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

Returning to her Midwest roots, award-winning author Jane Kirkpatrick draws a page from her grandmother's photo album to capture the interplay between shadow and light, temptation and faith that marks a woman's pursuit of her dreams. She took exquisite photographs, but her heart was the true image exposed. Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele loves nothing more than capturing a gorgeous Minnesota landscape when the sunlight casts its most mesmerizing shadows.

Christmas is coming and the world is joyful for everyone but Josie Bates. A devastating miscarriage, her employer's pending retirement, and her husband's overseas job have left her alone and adrift—until Lily Daye dies and names Josie executor of her estate. Josie has no idea who this woman is, but her will is simple and her possessions meager. In the spirit of the season, Josie accepts the job. Yet behind Lily's seemingly modest existence lies a complex, mysterious life.

Morgan Prager, at age 30, is completing her thesis on victim psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. She is newly engaged to Bennett, a seductive but possessive and secretive man. She returns from class one day to find Bennett mauled to death, and her dogs - a Great Pyrenees and two pit bulls she has rescued - covered in blood. Bewildered and devastated that her dogs could have committed such violence, she worries that she might suffer from one of the syndromes she studies.

Lena's best friend, Allison, is in a panic. On a walk in the woods by her home, Allison discovers the body of her mail carrier, an argumentative man who recently had a falling out with Allison's husband. Lena quickly realizes Allison has nothing to worry about, as the murder weapon points to a different suspect altogether: Lena's embattled boyfriend, Sam West.

As the edge of winter slices through Washington, DC, Josie Bates testifies before Congress about the Albanian blood feud that sent Hannah Sheraton and Billy Zuni fleeing for their lives while Archer reluctantly abandons a trail that has gone cold in his search for the teenagers. Determined to stay one step ahead of the authorities who want Billy back and a blood feud that will only be satisfied when he is dead, Hannah and Billy head north. There they will hunker down in the darkest corner of earth they can find and wait for the danger to pass.

We're all waiting for something. It might be a spouse or a baby. It might be healing or a home. Regardless of what we're waiting for, it's easy to feel discontent when things aren't going as planned and our dreams are delayed - especially when questions of "why?" and "how long?" remain unanswered. God uses seasons of waiting to teach us patience and make us more like himself. But sanctification is not the only purpose God has in mind.

In Emotionally Naked: A Teacher's Guide to Preventing Suicide and Recognizing Students at Risk, trainer, speaker, and suicide loss survivor Anne Moss Rogers, and clinical social worker and researcher, Kimberly O'Brien, PhD, LICSW, empower middle and high school educators with the knowledge and skills to leverage their relationships with students to reduce this threat to life.

Emily Dickinson was one of the most reclusive of all poets. She spent much of her life in seclusion in her father’s house in Amherst, and only a handful of her 1800 poems were published in her lifetime. Credit for the posthumous publication of her work must be given to her editor and friend Thomas W. Higginson, who reported that, in spite of the voluminous correspondence which passed between himself and Dickinson, he only met her twice in person.

No one who lives and loves will be immune from grief and trauma. While this suffering is universal, living through a devastating event often leaves people feeling alone and even alienated. Michele Neff Hernandez experienced this when her 39-year-old husband died after being hit by a car while riding his bicycle. Her most transformative realization was that grief changes us. There is no going back or bucking up. Life is now different.

It's two in the morning and an aging cargo ship lies off the Port of Los Angeles. Deep in the bowels of the vessel, an important man is dead and the woman who killed him is mortally wounded. On shore another man staggers out of the sea determined to save the woman before she dies or the ship sails. Exhausted and terrified, he goes to the only person he trusts to help, Josie Bates. He brings with him a history she can't ignore, a problem that seems insurmountable, and a plea she can't refuse.

When a hurricane roars through Lacey Armstrong's home on the coast of Barefoot Bay, she decides all that remains in the rubble is opportunity. A new hotel is just what Mimosa Key needs, and Lacey and her teenage daughter are due for a fresh start. And nothing, especially not a hot, younger architect, is going to distract Lacey from finally making her dreams a reality.

