Showing results by narrator "Tara Ochs" in All Categories

The story moves back and forth in time from the arrival of Thea from her isolated village in arctic Norway in search of a new life in the near wilderness of a small town and logging camp on the shore of Lake Superior to the travails of her orphaned son, Odd, some twenty years later. When Thea’s aunt and uncle do not meet her boat as planned, she’s initially left abandoned with no money or prospects and without speaking the language.

Lia Stanton, a woman who likes things safe, accidentally gets caught in a wormhole when she's just supposed to be getting a nice, easy fluff piece to write. It throws her forward in time and space, landing her on a planet she doesn't recognize. On the heels of her arrival, she's accused of espionage and forms a connection to a man she never should have met. Troll Maglaya is on his third tour of duty on Jarved Nine. Just when he thinks nothing here can surprise him, he's assigned to watch a suspected spy. As soon as he sees Lia, he knows her claim of time travel is true - he's carried a drawing of her for years, one made fifty years earlier.

With wedding plans well underway, Lois Barker plots to gracefully get rid of her groom's catfish collection - stuffed, ceramic, woven. Her husband-to-be, Chris, on the other hand, has decided to get rid of something else: his homestead, which he gives to a needy Mexican family at church. Life is full of possibilities, and the community of Green is tickled pink that their newspaper owner is settling down with one of their own.

They were destined to save the world from an ancient evil. Talos is a magic wielder, born into the mage guild of firecrafters. As an agent of the Overworld Police, he has come from a secret land to protect Earth from magicians intent on enslaving humanity. Mila has always had the gift of healing. But this very modern woman never realized that her skill was born of an ancient magic that only firecraft can fully unlock.

Faith Hunter planned the perfect event at her grandmother's shop, Scrap This, featuring local scrapbooker and Life Artist Diva, Belinda Watson. But the extravaganza goes up in a cloud of glitter when Belinda and her cousin, Darlene, brawl over scraplifted designs. Faith attempts to break it up, but only makes things worse. Then when Belinda turns up dead behind the Scrap This store, Faith's involvement goes viral.

Will Lois Barker put down roots in Green...or will small-town life be too tough? The charming and uncertain journalist is delighted with her decision to keep The Green News-Item and excited about the possibility of romance with her good-looking catfish farmer/coach neighbor - and the growth of her fresh faith and friendships. Her second year in Green has scarcely been rung in, though, before Lois is wrung out.

Spices are flying off the shelves of Spice It Up!, and Piper Prescott couldn’t be happier. It's that time of year again - time for the annual Brandywine Creek Barbecue Festival. Soon contestants and BBQ aficionados from all over the Southeast will converge on the town. Many of Brandywine Creek's citizens plan to participate in the week-long festivities and are busily concocting savory rubs and sassy sauces. Among the locals vying for the grand prize are Becca Dapkins and Maybelle Humphries.

Murder comes well-seasoned in this charming mystery featuring a smart and spunky new amateur sleuth, small-town Georgia spice shop owner Piper Prescott. Piper Prescott, a transplanted Yankee living in the South, has got her sass back. She might be down, but don’t count her out. “Change of life?” she asks. Bring it on. Recently divorced, Piper decides to pursue a dream she’s secretly harbored: owning her own business, Spice it Up!, a spice shop in her adopted hometown, Brandywine Creek, Georgia.

As the owner of It's Vintage, Y'All in Sugar Creek, Georgia, Cookie Chanel has agreed to share her expertise with author Juliana McDaniel. But on her way to town, Juliana is shot dead, and that was all she wrote. Cookie picks up the thread of the story with help from her psychic cat and a couple of inquisitive ghosts. To unmask this killer, she'll have to lift the lid on family secrets and hidden motives - because she might wind up getting capped herself if she doesn't cloche this case....

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Case in point: Piper Prescott's former mother-in-law, Melly. Beneath her twin sets and pearls beats the heart of a geek - a geek whose programming changes for the point-of-sale software in Piper's shop have the owners of the program ready to make her an offer she can't refuse.

