Showing results by narrator "Courtney Patterson"

These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.

Rodeo king Tanner Callen doesn't want to be tied down. When he sees Madeline Harper at a local honky-tonk and everything about her screams New York, he brings out every trick in his playbook to take her home. But soon he learns that he doesn't just want her for a night and instead hopes for forever....

Has anyone ever told you that baseball is more than a game, that it's really a metaphor for life? Have you ever wondered what they meant? This story imagines the answer. A single mother moves to Kansas City with her young daughter and notices that everyone she meets - her new colleagues, neighbors, even the mailman - can't stop talking about baseball. "It's more than just a game," they tell the mother. "It's so much more. What you need is to come to a game and experience it."

Best friends Francie and June thought attending a three-day acting seminar at Devil's Island Luxury Resort and Amusement Park would provide the perfect opportunity to indulge in some relaxation and entertaining girl time, but stumbling over a dead body throws a wrench into their holiday agenda. Glamorous women, gorgeous men, and unlimited access to free food, drinks, and the resort's world-renowned spa do little to distract the unwitting sleuths from their mission to uncover a murderer.

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor getting over a breakup with the help of a patient, a newly married gay man who reconnects with his estranged mother, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert.

In the political aftermath of the 1973 Chilean coup, Eugenia Aldunate is imprisoned and tortured. Her lover, Manuel, is savagely killed, one of the countless “disappeared” that would haunt Chile’s collective memory for decades. While still in the torture camp, Eugenia discovers she is pregnant and is exiled to Mexico and then to the United States to raise her daughter alone, forbidden to return. She builds a quiet life for herself, but the scars on her arms do not allow her to bury her past. Nearly twenty years after her exile, Eugenia is called back to Chile to testify in Manuel’s case and help seek justice for the others who disappeared.

Together as husband and wife, Nick Ward and Lena Grant ran a successful boutique law firm in Minneapolis, vanquishing all their legal foes side by side. When Nick’s charmingly erratic behavior finally became too much for Lena, the marriage and the partnership ended. But like C. K. Dexter Haven and Tracy Lord it seems that Lena and Nick just can’t quite separate. Lena works out fiercely, keeps her dates with the boring and conventional Preston Winter, and daily battles on against corporate greed. But Nick’s not doing so well. Still brilliant and devilishly clever, he is now also almost crazy....

When orca researcher Don Jacobs arrives on Blackfish Island after a 15-year absence, he has a hidden agenda. At 16, Tracy Maxwell was lovely, but he was 10 years older and her father’s colleague, so she was off-limits. Now that she’s 30, she utterly bewitches Don. It took all his willpower to resist her before. Now Tracy seems ripe for passion. But is she ready for love? Tracy can’t believe the man she just spied at the helm of the boat is the blond Adonis who once left her weak-kneed with desire. Once upon a time, she tried to seduce Don, but he rejected her and left the island. This could be her chance....

New Orleans novice detective, Brenda Shapira, investigates murders committed by a vengeful killer, only to discover that the killer has been dead for 100 years.

Rosalie Whitwell has spent most of her life sailing the globe with her adventurous father, dreaming of the day she can settle in one place long enough to have a home and family of her own. When her father suffers a fatal heart attack in the middle of the North Atlantic, Rosalie turns in her panic to a fellow passenger - the cool, reclusive Lord Deal. For years David Linney, Marquess of Deal, has avoided the society of others. Even so, he's drawn to his lovely shipmate, like him, the victim of family tragedy.

Gwen, the straight-talking narrator of this poignant tale, has always kept herself moving from one place to the next. But when she meets Danny, a Blackfoot Indian, she glimpses what it might be like to feel grounded. Drawn to an increasingly longer stay in East Fork, Montana, amidst the trailer parks, stray dogs, and mountains, Gwen allows herself to hope. This story, about loss and something like love, is a skillful study of people and place.

From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, "multiracial" to "mixedblood," the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery.

Paris. 1968. A young woman has an affair. The one-night stand may be a failure, but the buttery croissant she eats on a snowy morning-after is not. Even after she marries and has children, time won't stop polishing that simple memory, until it glows in unexpected ways.

Dixon Sinclair arrives in Jexville, Mississippi, the town of her forebears, to find solace, stop drinking, and rebuild her life after her father’s murder. As the new publisher of the weekly newspaper and a second-generation journalist, she’s determined to ignite the political will of the townspeople and expose the corruption of the old guard. She forms an uneasy partnership with Sheriff J.D. Horton, another prodigal son returned hoping to find peace and a sense of fulfillment by keeping his town safe.

In a rut? Follow Addie Sewell's plan! 1. Refuse to be the Scary Cat Lady. Don't buy a cat. 2. Step out of your comfort zone. 3. Use a friend's wedding to start your New Spontaneous Life. 4. Prepare to seduce The One Who Got Away (TOWGA). 5. Avoid Derek Bates. Sure, he's hot... but he's not why you're here! 6. Seriously. Stop looking at Derek like he's sex-on-a-stick. 7. Seduce TOWGA by slipping into his bed naked. (You can do it!) 8. Don't panic - you accidentally ended up in Derek's bed instead....

Christabel Woodward is the darling of her prosperous, mill-owning father until one day he has a sudden and bewildering change of heart. He has read her mother's story, written in three exercise books and usually kept well hidden, and he knows her secret: Christabel is not his own child, but the illegitimate daughter of Branwell Brontë. Branwell died at 31, an obsessive and tormented wreck of a man who was ruined by drinking, drug addiction, and bouts of depression. All Christabel's mother has left of her secret love are a lock of auburn hair and Branwell's daughter, whom he has never known.

Madison's newest client at In a Pinch Temp Service is a suspicious wife, up against a formidable foe - the lovely Caress Ellingsworth, former soap opera queen. When the star is murdered and Madison is eyewitness to the deed, she wonders if the shadowed person she saw commit the crime might really be her client. Now Madison is torn between uncovering the truth and keeping her client's name off the suspect list. Caress is not the only star in town these days. With a little help from Granny Bert and Madison's best friend Genesis, the popular television show Home Again arrives.

Jenna, a single mom and successful author, has five weeks to deliver her next young adult novel to the publisher. This year’s summer getaway with her kids will be a working vacation. The only problem? Lucas, the devil-may-care surfer in the beach rental next to hers. He cranks up his music at night, hosts loud volleyball matches, and allows his dog to run around at will. Jenna often blames him for her writer’s block. But before long, she begins to see a new side of her neighbor at the shore.

When Madison Reynolds finds herself widowed and penniless before 40, she does the only thing she knows to do - she packs up her teenage twins and moves back home with her 80-year-old grandmother. To make ends meet, Madison opens In a Pinch Temporary Services. Her first real client is Ronny Gleason, but when she shows up for the first day of work at the Gleason Poultry Farm, Madison makes a gruesome discovery. The dead body she finds belongs to Mr. Gleason. When a local man is arrested for murder, Madison takes on the job of proving his innocence.

Forensic psychologist Claire Markwood has experienced her share of disaster. But nothing could prepare her for her sister, Darcy, going missing. Claire rushes to the butterfly sanctuary where Darcy has been working, prepared to do what she does best - work the clues. But her sister, along with her car and some of the sanctuary’s rarest species of butterflies, has seemingly vanished without a trace.