Showing results by narrator "Laurie Klein" in All Categories

Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert of Green Gables had no intention of adopting the talkative, mischievous, red-headed girl the orphanage in Nova Scotia sent by mistake. What they wanted was a sturdy, sensible boy to help with the chores. Instead, they got 11-year-old Anne Shirley, whose capacity for adventure was only matched by her bright spirit and love of life. Still, there was something about the little girl that gave them second thoughts. She was keen of wit with a scintillating effervescence that was purely captivating. Just perhaps....

Anne is growing up and leaving the Island to spend four years of her life at Redmond College. She meets a wonderful new friend in Philippa Gordon, offspring to an old and exclusive "bluenose" family. Phil's family ties, combined with her beauty and charm, open the gates of all the social cliques and clubs at Redmond. And where Phil went, Anne went. Thus, Anne found her social pathway at Redmond made very easy while other freshettes were doomed to remain on the fringe of things.

This is a captivating, good-humored look at family life in a small farming community in Indiana in the early 1900s.

This is the second story in the Anne of Green Gables series. Skinny little red-haired Anne has changed into a pretty 16-year-old and is all grown up - well, sort of grown up. The story opens with Anne as a school teacher at Avonlea school. When Anne reached the school that first morning, she was confronted by prim rows of "shining morning faces". She had sat up until nearly midnight composing a speech which she had revised and improved painstakingly. It was a wonderful speech with fine ideas. And then, she couldn't remember it!

In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche Indians. This is the story of how she grew up with them, mastered their ways, married one of their leaders, and became, in every way, a Comanche woman. It is also the story of a proud and innocent people whose lives pulsed with the very heartbeat of the land. It is the story of a way of life that is gone forever.

In a land where justice was found in the barrel of a gun and the line between outlaw and citizen was thinly drawn, two women struggled, fought, and won. Rebecca, the elder, beautiful and defiant, found herself in the majestic mountains of Utah, forced to marry a brutal polygamist. All she wanted was to become a physician - and a free woman. Katie, younger, innocent, passionate, risked her life so her sister might have a chance for freedom. She risked all to establish a sprawling sheep ranch and prove that a woman could do it all - on her own.

Cole Cantrell has no premonition that his life is about to change forever when he saves the life of a beautiful stranger. Still haunted by his wife’s death, he fights his growing attraction to the mysterious Stephanie, afraid that she belongs to another man. Stephanie has no memory of who she is or how she came to be in the middle of Wyoming Territory among strangers. Her only clues to the past are frightening dreams, a gold wedding band, and a confusing note that poses more questions than it answers.

Twenty-year-old Halsey and 24-year-old Gertrude, nephew and niece of Rachel Inness, a well-to-do middle-aged spinster, talk Rachel into renting a large country house for the summer. Mysterious happenings occur the first night they are there, something or someone falls down the stairs in the middle of the night. A man is dead at the foot of the circular staircase. Now the question arises as to who he is and why was he in the house.

Tiana was a Cherokee woman. She grew up learning the magic, spells, and nature religion of her people. Before Sam Houston became the father of Texas, he was a young man who had run away from his home in Tennessee to live among the Cherokee. He came to love Tiana. As the Cherokee would say, she walked in his soul. But Sam was a white man, and Tiana, a Cherokee. And the dreams each had for their land and their people were far apart.

Set in 17th century England, this marvelous tale is about Mistress Clorinda, a tempestuous stable brat born out of wedlock. It’s a story of rebellion, dark secrets and great love. At a young age Mistress Clorinda inspires her father, Sir Jeoffry Wildairs to publicly acknowledge her. She grows to be a strong, defiant, aggressive woman of great beauty, who triumphs over all. She survives her mother’s attempt to murder her, her nurses neglect, and her own checkered past, to become, at last, a lady of quality.

Christina Swan, the local schoolteacher, is fired when two overzealous suitors brawl at her school. Angry at the unfair treatment, she seizes the opportunity to manage a fledgling ranch for her uncle and runs into the obstinate Kern Yager, a neighboring landholder. As tempers flare between them, the two discover a common enemy in a land development plan that will swallow their ranches. They also discover the faith to meet their problems with God's support.

When a wealthy woman is found battered and abandoned, her womanizing embezzler of a husband mysteriously vanishes. His sister arrives from the East to avenge his reputation, and Carson City's spunky and beloved Judith Kingston, wife of Judge Hollis A. Kingston, finds herself caught up in a hurricane of intrigue and innuendo. Will she stay safe in the eye of the storm until justice is served?

Nan Prince first becomes interested in medicine as a child, as the ward of the widowed physician Dr. Leslie. In time she becomes his protégée. But when she enters medical college, she realizes that she will have to choose between marriage and her career, between the demands of her society and her obligations to her true self.

After two hellish years on the rim of the Arctic, Philip Weyman stumbles back toward civilization, half-starved and half-crazy. He stumbles onto Josephine Adare, a beautiful woman living alone in the wilderness. She asks for his help, “I need you to pose as my husband to help me save my home from a band of outlaws and cutthroats.” She persuades him to stay and fight for her. But he has no idea he will be joining a battle with the silent strength of the Cree Nation as his ally. Nor does he realize, the final battle will require every ounce of his strength and will...

Madsaw, war chief of the Tillamook tribe, kidnaps Twana, the step-daughter of the Nisqually shaman. Though their people are enemies, and to love a slave violates tribal law, Madsaw and Twana become lovers. Twana is endowed with an unusual power which allows her to mentally commune with animals and "see" them even though they are out of sight.

It's Christmastime in Skary, Indiana, but the holiday season has been hijacked by maverick director Lois Stepaphanopolis as she attempts to bring her horror-ific vision of A Christmas Carol to life. But the holly-decked path from page to stage is a thorny one, as Lois attempts to rally her skeptical cast, including new father Wolfe Boone, and then she learns that her reluctant marketing director, Alfred Tennison, is truly a Christmas Scrooge.

Notorious outlaw Manitoba Joe Clark seems to have been caught red-handed this time, but he's begging Judge Kingston to find out who framed him. At home, life seems to be unraveling for the judge and his wife Judith. Will their widowed missionary son marry a most unlikely woman and return to India? Can evidence implicating Roberta's fiance as an embezzler and the father of an illegitimate child be true?

In an age when robber barons and get-rich-quick schemes abound, a charismatic land developer arrives in Carson City. It doesn't take Major Lansford Fallon long to win the affections of widowed Marthellen Farnsworth - Judith Kingston's housekeeper and dearest friend. And it takes Fallon even less time to win the financial backing of the town's leading citizens when he presents a plan to build a health sanitarium on a mineral spring outside of town.

Uprooted from a well-ordered life in Virginia when she was nine, Willa Cather came of age in the West during the last years of the American frontier. She developed a love for the beauty of the open grassland and an abiding interest in the Old World customs of her neighbors, the dreamers and builders who inhabit her fiction. This collection includes work from the early part of Cather''s career and clearly marks themes and landscapes that she would detail and explore for the remainder of her life.