Showing results by narrator "Ann Marie Lee" in All Categories

Stan and Jake's wedding will soon take place on the town green in Frog Ledge, Connecticut, followed by a reception at their beloved Irish pub filled with friends, family, and their four favorite canine companions. Stan just has to endure the traditional girls' night out first. Male strippers jumping out of gigantic cakes aren't her preferred entertainment. But the hired hottie never gets around to taking it all off . . . because someone takes him out first with one of Stan's kitchen knives.

When a buttoned-up professor and her unbuttoned daughter fall for the same irresistible man, a delightful, subversive comedy begins.... Life isn't easy for single mother Ally Hughes. Teaching at Brown, her class load is huge, and her boss is a menace. At home she contends with a critical mother, a falling-down house, and a daughter who never misses a beat. Between taking care of the people she loves, teaching full time, and making ends meet, Ally doesn't have time for a man.

Photographer Clare Porterfield's once-happy marriage is coming apart, unraveling under the strain of a family tragedy. When she receives an invitation to direct an exhibition in her hometown of Galveston, Texas, she jumps at the chance to escape her grief and reconnect with the island she hasn't seen for ten years. There Clare will have the time and space to search for answers about her troubled past and her family's complicated relationship with the wealthy and influential Carraday family.

In the New England town of Frog's Ledge, the Holiday Light Festival is a Christmas tradition. Killing Santa is not. To bring joy back to the season, organic pet patisserie owner Kristan "Stan" Connor will have to find another Santa before it's too late . . . To the townspeople's delight, the annual lighting of the tree is a spectacular success. Unfortunately, Santa pulled up in his sleigh, DOA. At first Stan is sure it's Seamus, her boyfriend's uncle, inside the red suit. But the victim turns out to be an employee from the town's Christmas tree farm.

When Robin Romm's The Mother Garden was published, The New York Times Book Review called her "a close-up magician", saying, "hers is the oldest kind [of magic] we know: the ordinary incantation of words and stories to help us navigate the darkness and finally to hold the end at bay." In her searing memoir The Mercy Papers, Romm uses this magic to expand the weeks before her mother's death into a story about a daughter in the moments before and after loss.

Mayor Falco's dogged ambition isn't popular among locals, but it's his executive coach, Eleanor Chang, who's inspired a dangerous grudge. When Eleanor is found dead, there's a whole pack of suspects to choose from. Stan has firsthand experience of Eleanor's unsavory business tactics. But finding out who forced her to take a fatal plunge off the corporate ladder means unearthing some shady secrets . . . and a killer who's too close for comfort.

Dahlia Waller's childhood memories consist of stuffy cars, seedy motels, and a rootless existence traveling the country with her eccentric mother. Now grown, she desperately wants to distance herself from that life. Yet one thing is stopping her from moving forward: She has questions. In order to understand her past, Dahlia must go back. Back to her mother in the stifling town of Aurora, Texas. Back into the past of a woman on the brink of madness.

When Amy loses her best friend, Kat, to cancer, she knows their dream of a secret trip to Paris will never come true. Yet Kat's words haunt her, urging her to embark on the Paris trip alone and shed the dissatisfaction of her life in Phoenix. Little by little, Amy, grappling with a failing marriage and struggling with painful childhood memories, lets herself be swayed. Guided by Kat's bold voice, Amy sneaks off to Paris while her husband is away on a business trip. Once there, however, she finds that her problems have come right along with her.

Pull up a chair, snuggle under your favorite blanket, gather the kids, and enjoy the charming stories you know and love. This multicast production brings to life all your favorites!

World famous at twenty-four, brilliant and reckless, hard-living and scandalous, Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage before he ever experienced war first-hand.

Charlie Anne is devastated when her father must go north to build roads after the Depression hits. She and her siblings are left with their rigid cousin, Mirabel, and a farm full of chores. The only solace Charlie Anne finds is by the river, where the memory of her mother is strongest. Then her neighbor Old Mr. Jolly brings home a new wife, Rosalyn, who shows up in pants—pants!—the color of red peppers. With her arrives Phoebe, a young African American girl who has also lost her mother. Phoebe is smart and fun and the perfect antidote to Charlie Anne's lonely days.

Bella was once a lost dog, but now she lives happily with her people, Lucas and Olivia, only occasionally recalling the hardships in her past. Then a weekend camping trip turns into a harrowing struggle for survival when the Rocky Mountains are engulfed by the biggest wildfire in American history. The raging inferno separates Bella from her people, and she is lost once more. Alone in the wilderness, Bella unexpectedly finds herself responsible for the safety of two defenceless mountain lion cubs. Now she’s torn between two equally urgent goals.

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new voice in American fiction, Robin Black's If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This takes readers into the minds and hearts of people navigating the unsettling transitions that life presents to us all.

A schoolteacher still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic travels to the Middle East in this memorable and passionate novel. Agnes Shanklin, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference convenes, she is freed for the first time from her mother’s withering influence and finds herself being wooed by a handsome, mysterious German.

Our obsession with praise and blame begins soon after birth. Totally dependent on others, rapidly we learn to value praise and to fear the consequences of blame. Despite outgrowing an infant's dependence, we continue to monitor others' judgments of us - and develop what relational psychologist Terri Apter calls a "judgment meter", which constantly scans people and our interactions with them, registering a positive or negative opinion.

A collection of one-acts by the Pulitzer-winning playwright, including Close the Book, Suppressed Desires, Tickless Time, Woman's Honor, The People, and Trifles.

Although the Dea Vitae cult has been evicted from Thalia Island, Lara J. Clarke and her grandfather’s eco-utopia are still in peril. Rupert’s ongoing lymphoma treatment deposits Lara at Thalia’s helm—with no idea how to navigate the rough waters. Finan is back from the mainland after two tense weeks of silence, but the sting of his unscheduled departure lingers. Lara and Finan must work with investigators, and a few unsavory players, to dismantle the sinister machinations of Dea Vitae before it destroys their blossoming romance—and the sanctity of Thalia Island herself.

Finan is gone, Jacinta has disappeared, and Lara is holding on by a thread. She will do whatever it takes to recover the other half of her heart, even if it means trusting those most unworthy of her trust. As terrible new threats burst onto the scene, Lara must rely on her Thalia Island family to bring Finan home in one piece—and save the utopia her grandfather fought so hard to create. With the curtain pulled back on incendiary secrets concealed for decades, reckoning comes from all sides: who is telling the truth, and who pays the price for the sins of our forebears?

The Spaghetti is a floating palace of elegance and entertainment. There's only one problem: Miss LaPasta doesn't want Barnabas Brambles to come aboard, because she's heard he's the meanest man alive. Lucky for Barnabas Brambles, his boss is Sir Sidney, the nicest man alive.

It's no secret - the US economy is in crisis mode, threatening everything from personal savings to our overall prosperity as a nation. Panicking is not the answer. Having a clear game plan is. In this environment, investors must protect themselves from the immense financial uncertainties they face as a saver or an investor in the 21st century. Investors need solid information about ways to recession-proof their retirement and investment portfolios.