Showing results by narrator "Cynthia Barrett" in All Categories

Just one year later, Margaret is coming into her own as an investigator, after leaving the comforts of her Kerrisdale home and her inattentive husband, a corporate lawyer. Living in trendy and bustling Kitsilano with Nat Southby, her newfound happiness is undercut by her family's pleadings to return home. In need of a vacation, she and Nat head for a ranch in the Cariboo. Instead of solace, they find violence, betrayal and an unsolved missing person's case that introduces them to host of new and questionable characters.

Back in Vancouver, Maggie and Nat begin their next adventure at a cranberry bog where a veterinarian's assistant has been found dead. A long trail with a faint scent to follow, their victim's double-life leads them to a strip club, a bogus religious sect, and a nursing home with a dark underlying secret.

It is January 1961 and Margaret Spencer and Nat Southby are relaxing on a ski holiday when their vacation takes a bone-chilling turn. While cross-country skiing the couple comes across the frozen body of Maurice Dubois, a man who went missing from a fishing resort the month before. In Death As a Last Resort, the fourth book in the popular Margaret Spencer Mystery series, our favorite Vancouver female sleuth Maggie Spencer and her partner Nat Southby continue their escapades as they track down the unlawful and dangerous.

Four little words. That’s all it took. Just four words to turn Andi Vanzant’s world upside down. Until then, Andi thought her life was perfect: married to an adoring man, recently tenured at Northampton University, and a published author. But when her husband is killed by a drunk driver just blocks from their home, his death plunges Andi into a grief from which she cannot imagine ever surfacing. Her family and friends do their best to help her pick up the pieces, but nothing they do or say will ever bring back what Andi lost that night.

Sarah Avery's reckless behavior has cost her a job, her boyfriend, and the independence she desperately craves. Reluctantly home for the holidays in the Bay of Fires, a tiny seaside town on the Tasmanian coast, she hopes for a calm, quiet visit, with time to reflect on all that's gone wrong. Those hopes are crushed when, early one morning, she discovers the body of a young female backpacker washed up on the shore. A year earlier, another woman went missing and hasn't been seen since. Now everyone wonders: is there a killer in the brush? Or were these women victims of Tasmania itself?

Passed over for promotion and dumped by her boyfriend, Nina O'Malley is further frustrated when her editor assigns her one of the "soft" stories she despises - covering a gala benefit supporting the AIDS Memorial Quilt. More determined than ever to prove she deserves a promotion to the NY office, Nina decides to write a series featuring a local quilting group raising money for AIDS research.

Andi and David have settled happily into Andi's Northampton home, but David wants more. He wants them to get married. But their discussion is put on hold when Wylie, a fifteen-year-old girl, shows up in their backyard, bearing news that takes David’s mind off the future and sends it spiraling into the past. Reeling from David's news, Andi receives a startling announcement of her own, one that leads to a relationship with her estranged mother. As Andi and her mother get closer and Wylie weaves her way into their lives, Andi finds solace in an old comfort: her ex-fiancé.

Grace Riley is on the run - from her past and from her fears. The victim of a violent rape at the hands of a rich politician's son, she must "disappear" to escape his constant attempts to recapture her. Moving from cattle drive to cattle drive as a cook, she avoids her tormentor for nearly 20 years. When she discovers that the brother she gave up for adoption after their mother died in childbirth was orphaned at an early age, she is frantic to verify that he's safe. She tracks him to a cattle ranch in Montana.

A top “must-have” for any listener of Holocaust and World War II survival accounts. This incredible true story is both a witness to the Holocaust through Polish eyes and the story of how Henry Zguda, a Polish Catholic swimmer, survives Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

The owner of the Silver Unicorn Art Gallery is dead, and Southby and Spencer, Private Investigators are back at work in search of the killer. With plenty of suspects and twists and turns along the way, Maggie and Nat have their work cut out for them. The cast of memorable characters are no match for the investigators. Maggie trusts her instincts as they take her from the streets of Vancouver to Victoria, Galiano Island, and Mission. Meanwhile, her estranged husband continues his efforts to win her back, but even with plans for her daughter's wedding taking up all her spare time, Maggie knows there is no returning to her old life.

