Showing results by narrator "Shannon McManus" in All Categories

With her two younger sisters heading for the altar, will Samantha Castle exchange old dreams for new ones? Lately she’d rather be on the North Carolina coast with family than in New York with agents and actors. Though she vows not to let her teenage crush on Ethan Cole influence her decision, it’s hard to ignore her feelings for the local war hero. Ethan lost more than his leg in Afghanistan. He lost his belief in love.

Facing a personal crisis, ambitious and driven Gabriella Castle retreats to the welcoming arms of her family. Everything she's worked for has been yanked out from under her, and she seeks the serenity of her grandmother's home on the North Carolina coast. With difficult decisions to make about her future, the last thing she wants is an unexpected love. Wade Johnson fell for Gabi the first time he saw her. It's not the only time he's found himself in the role of knight in shining armor, but Gabi isn't looking for a rescuer. To get her to stay, Wade will need a whole lot of patience and gentle persuasion.

Savannah Dey politely agreed to attend her ex-husband's wedding, but she'd be grateful for any reason to get out of it...which is why the speeding ticket from the handsome sheriff of Adams Grove is both a surprise and a reprieve. With one quick call to her editor, the aspiring columnist finds herself with a new assignment and the perfect excuse to get closer to the man who pulled her over. Now, all she needs is a way to deal with all the bad memories the small town dredges up.

When her family relocated to rural China in 2003, Kay Bratt was thrust into a new world, one where boys were considered more valuable than girls and poverty and the one-child policy had created an epidemic of abandoned infants. As a volunteer at a local orphanage, Bratt witnessed conditions that were unfathomable to a middle-class mother of two from South Carolina. Based on Bratt’s diary of her four years at the orphanage, Silent Tears offers a searing account of young lives rendered disposable.

Royce Dillard doesn't remember much about the day his parents - and one hundred and twenty-three other souls - died in the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster. He was only two years old when he was ripped from his mother's arms. But now Dillard, who lives off the grid with only a passel of dogs for company, is fighting for his life one more time: He's on trial for murder. Prosecutor Bell Elkins faces her toughest challenge yet in this haunting story of vengeance, greed, and the fierce struggle for social justice.

Malcolm McKenzie will never forget that night in New York when he put Ava Galvan in a taxi following a heated argument, and the Argentine beauty was involved in a horrific accident - one that ended her career as an acclaimed soloist with the Manhattan Ballet, and impaired her memory and ability to live an independent life. The Scottish tycoon and philanthropist lives with his guilt, and another consequence: Ava was pregnant with his child the night of the accident. Ever since that night, Malcom has raised Jack as a single father.

Becca Davis has always played it safe - denying her passion for fashion design in a dead-end job and letting her pragmatic boyfriend (mastermind of the "Kevin Bradley Ten-Year Plan") make the tough decisions in life. Stunned into saying yes when Mr. Predictable springs a surprise proposal on her, Becca realizes that she's running out of time to turn her life around. She's only got one more chance to chase her dreams and no one - not her control-freak fiancé, not her dramaholic sisters, not her overprotective parents - will talk her out of it.

Angela's Diner has the reputation of a safe haven where patrons find a moment of peace as they linger over coffee and tears. For one young runaway, Angela's is more than a place to tell your tale - it's a place where with the magic of chicken and waffles, and a little bit of trust, may just save your life.

Kate Riordan fears two things as she grows up in the small Appalachian town of Swan River: that she’ll be a frustrated townie forever or that she’ll turn into one of the mysterious and terrifying wild girls, killers who start fires and menace the community. Struggling to better her chances of escaping, Kate attends the posh Swan River Academy and finds herself divided between her hometown - and its dark history - and the realm of privilege and achievement at the Academy. Explosive friendships with Mason, a boy from the wrong side of town, and Willow, a wealthy and popular queen bee from school, are slowly pulling her apart.

