Showing results by narrator "Karen Peakes" in All Categories

Every brilliant person comes with problems. Even if that brilliant person is a child. At least, it seems that way for Nathan. All he wanted was a perfect family. Is that too much to ask? But instead of a perfect child, he got Cassie. She's a genius, sure, but she's not what he wanted. He doesn't care that she's a virtuoso on the violin or doing college level work at ten. She doesn't speak. Ever. To anyone. And Nathan knows that that means there's something wrong with her. No matter what his wife says, he has to do something about his daughter.

Why would the normally buttoned-down national security state imagine lurid future scenarios like a zombie apocalypse? In Training for Catastrophe, author Lindsay Thomas shows how our security regime reimagines plausibility to focus on unlikely and even unreal events rather than probable ones. With an in-depth focus on preparedness (a pivotal, emergent national security paradigm since 9/11) she explores how fiction shapes national security.

Putting out fires is what Lieutenant Charlie McMahon does best. The streets of Chicago keep him busy and provide a respite from his family's chaos. But everything changes when his rescue squad is called to a house where female victims are found chained to a wall and burned alive. The terror becomes personal as the women are identified, leaving Charlie to reel over one, haunting question: What have I done?

Irish immigrant Katie O’Connor and her younger sister, Shannon, risk everything to journey to America at the turn of the twentieth century. As each woman passes into an intimidating, stirring, and unpredictable New York City, she is forced to rethink her dream of a better life. It isn’t until Katie begins serving the sick in the depressed slums of the Bowery alongside Dr. Titus Brentwood that she discovers her true calling. Meanwhile, fate directs the vulnerable Shannon down an unsettling path that could put her life at risk.

Caught somewhere between love, hate, and indifference, Emily Bowen’s marriage is hanging on by a thread. After being let go from his job, her husband pulled away from her, and the distance continues to grow during their family’s sabbatical in Switzerland. With their relationship as cold as the wind baying outside, Emily finds unexpected warmth in a man from her past. As she contemplates seizing the connection she’s been craving, Emily must decide if she’s willing to sacrifice the life she’s built for an unseen future.

Boston society darling Gigi Wentworth leaves behind everything she holds dear for the sake of love - only to learn that the man with whom she'd planned to elope is nothing but a thieving scoundrel. Abandoned in New York City and saddled with debt, Gigi must sell a prized family heirloom, but even that sacrifice isn't enough to get her home. Her determination drives her to take on work as a lady's maid, keeping her identity a secret...until she's discovered by a former friend with a hidden agenda.

Laura Reese is losing control. Compassionate and conscientious, she excels as a post-op nurse, but her new supervisor doesn't care how much she needs time off. Although she's a selfless wife and mother, news of her husband's promotion only fills her with anxiety. The country-club lifestyle he craves triggers memories of the dysfunctional family she came from, and of her own mother's single-minded ambition to climb the social ladder.

Listeners will love this selection of three contemporary and three historical romance novellas.

Never was there a more charmed debutante than the impeccable Elizabeth St. James. Her sterling reputation makes her a favored guest in the most exclusive homes in New York City. But behind the gilded curtain of turn-of-the-century society, Elizabeth despises being her mother's perfect "specimen" and refuses to forgive the woman for her treacherous family betrayal. Now, with only two months before Elizabeth sets sail for London to marry a British lord, she resolves to live a lifetime of adventure - including kissing a man under the moon and stars.

At thirty-nine, Leona Accorsi is broke, single, back in school, and living in her sister Carly's basement. She's perfectly content being quirky Auntie Lee to Carly's four children. That is, until Leona's doctor tells her that if she wants to have a child, she'd better do it now. Leona does want a baby. She always has, but the circumstances have never been right. Now she has a huge decision to make: face motherhood on her own or risk missing out on its rewards.

Kat and Scott Hamilton are dealing with the hardest of losses: the death of their only child. While Scott throws himself back into his law practice in Los Angeles, Kat is hesitant to rejoin the workplace and instead spends her days shell-shocked and confused, unable to focus. When an unwelcome face from Kat's past in England emerges - the beautiful and imposing Sarah Cherrington - Kat's marriage is thrown into a tailspin. Now wealthy beyond anything she could have imagined as a girl, Sarah appears to have everything she could need or want.

After losing first her husband, then her daughter, 78-year-old grandmother Ruby wants to teach her risk-averse granddaughter, Tulsa, that some leaps are worth taking, no matter how high the potential fall. Tulsa loves her grandmother dearly, but she has a business to run and no time for romance - not even the paperback version. But when Ruby ropes her into a book club, Tulsa can't bring herself to disappoint the woman who raised her.

Late October, 1962. Wes Avery, a one-time air force tail-gunner, is living his version of the American Dream as loving husband to Sarah, doting father to 17-year-old Charlotte, and owner of a successful Texaco station along central Florida's busiest highway. But after President Kennedy announces that the Soviets have nuclear missiles in Cuba, army convoys clog the highways and the sky fills with fighter planes. Within days, Wes' carefully constructed life begins to unravel.

Twenty-three-year-old Elaine Kelly doesn't earn much as a bank teller, and most of her salary goes toward caring for her terminally ill mother. When a lonely old man who deposits money at her bank every week gets hit and killed by a delivery truck, Elaine - a good Irish girl from Queens - thinks she's found the answer to her problems. She'll just transfer $1 million from the dead man's account into hers.

In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame - beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy.

Samantha Reid, the brilliant Director of the White House Office of Homeland Security, is enjoying a rare evening away from Washington at a Florida charity ball when a bomb sends the well-heeled attendees stampeding into the night. Narrowly escaping the blast, Reid returns to the White House, where she has been trailing the massacres and illicit arms sales of a shadowy group of Russian oligarchs... all of whom want her dead.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives.

Paradise Alden's childhood in Nova Cambridge, Alabama, was idyllic until the night her parents were murdered. Since then life has left her scarred. After fifteen years, returning to her hometown is a last resort to finding her life again. She's hoping the wildlife refuge where she's accepted a veterinarian job will be the perfect place to heal from her recent traumas and unlock her memories about the night her parents died. But on the day she arrives at The Sanctuary, a body is discovered on the grounds.