Showing results by narrator "Cris Dukehart" in All Categories

When five-week-old Prudence, a brown tabby, meets a woman named Sarah in a deserted construction site on Manhattan's Lower East Side, she knows she's found the human she was meant to adopt. For three years their lives are filled with laughter, tuna, catnaps, music, and the unchanging routines Prudence craves. Then one day Sarah doesn't come home. From Prudence's perch on the windowsill she sees Laura, the daughter who hardly ever comes to visit Sarah, arrive with her new husband. They're carrying boxes.

You don't mess with Atlanta Burns. Everyone knows that. And that's kinda how she likes it - until the day Atlanta is drawn into a battle against two groups of bullies and saves a pair of new, unexpected friends. But actions have consequences, and when another teen turns up dead - by an apparent suicide - Atlanta knows foul play is involved. And worse: She knows it's her fault. You go poking rattlesnakes, maybe you get bit.

Raised by her older sister in the small town of Blueberry Springs, all Beth Wilkinson wants is to create a family so big she’ll never be alone. Things are going great until her fiancé, Oz, rethinks everything from his own career to their nuptial plans—forcing Beth to do the same. As Beth works to rediscover herself in hopes of reattracting Oz, she catches the eye of the charming new city doctor, Nash. Not only does he see her as she’d like to be seen, but he knows exactly what he wants from life—and that includes Beth.

Things aren't going well for private investigator and mom Margie Peterson. Her husband, Blake, is claiming his taste for drag queens is "just a phase." Her first-grade daughter isn't fitting in at her new posh elementary school, Holy Oaks Catholic School. And her hippie mother has swept into town and replaced the family's store of processed foods with seaweed snacks. To top it all off, a late-night phone call from her boss, Peaches Barlowe, has pulled Margie into a very strange murder case, one that involves the Holy Oaks headmaster, George Cavendish.

Midnight Louie goes along when PR whiz Temple Barr and her fiancé, rising media star Matt Devine, head to Chicago so she can meet his family. Matt's mother has a tragic past primed to rise and bite anybody in reach. When Louie is snatched, the catnapping's surprising motive loops back to Vegas and a string of unsolved murders connected to magic...and ex-magician Max Kinsella, Temple's former significant other. A skeptical homicide lieutenant has commissioned Max to investigate the cold case murder she suspects he committed. With amnesia from a recent attempt on his life, Max is more sitting duck than predator.

In a city built on dreams, Trisha Holiday makes her living moving like one. But out of her dancer's costume, she's as down-to-earth as they come. That's why she ignores the admiring note - and the accompanying $1,000 bill - that arrives backstage after one of her ethereal performances. Yet the sender, a wealthy foreign prince, isn't easily dissuaded. Seven years living and studying in the United States have made Malik long for the freedom to choose his own bride - and the woman he wants is Trisha.

Ella Dennings is furious. Soaking wet, muddy, and furious. All she wants is to enjoy a quiet summer retreat in her Red River cabin. Maybe she can finish healing after the death of her husband, Bradley. Maybe she can even start writing that third book in her top secret bestselling erotica series. But when she arrives at the cabin in a raging June rainstorm, who does she find holed up there but Cooper Wells, Bradley's sexy best friend - a man capable of seducing women of all ages and cup sizes within seconds - and a man Ella has never liked.

Private investigator/single mom Margie Peterson barely has time for breakfast, let alone to hit the gym. But when Austin Heights PTA president Pansy Parker hires her to find out who's been embezzling PTA funds, that's exactly where Margie ends up...finding Pansy dangling upside down from a Nautilus machine. But the PTA president's not alone: the dead body of a personal trainer is there, too. And now she's facing murder charges.

Alisanos, the deepwood, is more than just a forest...it is sentient, and predatory. Home to demons and worse, its mercurial boundaries can suddenly shift miles in any direction to encompass previously safe human lands - and those taken by the deepwood are forever changed. Audrun, a human woman trapped within the forest, is reunited with her four children, only to learn that each has been marked by the deepwood’s wild magic. And her newly born fifth child, captured by a winged demon, is still missing.

