Showing results by narrator "Vanessa Johansson" in All Categories

Librarian Julia Winston is ready to ditch the quiet existence she's been living. She's made a list of new things to experience, but falling for Jamie Caine, her sexy military pilot neighbor, isn't one of them. Julia's looking to conquer life, not become the heartbreaker's latest conquest. But when two young brothers wind up in Julia's care for the holidays, she'll take any help she can get. Happy to step in, Jamie reveals a side of himself that's much harder to resist. Not only is he fantastic with kids, he provides the strength Julia needs to tackle her list.

Samantha Parker is picking up the pieces of her life—and a pen to sign divorce papers—after she finds out her husband has been cheating on her and the other woman is expecting his child. While the idea of leaving town and starting over is appealing, Sam's only option is to head back to her childhood home of Cocoa Beach, Florida, to help her recently widowed mother run their family inn. Can she go home and start her whole life over at forty-three?

Computer-tech millionaire Bowie Callahan is about the last person that schoolteacher Katrina Bailey wants to work for. As far as she can see, he's arrogant, entitled, and not up to the task of caring for his young half brother, Milo. But Kat is, especially if it brings her closer to her goal of adopting an orphaned little girl. And as her kindness and patience work wonders with Milo, she realizes there's more to sexy, wary Bo than she'd ever realized.

In the wake of her husband's sudden death, Cassie Costas finds her relationship with her teenage stepdaughter unraveling. After their move to historic Tarpon Springs, Florida, Savannah hates her new town, her school and most of all her stepmom, whom she blames for her father's death. Cassie has enough to contend with as she searches for answers about the man she shared a life with, including why all their savings have disappeared.

Hortense first experienced alignment as a competitive show-jumper. Now, in Aligned, she delivers an essential three-part guide for anyone wanting to lead with ease, joy, and impact - and to become even more successful. Alignment helps organizations reach their full potential, and people realize their personal goals. Alignment does not happen by itself, however. In Aligned, Hortense uses real-life examples to show you how to connect with who you truly are, do the work to become who you want to be, and project your aligned self from your inner world onto the outside one.

Lauren Abrams wants nothing to do with her damaged mother, whose spurious testimony sent Lauren’s father to prison for murder years ago. After a serial killer’s confession to the crime restored justice, Lauren chose to live with her father and grandmother. Now an adult, Lauren has come home to the Sacramento family estate for good, her mother’s lies be damned... It’s been decades since Donna made her cheating husband pay, but she hasn’t forgotten the past. She knows her estranged daughter has made a terrible mistake by returning to the estate.

During the Midsummer Night's Festival, Allie decides to take her bichonpoo, Mal, home to spare her furry little ears from the sounds of fireworks. But on her way back, Allie spots a body in the lake. Just minutes ago, Winona Higer was crowning the event's Queen—could the competition have really been that deadly? While she ponders the mystery the next morning, Allie prepares her favorite dark chocolate cherry fudge recipe. But she's soon recruited to sub for the late Winona and serve as parade float judge, among other duties.

In 1908, 16-year-old Bridey runs away from her small town in Ireland with her same-age sweetheart, Thom. But when Thom dies suddenly of ship fever on their ocean crossing, Bridey finds herself alone and pregnant in a strange new world. Forced by circumstance to give up the baby for adoption, Bridey finds work as a maid for the Hollingworth family at a lavish, sprawling estate. She cares for the Hollingworth children as if they were her own, until a mysterious death changes Bridey and the household forever.

When Yaara meets Aryeh, her father's boyhood friend, she is instantly drawn to his impassive and archly assured presence. It is not long before she forsakes her devoted and well-meaning husband for the powerful, mysterious older man who seems to embody all that she lacks: will, strength, and the key to her parents' inaccessible pasts.

Elizabeth Hamilton has been lost. Trapped in a tangle of postpartum depression and grief after the death of her beloved parents, she couldn’t quite see the way back to her husband and their two beautiful kids...until a car accident stole away her memories and changed her life. And when she finally remembered the sound of little Cassie’s laugh, the baby powder smell of Bridger, and the feel of her husband’s hand in hers, Elizabeth worried that they’d moved on without her. That she’d missed too much.

Girl running...from a year she can't remember, from a husband she prays is dead, from homelessness and fear. Tough, capable Kellen Adams takes a job as assistant manager of a remote vacation resort on the North Pacific Coast. There amid the towering storms and the lashing waves, she hopes to find sanctuary. But when she discovers a woman's dead and mutilated body, she's soon trying to keep her own secrets while investigating first one murder...then another.

Alma Harper has been trying to forget what happened in Widowsfield 16 years ago. She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared. When a reporter shows up, just days before March 14th, Alma realizes that her past is coming back to haunt her. What happened on March 14th, at 3:14, 16 years ago? No one but The Skeleton Man can remember.

Meet Ottie Lee Henshaw, a startling, challenging beauty in small-town Indiana. Quick of mind, she navigates a stifling marriage, a lecherous boss, and, on one day in the summer of 1930, an odyssey across the countryside to witness a dark and fearful celebration.

Luke Rivers is a man of his word. He agrees to marry Kate Logan when she foolishly proposes to him - after one glass of champagne too many - at her former fiancé's wedding reception. And Luke, stubborn rancher that he is, refuses to renege on his promise.

Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At 26, she's been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family's cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future. Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father.

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations and feeling utterly alone in the process, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help - Priscilla Johnson - and begs her to come home with them as her son's nanny. Priscilla's presence quickly does as much to shake up Rebecca's perception of the world as it does to stabilize her life.

His Second-Chance Family by RaeAnne Thayne: Julia Blair is hoping for a fresh start. So when she sees an apartment-for-rent sign on Brambleberry House, she can’t help but feel that it’s a good omen. Having spent summers as a teen in a cottage near the rambling Victorian home, Julia easily pictures herself and her two children starting over in the one place that’s always felt welcoming to her. Katie’s Redemption by Patricia Davids: After two years away, Katie Lantz returns to her Amish community nine months pregnant - and unmarried.

In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the center of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fueled culture. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women.

Sofie Metropolis is back and in the deep end of the coffee pot when she's retained by the neighborhood vampire to prove he isn’t responsible for a recent string of grisly murders, and her mother talks her into looking for a missing woman neither of them knows, but Thalia has adopted in absentia nonetheless. And if her plate isn’t full enough, things heat up on the romantic front when ‘bounty hunter’ Jake Porter and yummy Greek baker Dino both decide to vie for her undivided attention.

Christmas, a kidnapping, Jake Porter, and a stray reindeer - oh my! Sofie’s mother tells her it is the season for miracles, but Sofie’s convinced it’s more of a season for whackos and flashing Santas. After nearly losing a battle with the local strange vampire a month ago, she regrets ever having bitched about boring cheating spouse cases and process serving. She’s ready for a quiet spell doing nothing but finding people’s lost pets. But Sofie’s life will probably never be boring again. After all, kidnapping is never boring. Especially when it’s Sophie who’s being kidnapped.