Showing results by narrator "Laural Merlington" in All Categories

Driven by desperation, Grace Hawkins must forsake the affluent comfort of her upbringing to save herself from an arranged marriage. Disillusioned by her father's insistence, she forges a daring plan to escape the sinister hand of her intended. Peter Colton sees the Alaskan gold rush as an opportunity to establish his family's fledgling shipping business. An unexpected partnership enables him to pursue those dreams and opens the door to an acquaintance with Grace, who has purchased passage north.

Why would two women separated by thousands of miles share a common thread involving alien abduction? Both cases are supported by multiple witnesses and have substantial evidence. Both women experienced missing time while driving with a companion and were later taken from their homes. Both have been unwilling participants in ongoing experimental procedures that appear to follow family genetic lines.

Paige Winterbourne is a witch. Not that you'd notice - no warts, no green skin, no cute little wiggle of the nose whenever she casts a spell. No, most of the time she's just a normal 23-year-old girl; works too hard, worries about her weight, wonders if she'll ever find a boyfriend. Okay, so she does have an adopted teenage daughter, Savannah, who wants to raise her black witch of a mother from the dead. And who is being stalked by a telekinetic half-demon and an all-powerful cabal of sorcerers.

On a chilly November afternoon in 1998, a tearful 36-year-old man walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department in Eureka, California, and confessed to something horrible. "I hurt some people," he said. Inside his pocket was the ghastly proof of his statement. But there was more to Wayne Adam Ford than the trail of mangled victims he left behind. More, even, than the twisted predator inside, which drove him to increasingly perverse sexual appetites.

As wild and reckless as the most incorrigible of her male cousins, young Amy Malory has reached marriageable age, and she has set her amorous sights on a most unsuitable mate: the handsome, straightlaced ship's captain who once nearly had her uncle James hung for piracy. An overpowering yearning for the young woman threatens to defeat the captain's defiant heart and stoke the fires of a perilous family feud.

Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne here explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it.

The Sisterhood: a group of women from all walks of life bound by friendship and years of adventure. Armed with vast resources, top-notch expertise, and a loyal network of allies around the globe, the Sisterhood will not rest until every wrong is made right. The small Oregon town of Mountain Valley seems like the perfect place to safely raise a family, away from the dangers of the big city. Vanessa’s parents think so, until the day their 14-year-old daughter doesn’t come home for dinner. They call her cell.

After traveling to Bethesda for a mystery writers’ conference, Jessica Fletcher decides she’s earned a vacation and takes a train to Columbia, South Carolina, to visit her old college friend Dolores, who has recently married her third husband, Willis Nickens, a wealthy and cutthroat businessman. They’ve moved into an opulent historic home with plenty of space for guests, and Jessica is ready for a week of shopping, gossiping, and relaxing at the grand estate. But the morning after she arrives, Jessica discovers Willis facedown in the koi pond.

Local Guild boss and powerful ghost hunter Cooper Boone is everything botanist Elly St. Clair could ask for-the handsome, strong, and silent type. Maybe too silent. For when Guild secrets threaten her career at the college, Elly has to call off their marriage-and leave small-town life behind....

When Nelson Penzell, co-owner of a local art and treasure store in Cabot Cove, is murdered, the nail tech from Jessica Fletcher's favorite beauty parlor is the main suspect. After all, she's the one who ran out of the store screaming, covered in blood, and holding the murder weapon. Jessica is positive that despite the circumstances, Coreen can't possibly be guilty, and she’s determined to prove it.

Find the path to inner peace through a weekly guide of spiritual meditations and positive affirmations.

Professional matchmaker Celinda Ingram is a psychically gifted woman with a problem. She is in desperate need of a bodyguard who can double as a date for her sister's wedding. Davis Oakes, a member of the mysterious Ghost Hunter's Guild, is a security expert with a most unusual paranormal talent. But Davis doesn't trust matchmakers and Celinda doesn't trust anyone connected to the Guild. Sparks fly immediately. Danger is closing in fast, however, and this pair has no choice but to work together to survive.

Upon arrival in Edmonton, Jessica is quickly outed as mystery writer J. B. Fletcher, and despite numerous protests, a hotel staffer arranges a book signing for her. This and touristy adventures arranged for the group make for a much busier trip than Jessica was expecting. When a hotel bartender, who also happens to be a stagehand for Emma’s play, turns up dead backstage at the theater, Jessica’s fun and relaxing vacation quickly becomes anything but.

Drs. Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski's popular Online course Learning How to Learn, has enrolled more than 1.8 million students. In this much needed follow-up to A Mind for Numbers, the authors teach kids and teens how to learn effectively at a time when they most need these skills. Learning How to Learn teaches them about the importance of both focused concentration and letting their minds wander, how the brain makes connections between different pieces of information, why procrastination is the enemy of problem solving, and much more.

In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman - who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband - conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished.

Tabloid reporter Sierra McIntyre wants a scoop when she interviews Ghost Hunter Guild boss John Fontana about the disappearances of retired, homeless hunters. She doesn't want to trust the physically and psychically powerful man, but her intuition—and her dust bunny companion—give her the green light. To uncover the conspiracy within his own organization, Fontana proposes . . . marriage. And though it's purely a business arrangement, there's nothing pure about the attraction that sizzles between them.

The exquisite niece of Lord Edward and Lady Charlotte Malory, Regina Ashton. is outraged over her abduction by the arrogant, devilishly handsome Nicholas Eden - and is determined to make the rogue pay...with his heart. A golden-haired seducer, Nicholas has been hardened by a painful secret in his past. And now that he has besmirched Reggie's good name, the hot-tempered lady has vowed to wed him.

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation, multispecies feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants. She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene, preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene, as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices.

The Widow Spy is the firsthand account of a true Cold War spy operation in Moscow told exclusively by the CIA case officer who lived this experience. Martha D. Peterson was one of the first women to be assigned to Moscow, a very difficult operational environment. Her story begins in Laos during the Vietnam War where she accompanied her husband, a CIA officer. She describes their life in a small city in Laos, ending with the tragic death of her husband. Then her own 30-year career begins in Moscow.

When half-demon Xavier calls in the favour Elena owes him, it seems easy enough - steal Jack the Ripper’s ‘From Hell’ letter away from a Toronto collector who had himself stolen it from the Ripper evidence boxes in the Metropolitan Police files. But nothing in the supernatural world is ever as simple as it seems.