Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

A once vibrant oak tree in her yard began dying, voicing cries of help through its dead leaves and moss-covered branches. Inside the house Barbara too was in crisis, the recipient of her husband's anger and rage. As time passes Barbara can no longer stay strong. While she deals with her own demons, the oak too weakens. Based on a true story, this woman takes us inside her emotionally charged existence, letting us feel the anguish of domestic abuse, divorce, attempted suicides, and incarceration in a mental institution.

Twelve-year-old Sara and her brother, Hawk, are told that they are not to bother the man - The Mister - who just moved into the silo apartment on their farm. It doesn’t matter that they know nothing about him and they think they ought to know something. It doesn’t matter that he’s always riding that unicycle around. Mama told them no way, no how are they to bother The Mister unless they want to be in a mess of trouble.

What We Take for Truth is the story of a young woman who finds her strength when the world around her crumbles. It is a timely tale about shifting loyalties and the painful choices we are forced to make in order to preserve what we value most. What We Take for Truth tells a story that both defends a way of life that is dying and celebrates a landscape that is being lost.

Eleven years ago, Hannah Hawkins’ parents disappeared while traveling abroad. Presumed dead, Hannah and her uncle are shocked when a letter from her mom arrives right after Hannah’s 16th birthday. By piecing together cryptic hints from the note and other clues left behind, Hannah realizes her parents disappeared while trying to find the mysterious Code of Enoch, an artifact they believed could hold the key to curing disease - or creating it. Hannah’s parents had been determined to destroy the code, no matter the cost.

A treacherous storm, a flat tire, and a touch of serendipity causes Tessa Sullivan and her husband, Jack, to stumble upon the narrow strait that leads into Hamlet. It was supposed to be a one night stop until the rain let up and Jack could figure out how to fix the tire - until Tess lands herself in the local jail cell overnight and Jack is found dead in their hotel room the next morning. There's no doubt it was murder, but with Sullivan’s gentle wife having an airtight alibi, the sheriff has to wonder: Who had any cause to kill the outsider? And is he the only victim?

Lawyer turned stay-at-home-mom Sarah Shaw is struggling to be present for her two young sons and law professor husband, three years after the death of their infant daughter. Then one day, walking in L.A., Sarah’s heart catches at the sight of a young homeless mother and toddler, and saving them becomes her secret, obsessive mission. When tragedy threatens them, Sarah discovers she is capable of deceptions and transgressions she never imagined. Her lies unleash a downward spiral that will threaten her marriage, family, and her sanity.

Mona’s demanding mother ruled their home until a car crash took her life and changed their family forever. Left to tend to a distant father and a needy younger brother, Mona finds her new role almost too much to bear. And when a new stepmother, troubled and depressed, adds yet another crack to the family portrait, Mona’s forced to shoulder an even greater share of the emotional burden.

In the wake of a devastating plague, two communities emerge as bastions of survival. One is called the City, and its people scrabble for scraps in the wasteland. The other, New Charity, enjoys the bounty of its hydroelectric dam and refuses City denizens so much as a drop of precious water. When City-dweller Cressyda inherits her father's ranch within New Charity, she becomes intent on opening the dam to all - no matter the cost.

My lips are white. Sixteen-year-old Sep stares into the bathroom mirror. It’s not some weird lipstick (she never wears lipstick). Her lips are just - white. In a panic, she digs up an old lipstick and smears it on her colorless lips. But soon, more and more white spots begin to bloom, spreading their chalky tendrils across her olive brown skin. Does she have a disease? Is she turning into some kind of freak?

For Kate Sommers, there's nothing that compares to summer at her family's beach house on Cape Cod: the ocean breezes, the clam bakes, the boys. She and her three sisters seemed to have all their "firsts" over those long months - first job, first party, first crush. Kate's first crush is her only crush - Ryan Landry, the boy next door, and her older sister Eliza's on-again, off-again summer fling.

Sadie Windas has always been the responsible one - she’s the star player on her AAU basketball team, gets good grades, dates a cute soccer player, and helps out at home. Not like her older sister, Carla, who hangs out with druggies and leaves her three-year-old daughter, Lulu, with Aunt Sadie while she parties and gets high. But when Sadie and Carla are caught up in a drug deal - wrong place, wrong time - it falls to Sadie to clean up the mess, confessing to a crime she didn’t commit to keep Carla out of jail and Lulu out of foster care. She’s supposed to get off with a slap on the wrist. Instead, she’s sentenced to six months in juvie.

By all accounts, Abby Holden has it all. She's the mother of a beautiful teenager and the wife of a beloved high school football coach. And all it took to achieve her charmed life was her greatest act of betrayal. Coach Ryan can coax his team to victory, but he can't seem to make his wife, Abby, happy. Her struggles with depression have marred their marriage and taken a toll on their daughter, Juliana. Although this isn't the life he's dreamed of, he's determined to heal the rifts in his family.

Everybody likes Chris Goodman. Sure, he's a little odd. He wears those funny bell-bottoms and he really likes the word ennui and he shakes your hand when he meets you, but he's also the kind of guy who's always up for a good time, always happy to lend a hand. Everybody likes Chris Goodman, which makes it especially shocking when he's murdered.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves - which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.)

Siblings Perry, Jake, and Phoebe Goodwin were raised on the shore of a beautiful Connecticut lake in a close-knit family. The eldest of the family, forty-two-year-old Perry has long craved order as surely as his charismatic younger brother, Jake, has avoided it. Phoebe, their baby sister, courts both. As adults, the Goodwin siblings could not be more different.

Susan Hayes moved to Georgia to start the life she wanted to live and build her catering career. On the brink of having everything she ever wanted, Eric Walker and his family happened into her life. Eric Walker’s life had been quiet, structured, and boring until his uncle gambled away the family’s property and jeopardized Eric’s livelihood. Now midst family secrets learned, someone ruining his business and trying to drive him off his land, he fell in love. Things will never be the same for them - especially if someone succeeds in destroying the Walker family and killing Eric.

Fourteen-year-old Julia is back at Lake Bradford for a very different reason than last time. Two years ago, she and her cousin Lizzie got to experience Camp Auctus, a leadership camp for gifted girls rooted in tradition, a place where even their mothers and grandmothers attended as girls. Campfires, fireflies, talent shows, races by the lake, friendships, and a mysterious Writer's Hut nestled in the woods were just a few of the things that made Camp Auctus special.

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island's original eight settlers to burn "the witch" out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward 100-some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life.

Aja and her SHIELD colleagues successfully rescued 50 trafficked children in their last mission. But it was not without significant losses or loose ends. So, while Cybersecurity Specialists try to restore SHIELD’s hacked network, Aja and Marsha take some well-deserved time off to recover and recharge. Unfortunately, criminals who prey on children never take a vacation, and while on hiatus, they inadvertently discover a new threat in a most unusual setting.

"It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born . . . that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile, and reconnection. Her grandmother's stories recalled one true home: the family farm left behind in Latvia, where, during WWII, her grandmother Livija and her grandmother's sister, Ausma, were separated. They would not see each other again for more than fifty years.