Samantha Crawford has a storybook life: she’s happily married, lives on a ranch where she keeps her beloved horse, and the stories she has written and illustrated since childhood have become popular books. When her husband Billy is killed in a senseless act of violence, Sam loses her faith and the will to live. But a sudden death-defying encounter with two children leads to a reunion with her old friend Papa Joe Bradford.

They’ve had the white dresses and the fancy receptions. But now that the honeymoon’s over, Stella, Casey, and Erin have each had to face some hard truths about the men they’ve married and the lives they’ve chosen. So when the news breaks that the pastor who presided over their weddings failed to file a few critical pieces of paper, none of these newlyweds is rushing down to the courthouse to legalize her vows. Instead, the brides share their hopes, disappointments, and secrets while grappling with that pivotal question: Should they stay or should they go?

Every summer, four college friends hold a mini reunion. They laugh, reminisce, and commiserate about their soul-sucking jobs. Maybe they should have listened to everyone who warned them to study something "practical". Then an unexpected windfall arrives - $1 million, to be exact - with the stipulation that they use it to jump-start their new careers. Almost overnight, a professor, a bartender, a copywriter, and an administrative assistant reinvent themselves.

For Naomi Ash, growing up the daughter of a clairvoyant medium exposed her to the chicanery of a business where telling people what they want to hear is the only currency. And the sleepy hamlet of Train Line, New York, nestled against a frigid lake in the westernmost fringes of the state, was founded on, built, and is still sustained by it. Now a young woman and a practicing medium herself, Naomi still lives in the place that nourished and raised her - the place where she fell in love. Love, however, can be deadly....

Sixteen-year-old Baltimore teen Bethany Stern knows the only way out of spending her summer at Camp Utopia, a fat camp in Northern California, is weight-loss. Desperate, she tries The Forgiveness Diet, the latest fad whose infomercial promises that all she has to do is forgive her deadbeat dad, her scandalous sister, and the teenage magician next door and (unrequited) love of her life. But when the diet fails and her camp nemesis delivers the ultimate blow, Bee bids sayonara to Camp-not-Utopian-at-all to begin what she believes will be her "real" summer adventure.

Emma has always orbited Henri, her fierce, magnetic queen bee of an older sister, and the two have always been best friends. Until something happens that wrecks them. Then the unthinkable occurs - a watery nightmare off the dazzling coast. The girls wash up onshore, stranded. Their only companion is Alex, a troubled boy agonizing over his own secrets. Trapped in a gorgeous hell, Emma and Alex fall together as Emma and Henri fall catastrophically apart. To find their way home, the sisters must find their way back to each other.

A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade. In this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer.

As America plunges into the Great Depression, Marthanne Hendrix finds herself in rural Vidalia, Georgia, with no memory of how she got there.

Bewildered when the neighbors call her Oma, Marthanne is haunted by memories of another life—and another self. With the help of Comfort, a domestic worker living with her own tremendous loss, Marthanne discovers that Oma is another distinct personality inhabiting her body. In a time when mental illness is taboo, Marthanne and Oma’s simple, small-town life is fraught with complexity and danger.

With gossip running rampant, Marthanne and Oma will do anything to avoid their greatest fear: commitment to an insane asylum. Only by relying on Comfort’s kindness can they navigate their uncertain future. Friendship becomes sanctuary, and the quest for an ordinary life leads to an extraordinary bond.

Deeply moving and exquisitely wrought, Show Me a Kindness is a haunting novel of love, survival, and hiding in plain sight.

After weathering the first gut-wrenching year since her husband's death, Lily Declan is trying to move past her grief and find a place of healing for herself and her two young sons. But when a strange sympathy letter arrives, the quiet life Lily has rebuilt from her sorrow comes under stealthy, sinister attack. On her wedding anniversary, an intimate bridal gift is delivered to her door. Then, a bizarre home invasion shatters her sense of security, and a mysterious Facebook memorial appears.

Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith's debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.

Your Beautiful Heart explores issues that teen girls face every day: body image, self-worth, peer pressure, and much more. Whether you listen to the book on your own or with a group of friends, Lauren's personal message of love, faith, and value will show you what it means to be a girl who radiates with true beauty.