Showing results by narrator "Elizabeth Cottle" in All Categories

If your mom is dead, is she still your mom? At 25—nearly two decades after losing her mother to breast cancer as a little girl—an accident on a downtown street unleashes startling emotional reactions in Peg Conway, and this question starts to percolate. She comes to understand what she’s experiencing as long-buried childhood grief, and as she marries and becomes a mother herself, Peg’s intense feelings challenge her to offer herself compassion.

With some thematic overlap with Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm or what Mad Men would have been like if Sally Draper got to tell her side of the story, Little Miseries is set in Iowa and Minnesota in the '60s and '70s, a time and place when parents didn’t talk much to their children but certainly talked around them—while dipping into whiskey or rum punch, whether on a long drive, on the beach, or in the comfort of their own home. Little Miseries is a tribute to what it means to come into awareness, to be a part of a family unit, and to bear responsibility for those you loved.

When her estranged aunt Dahlia dies, single mother Lily Lindgren is surprised to inherit the family home and cranberry farm. Returning to Dune Island for the first time since Dahlia admitted to a terrible betrayal that shattered Lily’s trust in her family, she’s ready to sell up and finally create a stable future for her little boy. But her high-school crush and farm manager Jake Benson is determined to stop Lily’s plan.

Christmas is quickly approaching in Brentfield, and self-proclaimed crazy cat lady Olivia Wright has just opened Poe's Place, the small Vermont town’s first cat-rescue shelter. Olivia receives a request to pick up three stray kittens at an old roadhouse in a rough part of town and is relieved that the kittens are okay, but she's horrified when she discovers a body. When her former contractor is arrested for the murder, Olivia not only jumps in to uncover the truth, she takes in his 18-year-old son, Jack, because she fully believes that no one should be alone during the holidays.

Up-and-coming LA screenwriter Ivy Green is about to have her life turned upside down. Her movie, based on her high-school romance with Nick Shepherd, is being filmed in her hometown.

On the tropical island of Paraiso, Plum Lockhart has a new zest for life. Not only is her new villa rental company growing like a weed, but things are also finally heating up between her and the handsome Director of Security at Las Frutas Resort. Plum's thrilled when she gets an invite to dinner on the yacht of a wealthy music executive, grateful for a luxurious night on the water, surrounded by A-listers. But days later, one of the servers from the yacht—a girl with a dragonfruit tattoo—washes up dead, and Plum's sweet bit of paradise quickly goes rotten.