Showing results by narrator "Kimberly Austin" in All Categories

Bette Gartner, a ninety-five-year-old widow, wakes up one morning and decides to throw a dinner party that night for her small family, staff, two neighbors, and a medium—and no one knows why. The story takes place over the course of the day and is told through the multiple points of view of Bette’s guests, switching back and forth between them as we learn about their motivations, dreams, hopes, and fears.

Marta is on the verge of a new life. Hard earned success waits just around the next corner. But only if she’s brave enough to keep walking toward it. Winning the Milton Cesar Foundation for the Arts Award will launch her career. With the spotlight turned her way, she’ll have to face a messy past and dream of a brighter future. Carol is burdened with the desire to fix what’s broken. To make room for more people in the elite foundation she currently runs. But change is hard and the people around her don’t share her vision. Selecting Marta as the award recipient was a bold step.

There is a vast difference between having it all and being fulfilled. In the eyes of most onlookers, Carol Burgess couldn’t ask for a more gratifying life. She’d climbed the corporate ladder and taken her swipes at the glass ceiling, leaving a few cracks along the way. When she’s finally the one in charge, she discovers change is still taboo in the elite literary industry. Faced with the choice of keeping the status quo or starting a revolution of ideas, Carol seeks out a fresh and undiscovered voice in the writing world.

Ian Chambers is a rule bending, teasing, accidentally make-you-fall-for-him kind of man. And I want nothing to do with it, thank you very much. Our company’s in-house lawyer has been my human resources nightmare for nine years. When he quit eight months ago, I thought I was finally rid of him. But when I'm invited to a destination wedding as a bridesmaid and he's the best man in every sense of the word, it's not as easy to pretend he doesn't exist. And this week, he's dead-set on getting my attention.

Art buyer Charlotte Moore is given the chance of a lifetime to be head buyer for the esteemed Wallace Gallery’s Christmas charity gala. To her dismay, she arrives late to the auction, after the most prominent pieces are all bought up. She impulsively bids on the final painting in a panic—an unsigned landscape she’s nearly sure her boss will despise. To save her job, she travels to the beautifully festive New England coastal town of Seabreeze, the setting of the painting, in an attempt to learn the name of the artist.

After losing her beloved family’s Cape Cod inn right after culinary school, chef Lana Kelly converts her late father’s old fish market next door into a successful restaurant. However, over the years, she’s kept her eye on the inn with dreams to expand. She also hopes she can acquire the property for her grandad, so he’ll know it’s back in the family before his dementia causes the memory to vanish for good. When the inn goes up for sale, she rushes to put in an offer, only to have it denied immediately.

Each of the ten stories in Have Mercy on Us is an illuminating window into a human life. In the way of all the best fiction, these stories enlarge our understanding of what it means to be alive, with characters who leap out of the book. In this award-winning collection, the people are varied in age, race, and origin. Spare, romantic without being sentimental, these powerful stories are, above all, about love, and the impossible and remarkable ways we yearn for connection. Cupolo’s writing is rich with vision, insight and grace—cause for celebration.