A big event has Isabella ready to leave home at the crack of dawn. But that's a motion her parents aren't likely to pass. After a two-to-one vote, it's decided that some things need to happen before Isabella can leave the house - like eating breakfast and brushing her teeth! If her house is going to work like a democracy, Isabella knows what she has to do; call an assembly and campaign her way out the door!

Tres Amigas Café chef Rita Lafitte is busy baking her green chili soufflés and chocolate flans for Cinco de Mayo. If only her friend, Linda, the daughter of Rita's octogenarian boss, Flori, could get into the festive spirit. Linda's cart, Tía Tamales, is losing business to Crepe Empire, the hottest food cart in Santa Fe. Napoleon, Crepe Empire's owner, is a pompous celebrity chef who wants to squeeze out the competition.

Miranda Cruz isn't just the best darned waitress in town anymore; she's Red River's newest innkeeper. But first, she has to find the contractor who's disappeared with her life savings so she can start renovations. Not so easy for a woman who never depends on anyone, especially a man. And when a gorgeous old flame shows up, the fire between them is reignited and threatens to send her dreams up in smoke.

The unspooling of Toni Lee Wells' Tiffany and Wild Turkey lifestyle begins with a trip to the Luckett County Jail drunk tank. An earlier wrist injury sidelined her pro tennis career, and now she's trading her tennis whites for wild nights roaming the streets of Rose Hill, Georgia. Her wealthy family finally gets fed up with Toni Lee's shenanigans. They cut off her monthly allowance but also make her a sweetheart deal: Get a job, keep it for a year, and you'll receive an early inheritance.

It's Atlanta's senior year of high school, and she is officially infamous. Not only has she saved herself from a predator, brought down an untouchable dogfighting ring, and battled a pack of high school bullies, but she's also proclaimed to the Internet her willingness to fight for anyone who needs help. And Atlanta can't believe what's coming out of the woodwork. From an old friend to a troop of troubled girls with connections to a local fracking company, there's definitely fire in the water.

There's nothing that Angelique Barbetta can't handle, no illness she can't recover from, not one item on her outrageous bucket list that she can't conquer - not even alligator wrestling! But after discovering her fiancé in a less-than-professional position with their perky assistant, even tough-as-nails Angelique needs a break. Her law firm sends her to Red River to work on a case that should be a piece of cake. Until she meets her sexy neighbor, Blake Holloway...one of the proprietors who will lose everything if Angelique wins.

In Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit, feline PI Midnight Louie's roommate, powerhouse PR freelancer Temple Barr, discovers a strip club opening in a nearby empty building threatens her elderly landlady's wedding chapel business. Electra Lark's troubles go supernova with a murder charge for a death that echoes a bizarre slaying decades earlier.

After nearly a year and a half of grieving the loss of her husband, 27-year-old Alexa Sullivan Tate is headed back to her hometown after a decade of being away. She has no idea her high school crush, Jace McAllister, the guy who stole her heart the same night that he broke it, is more than ready to pick up the pieces.

Audrun, Davyn, and their four children have fled their war-scourged homeland, joining a karavan headed toward a haven of peace where diviners have said their fifth child - the one Audrun now carries - must be born. But now, desperate to reach safety before the child comes, they have chosen to break off from the karavan and take a dangerous route too near the sentient hell called Alisanos.

The interwoven tales of three women unfold in the voices of Sarah, Miriam, and Beth, whose unshakable friendship takes root in a Buffalo college dorm in the late 1960s. Fueled by the optimism and bravado of that era, they charge into adulthood with high expectations and lofty ideas. They were, as Beth would later observe, the first generation of women to feel entitled to interesting lives. At times, they find themselves living long distances from each other as each of them seeks new directions and new locales. Nonetheless, they remain deeply connected in the decades after college.

Spirited Ember Burns is led back home to open her own veterinary practice, and her first client lands her in the middle of a murder mystery. When the evidence points to the horse as the cause of death, she vows to protect him. But horses don't talk and neither do the dead, so Ember has to rely on her intelligence and instinct to get to the truth. A truth buried under layers of small-town secrets. Some that are big enough to get you killed.