuit court. The last person fire investigator Emery Pearson expects to see in court is the stranger she had the pleasure of dominating last night—only this time, Judge Claire Weaver is definitely in charge.

Hal Orion is an accomplished chef and food truck owner. Quinn Banning is an investment banker. Putting together her next business venture, Quinn recognizes Hal's talent and charm as necessary assets for success - her good looks don't hurt, either. But Hal's transient ways are in opposition to the stability Quinn craves. Relying on their shared love of Buffalo, Quinn makes Hal an offer she can't refuse - a restaurant under her own name, complete creative control, and secure financial backing. It's every chef's dream. But Hal utters the one word Quinn can't stand to hear: no.

Fire investigator Emery Pearson doesn’t have time for a relationship. Her career is everything, so the rest of her life is put on hold until she reaches her professional goals. Sex is always on the table, though. Finding the perfect woman who only wants a quick hookup seems like a fantasy, but when she meets Lily online, the fantasy turns to reality when they agree to meet. Their tête-à-tête at the museum is more than Emery could imagine—satisfying, exciting, and passionate.

When a CPA is forced to hire help for tax season, she resents the presence of her brash, young intern. The intern only wants to complete the internship so she can chase her dream job in DC. Will the CPA's past and the intern's future add up to something greater than the sum of their escalating attraction?

Now that the island will have its own teacher for the first time in decades, Rebecca Ahearn is tasked with making financial arrangements to build a new school room. While on the mainland, she barges straight into her first—and only—love, a woman she hasn’t seen in over 40 years. Suddenly, the choices she has made for her life seem empty, and she begins to wonder if it was worth the sacrifice.

1855, New Hampshire. Lucy Blunt is set to hang for a double murder. Murderess or victim? Only Lucy knows the truth. In the shadow of the gallows, Lucy reflects on the events that led to her bitter downfall - from the moment she arrived at the rambling Burton mansion looking for work and a better life to the grisly murders themselves.

Nearly 25 years ago, Kathleen Halloran’s brother drowned during the last summer they ever spent with their grandmother on a remote island off Maine’s coast. Like a siren’s call she can’t resist, Kathleen is pulled back to Little Sister Island. She leaves her job and her girlfriend, packs up her few belongings, and moves into her grandmother’s cottage.

Bailey must traverse the rocky terrain of her friendships, her freshman year of college, and her sexuality to discover not only whom she wants to pursue, but her own identity. For Bailey, learning to be true to herself means being brave enough to let go of the limits on love that are holding her back.

Kathleen Halloran has never been happier. She and Molly Cooper have built a life together, living in her grandmother’s cottage. The family drama of the past has calmed down. She and Molly will soon be aunts. Life on Little Sister Island is everything Kathleen could wish for...until the island begins to send ominous signals that change is in the wind.

New York, 1883: Gamblers and thieves, immigrants and street urchins, Do-Gooders and charity houses, impossible goals and impossible odds. The Bowery is a place where you own nothing but your dreams. And dreams are the only things that come cheap for pickpocket Mollie Flynn and prostitute Annabelle Lee. Pleasure is fleeting—and often stolen. Nights at Lefty Malone's saloon, sneaking into the Thalia Theatre. Then it's back to their airless, windowless tenement room and the ongoing struggle to keep a roof over their heads and bread in their stomachs.