Showing results by narrator "Cynthia Darlow" in All Categories

It's November, and Miss Julia is looking forward to some quiet time before the holidays. That is until snobby Connie Clayborn and her rich husband move to town. At first Miss Julia and the other ladies are pleased to be invited over for coffee, but the afternoon turns into a slap in the face when their hostess spouts nonstop criticism about Abbotsville. Why, how dare she? Days later Miss Julia decides to confront Connie woman to woman, but when she arrives Connie is lying on the kitchen floor - lifeless in a pool of blood.

Publishers Weekly proclaims "cozy fans and animal lovers will be charmed" by New York Times best-selling author Rita Mae Brown's foxhound series. The shrewd master of the Jefferson Hunt Club, "Sister" Jane Arnold must don her detective cap again as murder most foul creeps across the lush Virginia countryside.

When Quinn Langston’s her best friend unexpectedly passes away, Quinn knows she'll do anything to protect Brooke’s three-year-old daughter, Lily, and her grandmother Margaret. Not only is Quinn the little girl’s godmother, but they are the family she always wished she had. Now she vows to do whatever it takes to help the three of them heal - even if it means letting a complete stranger into their lives - and into their hearts. Margaret is old-fashioned, and she has no compunction about finding a way to reach Lily’s dad, a sperm donor.

Carol Wall, a white woman living in a lily-white neighborhood in Middle America, was at a crossroads in her life. Her children were grown; she had successfully overcome illness; her beloved parents were getting older. One day she notices a dark-skinned African man tending her neighbor's yard. His name is Giles Owita. He bags groceries at the supermarket. He comes from Kenya. And he's very good at gardening. Before long Giles is transforming not only Carol's yard, but her life....

Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health and dementia, as well as some phenomenally lousy business decisions. The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don't just grow, they grow old.

As manager of an elementary school cafeteria, middle-aged Margaret Tuttle is objective and self-contained. She has no interest in emotions or attachments to those around her. But when Birdie Freeman begins to work for Margaret, things begin to change. With her childlike, unselfish, Christian love, Birdie touches everyone she meets. Soon, Margaret's heart opens in spite of her resolve to remain aloof.

In this novel of lifelong reckoning between two women by the award-winning Mary Gordon, we meet Quin Archer, the revenge-loving queen of the reality-TV show Payback. Unbeknownst to her many fans, Quin was once an angry teen named Heidi, whose true story may be known only to Agnes, her art teacher at a private New England girls’ school in the 1970s. Then a young woman herself, Agnes saw a spark of originality in the brooding Heidi. But when she suggested Heidi visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the girl returned with a disastrous account....

Delighted fans eagerly anticipate each new book about Dorothy Jean Wetstra, reigning "oldster" of a little Midwestern town-on-the-square. She is a wonderful blend of feisty determination and strong faith. Now Dorothy is busy asking the man above for lots of help to deal with old family secrets and the mayor's wacky new plans for Partonville.

The February hunt season is in full swing in genteel Virginia when the neighborhood is rocked by murder: the female victim was stripped naked and propped onto a horse statue outside a tack shop.

It all started when Jan Louch, assistant librarian at the Douglas County Public Library in Carson Valley, Nevada, and a coworker acquired two Scottish fold cats to keep mice away from the town's new library. Jan called the cats Baker and Taylor because the names fit the felines' mild temperaments - and because she dealt with the book distribution company on a daily basis.

Nationally renowned inspirational author Lisa Samson writes deeply moving novels of the heart. Songbird is the beautiful tale of a young woman's journey toward healing and fulfillment.

> New York Times best-selling author Sandra Dallas spins a moving, memorable yarn that transports listeners from rural Montana to 1940s Hollywood. Buster Midnight’s Cafe is a compelling story of longtime friends, a shared past, and an act of violence that shatters innocence forever.

Ilda talks to people who aren’t there. Tilly hears fingers clawing at her door. All the while, the moon keeps her watchful eyes on them. Come Find Me is a time-hopping, feminist ghost story spanning two time periods. As it weaves its way through the halls of Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in 1907 and a beach house during the tumultuous summer of 1969, we discover the secret-laden lives of three women and how their worlds intertwine.

Now, in this collection of interconnected short stories, Jennifer Haigh returns to the vividly imagined world of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, a coal mining town rocked by decades of painful transition. From its heyday during two World Wars through its slow decline, Bakerton is a town that refuses to give up gracefully, binding - sometimes cruelly - succeeding generations to the place that made them. A young woman glimpses a world both strange and familiar when she becomes a live-in maid for a Jewish family in New York City. A long-absent brother makes a sudden and tragic homecoming.

Millie Truman has a problem. Make that two problems: her sons Mitchell and Steven. Mitchell, her youngest, can't hold down a relationship, and tells Millie it's her fault because no girl comes close to being the domestic goddess that Millie is. Millie brushes off his comments, but would prefer to not have to clean his apartment every week, or cook his meals. Things get worse when her daughter-in-law Audrey kicks Steven out of their house and their marriage.

Booklist hails the “snappy, smart writing, and memorable characters” in this novel that is steeped in Southern sensibility. The last thing widow Hattie Bohannon expects when she opens a truck stop in Alabama is controversy. But that’s just what she gets when allegations surface that the parking lot is a haven for prostitution. With the local Bible-thumping minister crusading to close the truck stop, Hattie and her unruly daughters must fight to preserve their names and their way of life.

The first three books in award-winning journalist Charlene Ann Baumbich's Dearest Dorothy series won her a congregation of adoring fans for her pleasant tales set amid the good people of Partonville. The fourth entry in the series contains all the hopes, heartache, happiness and inspiration her readers have come to cherish.

The holidays are coming, and a plan to build a mini-mall has some residents in a tizzy. It'll take some shrewd negotiating and a little help from the Big Guy upstairs for Dorothy to set this one right.

The 19th addition of this annual anthology exhibits a collection of short fiction from award-winning Southern authors and rising stars including Edward P. Jones and Silas House. Each story’s derivation is explained in an illuminating note from the author following the rich and entertaining tales.

Sisters Dahlia, Iris, Violet, and Rose - all with grown children of their own - have a complicated relationship, so when their grandmother's will requires them to spend the whole summer - without friends or family - "camping in" at her run-down lodge on re mote Lake Clare in order to inherit the valuable land, old rivalries and new understanding emerge, with plenty of laughs along the way.