Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Woodward" in All Categories

A young woman struggles to finish her PhD on stars and galaxies. Instead, she obsessively tracks the experience of her own body, listening to its functions and rhythms, finally locating in its patterns the beginning of illness and instability. As she discovers the precarity of her self, she begins to turn her attention to the distant orbits of her family members, each moving away from the familial system and each so different in their experiences, but somehow made similar in their shared history of illness and trauma, both political and personal.

Annie Shepherd is represented by the biggest entertainment agency in the world. Annie Shepherd has the perfect literary life. But Annie Shepherd has a secret. A huge secret she's tried to hide her entire career, which is bought to the surface when her National Book Award-winning boyfriend (and Annie’s former professor) suddenly dies.

Renee may be thrilled to be planning her sister’s wedding, but after witnessing her mother’s two failed marriages, she has always vowed that she is better off on her own. But when Renee discovers that Luc Hardy has moved next door, her world is knocked off kilter. Luc was her whirlwind summer romance as a teen and, more importantly, her first love. Now he’s back in West Cove, looking more handsome than ever.

Karen Rainey lives a sheltered life on the edge of the city. For the last five years, she has rarely left the home unless it was unavoidable. She has her food and anything else she needs delivered to the front door. She works from home to avoid venturing outside. But Karen isn’t agoraphobic. She’s terrified of her ex-boyfriend, Zach, who is serving a life sentence in prison for a string of bank robberies after Karen testified against him. With the constant threat that Zach might send someone to find and kill her, Karen keeps a low profile.

When four patients unexpectedly wake after being declared dead, their families are ecstatic and the word “miracle” begins to be whispered throughout the hospital. But the jubilation is short lived when the patients don’t respond to their names and insist they are different people. It is suggested all four are suffering from fugue states until one of the doctors recognizes a name and verifies that he not only knew the girl but was there when she died in 1992.

When her husband of 25 years suddenly announces he's leaving her, writer Mary Jane Grant runs away to London to immerse herself in any reality but her own. Reeling from the shock and loss of her marriage and the life she's known, she begins to discover that if she can just focus on the moment she's in, take notice of the people, the sights and smells around her, that her pain and grief start to recede.

There’s something in Jack’s past she doesn’t want to face, an evil presence that forever changed the trajectory of her family. It all began when the Toy Thief appeared, a being drawn by goodness and innocence, eager to feed on everything Jack holds dear. What began as a mystery spirals out of control when her brother, Andy, is taken away in the night, and Jack must venture into the dark place where the toys go to get him back. But even if she finds him, will he ever be the same?

On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother's home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. 'Home' is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana's mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature's most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the Lost Generation.

Lois and Carly-May are just 12 years old when they're abducted, driven across the country, and imprisoned in a remote, isolated hunting lodge for two months. That summer, under the watchful gaze of their kidnapper, they form a bond which will never be broken.... Decades later both Lois and Carly-May have built new lives and identities for themselves.

A family watches, horrified, as their patriarch transforms into the wise-cracking lead of an old-timey minstrel show. An art collector gleefully destroys his most valuable pieces. A young artist devotes himself to a wealthy, malicious gossip, knowing that it's just a matter of time before she turns on him. In this new collection of short stories, Paul Theroux explores the tenuous leadership of the elite and the surprising revenge of the overlooked.

Doctor Esme Charbonneau Tallich's passion is cosmology, the science of the origin of the universe; specifically, she is searching for a TOE, or a Theory of Everything. Esme is a feminist maverick, a rogue thinker. Hired as a professor of molecular biology at the University of Greater California, she prefers the "bench science" of organic chemistry at one extreme and "walking out into space" at the other. Her marriage to a TV director and aspiring stand-up comedian is rocky.

It started with a child's letter. Psychologist Karen Wiley thought she understood moral dilemma. Now, somewhere out there, an anonymous child has begun to cry for her help. The letters keep coming...and then something far, far worse. Until the terror in the Trueblood trailer, police chief Ella McCullers believed she knew crises of faith.

Touchy Subjects is about things that make people wince: taboos, controversies, secrets, and lies. Some of the events that characters crash into are grand, tragic ones: miscarriage, overdose, missing persons. Other topics, like religion and money, are not inherently taboo, but they can cause acute discomfort because people disagree so vehemently. These stories are about the spectrum of feeling that runs from awkwardness through embarrassment to shame.

Pure Princess or a Right Royal Scandal? “Carlita Santaro, youngest of the royal Uccelli family, has escaped the palace and come to our very own small town! Tune in tomorrow for an intimate portrait of the mysterious Carlita - she’s stunning, but is she a real blue blood, or just a bad liar? Find out as top reporter Daniel Reynolds (who seems to have a sweet spot for our Princess) puts Carlita through a gruelling ‘Princess Test’. We’re sure viewers will join us in asking - will the real Princess please stand up?”

For tough tycoon Rick, settling down’s certainly not on the agenda! Chatty assistant Savannah seems doomed to clash with him, but over long working days she grows close to her dour but dishy boss. Rick’s starting to suspect Savannah’s the most precious jewel in the company. Then an unexpected baby bump throws everything off course!

New start, new love. That's what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters- so she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England. Honor's hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious man. Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life.

A skeletal hand clutching an iron key lies hidden within a mermaid's wooden sarcophagus; a hand-drawn map is stolen from beneath the floorboards an old museum. All while an eccentric inventor - the Sleeper - dreams of a passage to the centre of the hollow earth. And by dreaming, brings the passage into being....

Where did Brandon Duke’s secretary go? Because this sultry woman is not the Kelly Meredith who left on vacation! She says this makeover is part of a plan…to become more seductive. And Brandon is just the man to give her a few lessons in love, savour every moment, and then say goodbye - as long as he can remember just who is seducing whom!

When the Bergamots move to a well-to-do neighbourhood, they're unsure how well they'll adapt. Soon though, Richard is consumed by his new role and Liz is hectically playing mother to 4-year-old Coco and 15 year-old Jake. But the day Jake unthinkingly forwards his friends a sexually-explicit email from a young girl is the last day of the Bergamots' comfortable existence. Faced with impossible choices, what Richard and Liz do next risks destroying not only their marriage, their daughter, and their place in the community, but also Jake - the child they have set out to protect.

Abby Jones, a young nanny from a small town outside Boston, is the last person with infant Jacob Rotterdam when he becomes seriously ill. Within hours, tragically, he dies, and Abby is charged with his murder. Heather Baxter, her defense attorney, knows the case is not as clear cut as the Assistant District Attorney claims, and with enormous media attention on the trial, the stakes couldn't be higher.