Showing results by narrator "Judith West" in All Categories

When Cat arrives in Portugal, she discovers that her friend Tónio has installed his ex-lover, Mateus, in the apartment, where he too is dying - of AIDS. As Cat struggles to untangle a complicated web of present desires and past secrets, she makes a series of shocking discoveries.

Disturbed when five books about death are returned overdue to the library, slashed and containing a warning on a bookmark, library employee Kathleen is terrified when people close to her start falling victim to tragic "accidents".

Five Lessons I Didn't Learn From Breast Cancer is Shelley Lewis' thoroughly modern, slightly contrarian take on "doing" breast cancer in an epiphany-free zone, where the goal is simply to get through it and get the hell back to your life. She proves chemotherapy can eradicate everything except a sense of humor.

Almost everyone prays: believers, unbelievers, wannabe believers, and might-have-been believers. It assures us all in our many parts and many moods that everything is going to be okay, despite any evidence to the contrary. When people say, “I don’t know how to pray,” what they often mean is “I don’t believe.” Or perhaps they are struggling with disappointment or anger with God and have taken a break from their prayer life.

Erica Tate wouldn't mind getting up in the morning if she enjoyed her children more. Until puberty struck, Jeffrey and Matilda were absolute darlings, but in the last year, they have become sullen, insufferable little monsters. Erica's husband, Brian, is so deeply immersed in university life--and the legs of a half-literate flower child named Wendy--that he either doesn't notice his wife's misery or simply doesn't care. Worst of all their pleasant little neighborhood is transforming into a subdivision.

Eileen Connor hopes that a demanding bilingual job at an ad agency in Geneva will help her forget the man who broke her heart in New York. Instead, she falls in love with architect Matt Edwards - all too likely to be another disastrous choice.

The Capulets and the Montagues had nothing on the Ryders and the Morgans! But despite the fact that each one was from one of the rival ranching families, Jenny Ryder and Win Morgan had a passionate summer affair four years ago - one that resulted in pregnancy. They got married and promptly lost the baby. Heartbroken, Jenny let herself be talked into divorcing Win…without ever having revealed the marriage to her family - or his. Now Jenny's back, and one impulsive night means that Jenny and Win are about to be parents again! This time, they have to fess up.

When their vehicle is hit by a truck, that did not have its lights on, Gayle and Stephanie seek refuge at the deserted farmhouse of Gayle's Aunt Pat. They soon become suspicious after a series of strange events...

Hearing an old lover’s song on the radio while she’s taking her daughter to kindergarten carries the narrator back to her complicated affair with the singer, and to a meditation on what is, what was, and what might have been.

Beginning with "Why Women Fight Pirates," Walley writes, "A real woman will not be content with one man. With one man, she will rage, eat into herself and him. She will jump off the pirate ship onto a ship that is gracefully billowing with sails of humanity and the caring of, a ship full of love, of fools. She will not stay isolated in one man's private war with his maleness."

This lyrical narrative brings the listener into the mind of an unforgettable character and into a corner of rural Washington State at a time when its residents are trying to secede from the country. It's a fascinating, little-known slice of history woven seamlessly with the everyday eeriness of an isolated family farm.

Janet works as a telephone operator in 1950s Richmond, Va. When she patches through a call for help from a child reporting an intruder at an isolated farm, she realizes she knows the family. Enlisting the help of the man she desires, she makes an emergency trip to help someone in danger - or is it, really, to help herself?

The American women’s movement has been shrouded in myths, argue three leading scholars in this bold and revisionist history. Eschewing the conventional wisdom that places the origins of the American women’s movement in the nostalgic glow of the late 1960s, Feminism Unfinished traces the beginnings of this seminal American social movement to the 1920s, in the process creating an expanded, historical narrative that dramatically rewrites a century of American women’s history.

Though Carolyn’s mother never expected to inherit Glanton House from long-lost Aunt Hazel, she wants to make the most of the opportunity. Planning to turn the creaky waterfront mansion into a hotel, she moves Carolyn down to the seashore. But this house has a nightmarish history. As the story goes, Captain Glanton spent so long at sea that his wife, believing him dead, took a new lover. When her husband finally returned, her new love - a mysterious drifter - brutally murdered him, and she went mad with grief.

It's Darcy Thomas' summer home: the Dungeon of Horrors, owned by Jake, the gorgeous green-eyed uncle she's just met. But the gory fun turns to terror when real bodies are found with the mark of a vampire on their throats - and Darcy is targeted as the next victim.

Assistant District Attorney Beverly Mendoza appears to have an open and shut case when she prosecutes Rafael Santiago for the murder of a judge and the sexual assault of his wife in Eagles Landing, a town in Northern California. Santiago was recently released from prison and had a grudge against the judge. But her case against the suspect is put in jeopardy when career criminal Manuel Gonzalez, arrested for the murder of a young woman, also confesses to killing the judge.

Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War.

In 1941, with America at war, Ann Pollock falls in love. Handsome, charming attorney Phillip Coulter is everything she could want in a man and mate. But soon after they marry, Phillip leaves to fight for his country. When he comes home, he's a stranger, his body and spirit broken in a Japanese POW camp. It is only Ann's indomitable will and determination to succeed against all odds that keeps her family together.

Just because you’re not guilty doesn’t mean you’re innocent. Jessie Dancing got away, but she can’t escape her past. She works at a call center, for roadside emergency assistance. One night, she gets a call from Darren Markson, who sounds like he is being murdered. After telling the local police, Jessie starts her own investigation into the possible crime, finding Markson's family, discovering that Markson is still alive.

This year, a modern-day Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas with the help of a suddenly sexy old friend. A down-on-his-luck baseball star finds a beautiful new beginning with a hometown girl. And a prim-and-proper teacher is determined to bring out the holiday spirit in a grumpy tree farmer. Settle in for the season with this collection of very merry short fiction.