Sold into prostitution, Sara Fuller robs a client and flees to her brother in White Pines, Montana. Anxiously awaiting his mail order bride, rancher Caleb Young is delighted when a beautiful woman steps off the stagecoach. A series of misunderstandings soon finds the two taking their marriage vows. When Sara discovers she isn't Caleb's intended bride, she hides her scandalous past and sets out to prove she can be a good wife. Caleb adores Sara but suspects her of hiding something very important. Despite Sara's secrets, their love grows and a child is conceived.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left a trail of loss, misery, and economic ruin in its wake. With such destruction, can there be any silver lining? As veteran science journalist Debora MacKenzie illuminates in this captivating, acclaimed book, there is one: With the lessons learned from this disaster, we can stop it from happening again. Here, in this fully revised and updated edition, she lays out the full story in accessible, gripping detail.

Gretchen Waters' writing career is cut abruptly short when she dies from a fall down a set of stone library steps. It is a tragic accident and no one suspects foul play, certainly not Gretchen's best friend from college, Jamie, who's been named the late author's literary executor. But there's an unfinished manuscript Gretchen left behind that is much darker than Tammyland: a book ostensibly about male country musicians yet centered on a murder in Gretchen's family that haunted her childhood.

Kristina Riggle explores the messiness of life’s love stories, especially those involving teenage almost-stepchildren, a unreliable ex-wife, and the words no parent ever wants to hear: “Your child is missing.” A poignant, honest, and unforgettable novel that fans of Katrina Kittle and Elin Hildenbrand will take into their hearts, Things We Didn’t Say is exactly the sort of well-written, complex relationships story that women love to listen to, discuss, and share with their friends.

Dark chocolate sales are on the rise as people embrace the concept that chocolate can truly be good for them. But how do they know what to eat, how much, and which kinds are the best? The Chocolate Therapist answers these questions and more. This book has everything a person needs to know to select the best chocolate for health. Both informative and entertaining, it includes alphabetized ailments, each with a chocolate recommendation, followed by supporting research as to how and why it helps the body.

When they first met at Harvard in 1946, young Kenny O’Donnell and Bobby Kennedy could not have imagined where their lives would take them. The friendship they built saw them through some of the most pivotal moments of the twentieth century - including Robert Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general and O’Donnell’s time spent as John F. Kennedy’s chief of staff - and only ended with RFK’s tragic death.

On the edge of the remote salt flats of Australia, a young woman blows in from nowhere and disturbs the precarious equilibrium of a family farm. The boy is fascinated by her, his mother despises her, and the brutish farmhand wants to possess her. When the woman mysteriously disappears, the only trace of her a bloodied dress, the boy sets out in search of an Indian hawker who may or may not have the answers. As he journeys through the broken landscape, accompanied only by his horse and his dog, the boy becomes aware of another party converging murderously on his destination.

At age fifty, Margaret Spencer's empty nest and empty marriage prompt her to answer an ad for part-time office work at the office of private investigator Nat Southby. Suddenly, she is deep in the most unlikely of adventures for a woman in 1950s Vancouver, helping him with a case of missing young women involved in a shady business ring. Maggie finds unexpected freedom as a developing detective and along the way she uncovers evil in the quaintly urban setting.

With one of Texas's most heinous serial killers still on the loose, it's Colby agent Joel Hayden's sworn duty to protect single mom Laney Seagers. Getting a job at Laney's High Noon bar is easy for Joel … but gaining the trust of the fiercely independent beauty is considerably harder. Amid escalating danger, Joel struggles to safeguard the shattering family secret that could destroy all Laney has ever known. As he witnesses her world starting to unravel, how can he protect her without revealing what he knows?

This book shows how schools can - and must - develop expertise in "learning variation" (understanding how different kinds of minds learn) and apply this knowledge to classroom instruction in order to address the chronic learning challenges and achievement gap faced by millions of students. Barringer shows how using what we know about learning variation with a focus on discovering learning strengths, not just deficits, can help schools create plans for success for those students who often find it elusive.