Showing results by narrator "Courtney Patterson" in All Categories

Paris. 1968. A young woman has an affair. The one-night stand may be a failure, but the buttery croissant she eats on a snowy morning-after is not. Even after she marries and has children, time won't stop polishing that simple memory, until it glows in unexpected ways.

Has anyone ever told you that baseball is more than a game, that it's really a metaphor for life? Have you ever wondered what they meant? This story imagines the answer. A single mother moves to Kansas City with her young daughter and notices that everyone she meets - her new colleagues, neighbors, even the mailman - can't stop talking about baseball. "It's more than just a game," they tell the mother. "It's so much more. What you need is to come to a game and experience it."

New Orleans novice detective, Brenda Shapira, investigates murders committed by a vengeful killer, only to discover that the killer has been dead for 100 years.

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert.

These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.

Together as husband and wife, Nick Ward and Lena Grant ran a successful boutique law firm in Minneapolis, vanquishing all their legal foes side by side. When Nick’s charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena, the marriage and the partnership ended. But like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord it seems that Lena and Nick just can’t quite separate. Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick’s not doing so well. Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy....

From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, "multiracial" to "mixedblood," the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery.

In the political aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup, Eugenia Aldunate is imprisoned and tortured. Her lover, Manuel, is savagely killed, one of the countless “disappeared” that would haunt Chile’s collective memory for decades. While still in the torture camp, Eugenia discovers she is pregnant and is exiled to Mexico and then to the United States to raise her daughter alone, forbidden to return. She builds a quiet life for herself, but the scars on her arms do not allow her to bury her past. Nearly twenty years after her exile, Eugenia is called back to Chile to testify in Manuel’s case and help seek justice for the others who disappeared.

Rosalie Whitwell has spent most of her life sailing the globe with her adventurous father, dreaming of the day she can settle in one place long enough to have a home and family of her own. When her father suffers a fatal heart attack in the middle of the North Atlantic, Rosalie turns in her panic to a fellow passenger - the cool, reclusive Lord Deal. For years David Linney, Marquess of Deal, has avoided the society of others. Even so, he's drawn to his lovely shipmate, like him, the victim of family tragedy.

Everyone thought reckless, troubled Geraldine Monroe was the bad sister - especially when she fled town after her mother's death 25 years ago. But people don't know the truth. Marie Monroe knows. She was there for their father's cruel punishments, the constant manipulation, the lies. Everyone thinks she's the perfect daughter - patient and kind, and above all obedient. No one would suspect her of anything. Especially not murder. Now Geraldine's home again, and she and Marie have united in a plan for the ultimate revenge.

When a body washes up outside Deception Cove, Washington, Jess Winslow - once a US Marine, now a trainee sheriff's deputy - is assigned to investigate. But when she realizes it's "Bad" Brock Boyd, a hometown celebrity lately fallen from grace, things become complicated. The last person seen with Boyd was her own boyfriend, Mason Burke. An ex-convict and newcomer in town, Mason is one of the only people who can understand Jess' haunting memories of her time in Afghanistan - and her love for Lucy, her devoted service dog.

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of 12 men. Most accounts of this event have linked Standing's murder to the virulent 19th-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence.

When a small bush plane smashes through the ice at Falls Lake Lodge, it’s a chilling reminder of everything Megan Metzler has lost. Three years ago, Meg’s pilot husband died in a similar crash, a tragedy Meg and her young son, Chip, have struggled to move on from. Still, Meg does everything she can to assist when Commander Bryce Saylor arrives to investigate, even as working alongside the handsome pilot stirs up painful memories - and an attraction that catches them both off guard. But when vital evidence is destroyed, it soon becomes clear this downed plane was no accident.

Forensic psychologist Claire Markwood has experienced her share of disaster. But nothing could prepare her for her sister, Darcy, going missing. Claire rushes to the butterfly sanctuary where Darcy has been working, prepared to do what she does best - work the clues. But her sister, along with her car and some of the sanctuary’s rarest species of butterflies, has seemingly vanished without a trace.

When an old college roommate invites Claire Britten to join her on an archaeological dig at a Florida peat bog, it's an offer the renowned forensic psychologist can't refuse. Claire's husband, criminal lawyer Nick Markwood, is comforted to see Claire working on a prehistoric burial site instead of an open grave for once. But Claire's investigative instincts kick in when some of The Black Bog's perfectly preserved corpses show signs of a grisly fate. What really happened to these people?

The Kaplan family has just won $10 million in the lottery. But haven’t they always been lucky? Gwen thought so. She’s carefully curated a perfect suburban existence with a loving husband and two children. For over a decade, she’s been a stay-at-home mom. As the Kaplans navigate the notoriety that the lottery brings and try to adjust to their new lives in the upper class, a tightly held secret is unlocked, and Gwen's meticulously constructed identity as the good wife and mother begins to crack.

Truth: Sherri Griffin and her daughter, Katie, recently moved to the idyllic beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. They’ve been welcomed by Rebecca Coleman, unofficial former leader of the Newburyport Mom Squad, and her teenage daughter Alexa, Katie’s new babysitter. Truth: Alexa has time on her hands after a falling-out with her friends involving her popular YouTube channel.

Alexis Gold knows how to put the "work" in working mom. It's the "mom" part that she's been struggling with lately. Since opening her own advertising agency three years ago, Alexis has all but given up on finding a good work/life balance. Instead, she's handed over the household reins to her supportive, loving partner, Tommy. While he's quick to say they divide and conquer, Alexis knows that Tommy does most of the heavy lifting - especially when it comes to their teenage daughter, CeCe. Their world changes in an instant when Tommy receives a terminal cancer diagnosis.

When Eliza Poinsett left the elegant world of Charleston for college, she never expected it would take her 10 years to return. Now almost a decade later, she is an art historian in London with a charming Etonian boyfriend who adores her. But the past catches up with her when she runs into Henry, her childhood love, at a wedding in the English countryside.

While it’s widely known in the US that the first president did not have any biological children, few are aware that he had several stepgrandchildren. In First Family, we see Washington as a father figure, as well as meet the children he helped raise and trace their complicated roles in American history. First Family brings new focus and attention to this surprisingly neglected aspect of George Washington’s life and legacy.