Showing results by narrator "Pilar Witherspoon" in All Categories

Holding her lovely head high, Wyoming schoolmistress Caroline Chalmers did what no lady should: She marched right into the local saloon to see the dashing and reckless Guthrie Hayes. Worse still, she went to ask him for help. She needed the former Confederate raider to plan a jailbreak to rescue her fiancé, Seaton Flynn, from the hangman's noose. An orphan by spinster sisters, Caroline was prepared do almost anything to save her beloved Seaton.

Elsa Reisner's lifelong dream of working as an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History is fading as the job begins to drain her passion. But fate takes an unexpected turn when she is assigned to catalog the bequest of a recently deceased patron whose Gothic country mansion holds secrets and treasures waiting to be discovered.

Dr. Prescott Parrish has never met a woman like Savannah. Despite her rouge and bangles, she is a virtuous - though decidedly stubborn - woman, who ignites his most infuriating emotions. But behind his prickly exterior, Pres harbors painful memories of the Civil War, heartache that may be soothed by a new and fulfilling love. Slowly, Pres and Savannah begin to see each other for who they truly are, with masks removed - and with passion flaring unexpectedly....

It's 1932, and Sullivan Harris is on the run. He promised the people of Kline, West Virginia, that he would find them water, but now he's failed and disappeared with their cash. Although he's determined to stay a step ahead of pursuers - like Jeremiah Weber - his resources are running low. Gainey Floyd is suspicious of Sulley's claim to be a dowser when he appears in town but reconsiders after he finds water. Rather, it's Sulley who grows uneasy when his success makes folks wonder if he can find more than water - like forgotten items or missing people.

For years her explorer father promised Dr. Lauren Westlake she'd accompany him on one of his Egyptian expeditions. But as the empty promises mounted, Lauren determined to earn her own way. Now the assistant curator of Egyptology for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lauren receives two unexpected invitations. The first is her repentant father's offer to finally bring her to Egypt as his colleague on a new expedition. The second is a chance to enter the world of New York's wealthiest patrons who have been victims of art fraud.

When Jack McLaughlin drifted into Springwater, he carried little more with him than his bitter memories of the Civil War and the shattering secret of a promise betrayed in the heat of battle. Wounded soul-deep, and fearing the wrath of his own parents, Jack has hidden his identity and come to Springwater to see his mother and father from afar, even if he can't bear to face them. Taking odd jobs and keeping a low profile, Jack finds a safe haven at the town's new rooming house.

Faith Collins embarks on a perilous journey through the untamed wilderness of the Rocky Mountains in search of the Peigan Blackfoot woman who once saved her father’s life. Masquerading as a man, she follows a group of trappers who may be able to lead her to the place the woman is hiding, but keeping Faith’s identity a secret proves more difficult than she imagined.

Eleven-year-old Amrie St. Pierre is catching tadpoles with her friend Finn O'Reilly when the Federal fleet first steams up the Mississippi River in the spring of 1862. With the surrender of New Orleans, Amrie's sleepy little village of St. Francisville - strategically located between the last river outposts of Vicksburg and Port Hudson - is now frighteningly vulnerable. As the roar of canons inches ever closer and food, shoes, and life-giving medicines become increasingly scarce, Amrie is forced to grow up fast.

Seven years ago, a hidden betrayal scattered three young friends living in the shadow of the great Vanderbilt mansion. Now, when Biltmore Industries master weaver Lorna Blankenship is commissioned to create an original design for Cornelia Vanderbilt’s 1924 wedding, she panics knowing she doesn’t have the creativity needed. But there’s an elusive artisan in the Blue Ridge Mountains who could save her—if only she knew where to begin.

In "Legacy of Love", Sarah Gooding never suspected returning a brooch to an elderly woman would lead to a job and introduce her to the woman's grandson. Widow Ruth Albright uses the family brooch as collateral for a loan from the local banker and hopes for a second chance at love in "Gift of the Heart". In "A Shot at Love", Fleeta Brady never expected her family's brooch might be how a fellow hunter turns her attention from competition to romance. Maddie Winslow stumbles upon an old family brooch in "Because of You". Might it finally be her turn for love?

After almost 20 years of caring for elderly parents - first for their senile father and then for their cantankerous 93-year-old mother - author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, 23 rooms bulging with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum thought, How tough will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags. But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined.

Lorelei Collins possesses a soft heart for any animal in need, so when she finds a buffalo calf bawling beside its mother's lifeless body, she can't help but bring it home to raise on the ranch she and her sisters are building in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Little does she realize that its white coloring is rare and considered sacred by Native Americans, which makes it highly valuable to them and the European trappers alike.

As the formation of Glacier National Park takes Eleanor Briggs and her conservationist father on a journey west to advocate for public lands, her heart carries the weight of a painful past. Since the death of her mother, she has spent her life traveling the country with her father and helping him with his work, but now he’s considering settling down and writing a book—and she’s not sure what that means for her future.

Rachel English has traveled to Springwater to take a post as the schoolteacher. Although the ramshackle schoolhouse - and her half-wild pupils - are not what she had envisioned, Rachel spiritedly makes the best of her new surroundings. But when she takes a stand against the scandalous saloon across the road from the school, she is more than surprised by her own powerful attraction to the bar's part-owner, handsome widower Trey Hargreaves.

Thirteen-year-old Loyal Raines is supposed to stay close to home on a hot summer day in 1934. When he slips away for a quick swim in the river and finds a dead body, he wishes he'd obeyed his mother. The ripples caused by his discovery will impact the town of Beverly, West Virginia, in ways no one could have imagined.

Maggie Molinaro survived a hardscrabble childhood in the downtrodden streets of Manhattan to become a successful businesswoman. After a decade of sacrifice, she now owns a celebrated ice cream company. But when she offends a corrupt banker, she unwittingly sets off a series of calamities that threaten to destroy her life's work.

A battered woman awakens atop a forgotten gravesite by Lake Superior's southern shore. Identified only by the locket around her neck inscribed with the name Rebecca, she seeks refuge with an elderly lighthouse keeper. But as Rebecca struggles to remember who she is, she finds herself haunted by the lingering memories of Annabel, a mysterious woman who perished in the lake's unforgiving waves years earlier. With the spirit of Annabel seemingly reawakened, and an unknown adversary on the hunt to silence Rebecca once and for all, more is at stake than reclaiming her own memories.

In 1774, Juliet Catesby lives with her father and sister at Royal Vale, the James River plantation founded by her Virginia family over a century before. Indigo cultivation is her foremost concern, though its export tethers her family to the powerful Buchanan clan of Glasgow, Scotland. When the heir of the Buchanan firm arrives on their shores, Juliet discovers that her father has secretly arranged for one of his daughters to marry the Scot as a means of canceling the family's debt. Confident it will be her younger, lovelier sister, Juliet is appalled when Leith Buchanan selects her instead.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapses when her fiancé, Fritz, vanishes after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1933, Hedda is stunned to see Fritz's name in a photograph of an American monument to German POWs in Asheville, North Carolina. Determined to reclaim his body and bring closure to his ailing mother, Hedda embarks on a journey from Germany to the US. However, her quest takes a dark turn when Fritz's casket contains the remains of a woman who died under mysterious circumstances.

Augusta Travers has spent the last three years avoiding the stifling expectations of New York society and her family's constant disappointment. As the nation's most fearless - and reviled - columnist, Gussie travels the country with her Kodak camera and spins stories for women unable to leave hearth and home. But when her adventurous nature lands her in the middle of a scandal at the worst possible moment, she's forced to leave America entirely.