Showing results by narrator "Marguerite Gavin" in All Categories

Evie Rosen has had enough. She's tired of the partners at her law firm emailing her at all hours of the night. The thought of another online date makes her break out in a cold sweat. She's over the clever hashtags and the endless selfies. So when her career hits a surprising roadblock, and her heart is crushed by Facebook, Evie decides that it's time to put down her smartphone for good. (Beats stowing it in her underwear - she's done that, too!) And that's when she discovers a fresh start

Lydia is having a party - it's a party she hosts every year for six women friends who treasure the midwinter bash. Over a table laden with a feast of food and wine, the women revel in sharing newsy updates, simmering secrets, and laughter. As this particular evening unfolds, Lydia prepares to make a shattering announcement. Lydia's announcement shocks them all, they rediscover the enduring bonds of friendship and find their lives changing in unexpected ways.

Our Founding Fathers rejected the notion of royalty and fought against extravagance, pomp, and circumstance. Today in Washington, members of the United States government live like royalty and enjoy lifestyle perks that would make Marie Antoinette envious. This book exposes our government's shocking waste, its corruption, and the serious detachment between our elected officials and reality. It looks at the hidden perks, the freebies, and the ego stroking that define life for a political class that is out of touch and out to lunch.

In a small town in Mississippi, a young, upbeat librarian has been given an ultimatum: increase the library’s circulation dramatically or close its doors. Maura doesn’t just start a book club; she gets involved in unique and unexpected ways with her patrons. She entertains and advises, she has potluck dinners, and life in the town begins to imitate art. The patrons begin to relate their own lives to the work of writers like Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee. In moving and personal ways, Maura helps them deal with such subjects as long-lost love and a brush with death.

The horrific slaughter of a prominent doctor, his wife, and their ten-year-old son inside their Scottsdale home brings US senatorial candidate Juliana Thorsson to private investigator Lena Jones. The slain family's 14-year-old, Alison, and her boyfriend, Kyle, have confessed to the murders. Thorsson wants to hire Lena to discover if Alison is telling the truth, but before accepting the job, Lena demands to know why a rising political star wants to involve herself with the fate of a girl she's never met.

Things are never easy for Scottsdale private eye Lena Jones. Her partner in Desert Investigations, Jimmy Sisiwan, is leaving for a moneyed wife and a job at Southwest Microsystems, and her old captain at the Scottsdale Police Department is off to his home in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, she’s doing security for Warren Quinn, director of a documentary film about the American World War II camp for German POWs at Arizona’s Papago Park, from which some prisoners once escaped.

Savannah Wilde is the first of her sisters to return to Midnight, Alabama when a grueling case leads the young prosecutor to seek shelter in the quiet of the once grand Wilde mansion. But when she finds letters casting doubt on her family's dark, shameful past, she realizes that peace in Midnight is a shallow façade and sinister secrets lurk beneath the surface. Protecting her is Zach Tanner, once the town's bad boy, now the new police chief - and he still has a wild hold over her.

The average attention span of an adult is eight seconds - eight seconds! That is tough news for a presenter. It means you may have a room full of people, but their minds are elsewhere. You're competing with a slew of activities demanding their attention - email, texts, Facebook, YouTube, chats, and apps, in addition to thoughts about their next meetings and projects that are behind schedule. How do you get a message across in a world like that?

Eadie Boone, an artist and former beauty queen, tackles everything with gusto and flair. But tailing her wayward husband is proving to be an exasperating chore. Nita Broadwell, a good Southern girl from a good Southern family, is jolted out of complacency when she discovers condoms in her husband's shirt pocket. Meanwhile, she is slipping into a steamy romance with a hunky handyman 13 years her junior.

In this book, subtitled What We Can Do for America's Beleaguered Moms and Dads, two different parents with different backgrounds of their own, one black, one female, come together to assay what they describe in the prologue as the world's antagonism toward parents and parenting.

Brianna Hai runs an occult shop that sells useless trinkets to tourists - and real magic supplies to witches and warlocks. The magical painting that hangs in Brianna's apartment is the last portal between the fae and human worlds.

Cape Cod summers are supposed to remain reassuringly the same, but everything falls apart when three sisters and their families come together for their annual summer vacation, and they are carrying more secrets than suitcases. Maggie is the oldest sister. She's hurt that her parents' recent divorce has destroyed the family's comfortable summer routines, and her own kids seem to be growing up at high speed. Is it too late to have another baby?

Experts mix science, psychology, personal insight, and passionate stories to unravel the mysteries and secrets of passionate, long-lasting love.

Francesca Amaro moves back to her hometown of Cape Bay, Massachusetts, and takes over the family business, Antonia's Italian Cafe. She spends her days making delicious artisan cappuccinos - until she stumbles upon her neighbor's dead body. When the police discover Mr. Cardosi was poisoned, Francesca becomes a suspect. The victim's son, Matty, happens to be Francesca's old high school friend. Together they uncover the secrets of the locals in order to find the killer in their idyllic beach town.

We follow the Socker family through many adventures, from encountering the slobbery mouth of the family dog to meeting Santa as he comes down the chimney on Christmas Eve to helping a fireman save a baby to the most shy Socker going to the school dance for the first time. Thanks to the time-travel opportunities afforded by the spin cycle of the washer, they learn about some of the most important humans in the world.

Cheap. It's a dirty word laden with negative meanings. It is also the story of Lauren Weber's life. As a child, she resented her father for keeping the heat at 50 degrees through the frigid winters and rarely using his car's turn signals - to keep them from burning out. But as an adult, she found herself walking 30 blocks to save $2 on subway fare. In Cheap We Trust teases out the meanings of cheapness and examines the wisdom and pleasures of not spending every last penny.

In this new novel by the darkly comic author of Three Girls and Their Brother, a woman who inherits an extravagant apartment overlooking Central Park is reduced to squatting to fend off the people who attempt to seize the inheritance themselves.

In Mississippi Noir, literary crime fiction master Tom Franklin has assembled a phenomenal short-story collection that highlights a mesmerizing and diverse set of styles and subject matter. Urban, suburban, and rural settings alike unveil new shades of darkness that fall upon Mississippi's past and present.

Cheryl Beth Wilson, a nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital, finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctor's husband, a surgeon, and now she is a "person of interest" if not an outright suspect. But someone other than the police is also watching Cheryl Beth.

Clara Brodeur has spent her entire adult life pulling herself away from her famous mother, the renowned and controversial photographer Ruth Dunne, whose towering reputation rests on the unsettling nude portraits she took of her young daughter from the ages of three to 14. As Clara charts a path connecting her childhood with her adult life, Shapiro's novel weaves together past and present in images as stark and intense as the photographs that tore the Dunnes apart.