Showing results by narrator "Susan Denaker" in All Categories

While teaching summer school at exclusive Philly Prep, English teacher Amanda Pepper feels a sense of foreboding. First, a reading of Romeo and Juliet activates some very strange chemistry. Then the computer science teacher begins receiving anonymous go-back-to-Africa phone calls. A young Vietnamese boy dies in a drive-by shooting. And late one night, outside a Chinatown massage parlor, student April Tuong is kidnapped. Random violence? Perhaps.

What does it really mean to be a good father? What did your father tell you that has stayed with you throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are? Is there a special memory that makes you smile when you least expect it?

After a tough year of teaching at Philly Prep, Amanda Pepper decides to go to Atlantic City with her friend Sasha Berg. Yet a beach vacation turns deadly when a bludgeoned corpse shows up in their hotel room - and Sasha is the prime suspect.

So Amanda hits the boardwalk to track down the real killer, chasing down clues around the surf and in the casinos, and discovering along the way that appearances are more than deceiving: They can be criminal and, sometimes, downright murderous....

"There," says Alice Hayward to Reverend Stephen Drew, just after her baptism, and just before going home to the husband who will kill her that evening and then shoot himself. Drew, tortured by the cryptic finality of that short utterance, feels his faith in God slipping away and is saved from despair only by a meeting with Heather Laurent, the author of wildly successful, inspirational books about angels. Heather survived a childhood that culminated in her own parents’ murder-suicide, so she identifies deeply with Alice’s daughter, Katie, offering herself as a mentor to the girl and a shoulder for Stephen....

When a boat drifts into a New England port with all its crew dead, only a shipboard statue knows what took place. Can a boy carved from wood reveal the secret? Can a love-struck apprentice find the girl of his dreams by following a weathervane with a figure of Saint Crispin, patron saint of shoemakers? After a lifetime of making statues of the wealthy and powerful, what will the Italian sculptor Zorelli do when he is hired not by a human, but a ghost?

German immigrant and farm wife Hulda Klager possesses only an eighth-grade education - and a burning desire to create something beautiful. What begins as a hobby to create an easy-peeling apple for her pies becomes Hulda’s driving purpose: a time-consuming interest in plant hybridization that puts her at odds with family and community, as she challenges the early-twentieth-century expectations for a simple housewife.

Based on historical characters and events, A Sweetness to the Soul recounts the captivating story of young, spirited Oregon pioneer Jane Herbert who at the age of 12 faces a tragedy that begins a life-long search for forgiveness and love. In the years that follow, young Jane finds herself involved in an unusual and touching romance with a dreamer 16 years her senior, struggles to make peace with an emotionally distant mother, and fights to build a family of her own.

No matter the season, the Philadelphia private school where Amanda Pepper teaches English is never a center of tranquility. But with Halloween and the annual Mischief Night party only days away, the hope is that nothing more than old-fashioned vandalism and pranks will take place. No such luck. Trouble erupts long before the witching hour, as the school is plagued by a series of mishaps ranging from the trivial to the potentially deadly - and most of which seem to center on a group of popular seniors.

Reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times and Fox News respectively, Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war. The West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade. At the same time, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This book shows the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world.

Well-known Broadway playwright and TV producer Lyle Zacharias is throwing himself a lavish birthday party in his hometown of Philadelphia. Guests include his current wife, ex-wives, friends, former partners - not to mention Amanda Pepper and her own irrepressible mother, Bea. Yet when Lyle drops dead in the middle of a speech, it appears the likely perpetrator is none other than Bea, whose gift was 50 delicious, but apparently poisoned, tarts!

In the City of Brotherly Love, nobody knows a thing about Emmie Cade, a young widow who “appeared from nowhere,” and in the blink of an eye was engaged to Leo Fairchild, a middle-aged bachelor with a fortune. However, as her marriage date approaches, Emmie’s mother-in-law to be, the ailing, autocratic Claire Fairchild, receives anonymous letters. They suggest, none too subtly, that there’s a great deal to learn about the mysterious young woman, none of it good, and much of it involving the violent deaths of the men in her life.

In Thinking about Leadership, Nannerl Keohane draws on her experience as the first woman president of Duke University and former president of Wellesley College, as well as her expertise as a leading political theorist, to deepen our understanding of what leaders do, how and why they do it, and the pitfalls and challenges they face.

When her husband is offered a post at a small northwestern university, Maye Roberts is only too happy to pack up and leave the relentless Phoenix heat for the lush green quietude of Spaulding, Washington. But when you're a childless 30-something freelance writer who works at home, making new friends can be quite a challenge. Her attempts to do so lead her to enter a kooky beauty pageant - and to uncover a sinister mystery.

Did photography replace an absence in her life or expose the truth of her heart’s emptiness? While growing in confidence as a photographer, 18-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele’s personal life is at a crossroads. Hoping she’s put an unfortunate romantic longing behind her as “water under the bridge”, she exiles herself to Milwaukee to operate photographic studios for those owners who have fallen ill with mercury poisoning. Jessie gains footing in her dream to one day operate her own studio and soon finds herself in other Midwest towns, pursuing her profession.

Book three in the Anthony Award-winning mystery series featuring Amanda Pepper, the resourceful English teacher at Philly Prep. Amanda is sorting books for a school fundraiser, when she comes across a book for battered women that contains a special and frightening message from its original, anonymous owner. Desperate to learn who donated the books, Amanda's search leads her to deliberate brutality and its cold-blooded consequences.