Lena and Camilla are busy working away while a town vandal runs amok. Things get even more complicated when Jane Wyland pays Camilla a not-so-friendly visit and gives her an ultimatum: reveal Camilla's husband James' family secret or she will. Lena assures Camilla that nothing will come of the woman's threats, since the family has no secrets to hide. When Jane Wyland is later found dead, they're convinced that whatever secret she was planning to expose led to her death. With Lena's assistance, Camilla is determined to solve the case before the finger points at her.

A boy literally disappears from Main Street. A security camera captures the moment of his instant, inexplicable vanishing. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong: Four cops are gunned down; a TV news helicopter is shot and spins crazily out of the sky, triggering a disastrous cascade of events that ricochet across twenty different lives over the course of just 36 hours. Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves struggling to make sense of it all.

Oak Flat is a serene high-elevation mesa that sits above the Southeastern Arizona desert, 15 miles to the west of the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. For the San Carlos tribe, Oak Flat is a holy place, an ancient burial ground and religious site where Apache girls celebrate the coming-of-age ritual known as the Sunrise Ceremony. In 1995, a massive untapped copper reserve was discovered nearby.

It seems Carole Morganwick, the town vet, is from the old school of pet care. But when Stan swallows her pride and brings a very unwilling Nutty in for a checkup, she not only finds Carole dead under a pile of kibble...but also learns that she's in the dog house as the prime suspect! Finding the real killer and clearing her name will require some seriously surreptitious sniffing around...and hopefully, curiosity won't kill this innocent cat.

Lena is starting to feel like having it all may actually be possible! She and suspense novelist Camilla Graham are busily plotting their next novel and she's got a brand-new diamond ring on her finger thanks to her fiance, Sam West. The only blot on her Blue Lake life is a strange new corporation that has come to town called Plastisource. They seem to be intent on gobbling up prime real estate and changing the landscape of Lena's lovely adopted home. When she and Sam get a call from their good friend (and Blue Lake detective) Doug saying that his girlfriend - and Lena's pal Belinda - isn't answering her phone and missed a date with him, they all head out to her home.

When Helga Oliver, the town's elderly historian, is found crumpled in the basement of the Historical Museum, the close-knit town is devastated. But after some tenacious digging, Stan discovers Helga was pushed down the stairs—and that this picture-perfect New England town may hide some dark secrets.

As Halloween approaches, Stan is asked to cater a doggie costume party hosted by the Happy Cow Dairy Farm. Part of a local co-op, farmers Hal and Emmalee Hoffman have started opening up the farm for parties, offering a "haunted" corn maze as an added attraction. When Hal's lifeless body is found in the maze, the police at first suspect his wife, but Stan soon learns the dairy farmer had plenty of enemies—from bitter family members to shady business associates. If Stan can't extract a kernel of truth from the labyrinth of lies, she may be the next one to buy the farm.

For decades, evidence of the 1978 murder of Gwendolyn Elaine Fogle lay in the evidence room at the Walterboro Police Department. Special Agent Lieutenant Rita Shuler worked on the case shortly after she joined the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and she couldn't let it go, not even after her retirement in 2001. In May 2015, Lieutenant Shuler teamed up with new investigator Corporal Gean Johnson, and together they uncovered key evidence that had been overlooked. With new advancements in DNA and fingerprint technology, they brought the case to its end in just four months.

Not yet 16, Bellamy Larson - or Beam, as she'd rather be called - remembers everything. Truthfully, there's a lot she'd just rather forget. Beam never knew her father and doesn't ever want to. Her little brother died while saving her. And her mother self-medicates, leaving Beam to fend for herself. She doesn't need friends. She just needs to get away. Buzz Donovan is on a journey across America. Luckily for him, he has a friend - a dog named Hush. It's because of Hush, though, that Buzz is homeless. But that's his choice, because if it weren't for Hush, he'd be dead.