Dale M. Kushner's novel The Conditions of Love traces the journey of a girl from childhood to adulthood as she reckons with her parents' abandonment, her need to break from society's limitations, and her overwhelming desire for spiritual and erotic love. In 1953, 10-year-old Eunice lives in the backwaters of Wisconsin with her outrageously narcissistic mother, a manicureeste and movie-star worshipper. Abandoned by her father as an infant, Eunice worries that she will become a misfit like her mother.

The paper was an unexpected inheritance from a close colleague, and Lois must keep it for at least a year, bringing a host of challenges, lessons, and blessings into her life. When Lois pulls into Green on New Year's Day, she expects a charming little town full of smiling people. She quickly realizes her mistake. After settling into a loaned house out on Route 2, she finds herself battling town prejudices and inner doubts and making friends with the most surprising people.

Former US Army JAG specialist, Faith Hunter, returns to her West Virginia home to work in her grandmothers' scrapbooking store determined to lead an unassuming life after her adventure abroad turned disaster. But her quiet life unravels when her friend is charged with murder, and Faith inadvertently supplied the evidence. So Faith decides to cut through the scrap and piece together what really happened. With a sexy prosecutor, a determined homicide detective, a handful of sticky suspects and a crop contest gone bad, Faith quickly realizes if she's not careful, she'll be the next one cropped.

Though she's written dispatches from across the globe - covering the Loch Ness monster, live dinosaurs, and the ever-enigmatic yeti - Vera Perl never leaves the offices of "This Week," a supermarket tabloid covering the universe's stranger side. Her reporting is done entirely inside her own head, and now she’s contemplating a Bigfoot exposé that will astonish even the most jaded conspiracy theorist. No one is better than Vera at imagining these weird, wild stories, because more than anything, she wants them to be true.

Sugar Creek is all abuzz. A film is being shot on a historic plantation, and vintage clothing store owner Cookie Chanel is thrilled to provide authentic period outfits for its stars. When Cookie discovers the temperamental leading lady drowned in a pond, wearing a lovely vintage dress, she's suddenly on location for a real-life crime scene. And when a ghost says the dress belongs to her, the number of clues Cookie has to investigate rivals the size of her shoe collection.

For two centuries, the planet of the Dedelphi has been riven by war. Though delicate, swanlike creatures, the planet’s natives are fierce in battle, and their ceaseless conflict has reduced their world to a wasteland. To save themselves and their world, the Dedelphi have forged a fragile peace and called for outside intervention. The Earth corporation Bioverse constructs a plan to heal the shattered planet. It’s the most ambitious engineering project the universe has ever seen, and if it backfires, the result will almost certainly be genocide.

When Faith Hunter agrees to help PI Bob Roget find an identity thief at a local scrapbook retreat, her friendly croppers’ weekend quickly morphs into a dangerous one. As croppers share their own memories, a killer collects them for her new identity, and doesn’t appreciate Faith in the picture. Faith struggles to balance her professional, detecting and personal lives as threats and secrets keep her off-balance. Things turn deadly when a woman is killed and Faith is blackmailed.

Every schoolboy in America knows the work of Wilkie Walker. A pioneering naturalist, he won fame and fortune with his accessible nature books. But by the time he turns 70, his renown is nearly gone. Late at night, he sits up torturing himself with fears that his career was a waste, his talent is gone, and his body is shot through with cancer. His wife Jenny, 25 years younger than Wilkie, can tell only that he is out of sorts. She has no idea her husband is on the verge of giving up on life.

Darcy Gordon lives in fear of the past catching up with her. So when a horrible accident injures her boss, she can't shake the thought that it was meant for her. And her problems only worsen when her boss's brother, FBI agent Patrick Devereux, comes to town asking questions. If it wouldn't raise so many suspicions, she'd be packing her bags and leaving Chicago. So she does her best to stay under the radar. Patrick's fierce good looks and razor-sharp stare have her stomach in knots...and her heart racing.

Beginning with a love story and ending with a ledger of its character's fates, The Inventory examines the ways in which the lives of ordinary citizens intersect in a society where persecution and extermination become daily events. We see Volker Tilling, a high-school student tortured by the Gestapo because of his vague association with the Young Socialist Workers brigade; Werner Kurig, a renowned opera singer who is beaten for suspicion of homosexuality; and little Anna Rossner, whose mental disability sends her - trustingly - to the camps.