Showing results by narrator "Marguerite Gavin" in All Categories

In The Tender Years, Virginia Simpson managed to struggle through adolescence and was looking forward to stepping into adulthood. When her graduation day arrives, she walks to the podium as the class valedictorian to the proud grins of her grandparents, Marty and Clark Davis. College beckoned, and life seemed to be well in hand.

The residents of Alaska’s largest national park are stunned by the death of one of their oldest members, 87-year-old Old Sam Dementieff...even private investigator Kate Shugak. Sam, a lifelong resident, dubbed the “father” of all of the Park rats - even though he had no children of his own - was especially close to Kate, his niece, but even she is surprised to discover that in his will he’s left her everything, including a letter instructing her simply to, “find my father".

Between tourist season, planning her beach wedding, and running her pancake house, the Flip Side, Marley McKinney is busier than ever. On top of that, one of her regulars is competing in Wildwood Cove's Golden Oldies Games - a sporting event for athletes 50 and over - and Marley wants to cheer her on. Everything's running as smooth as batter - until sports reporter Yvonne Pritchard stirs up a triple batch of trouble. Yvonne has one admirer in town - Ed Herman - but she has many more enemies. So when a body washes up on shore, it's not a complete surprise Yvonne is the victim.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, writer Kathleen Flinn returned with no idea what to do next, until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals.

Marley and her new husband, Brett, need some quality couple time before the holiday madness, so they drive up into the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula to charming Holly Lodge. Despite some barely concealed marital tension between the owners of the lodge, they're finally able to unwind.... Until one morning when they notice a glove sticking out of a snowbank outside of the lodge. Inside the glove is a hand connected to a frozen corpse buried beneath the snow - lodge owner Kevin Manning has been murdered.

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Mark Hyman, and Andrew Weil, pioneering integrative pediatric neurologist Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD, reveals the shocking contents of children's food, how it's seriously harming their bodies and brains, and what we can do about it. And she presents the first nutritional plan for getting and keeping children healthy - a plan that any family can follow.

This summer, Wildwood Cove is hosting a special event, Wild West Days, to celebrate the town's storied past. Wildwood Cove's museum is also getting a new lease on life thanks to a longtime resident's generous bequest. Several locals, including Marley McKinney-Collins, owner of the Flip Side pancake house, offer to transfer artifacts to the beautiful restored Victorian that will become the museum's home. But there's an unappetizing development when a volunteer, Jane Fassbinder, is found dead - bludgeoned with an antique clothes iron.

Once solely the province of ivory-tower professors and college classrooms, contemporary philosophy was finally emancipated from its academic closet in 2010, when "The Stone" was launched in The New York Times. First appearing as an online series, the column quickly attracted millions of readers through its accessible examination of universal topics like the nature of science, consciousness, and morality while also probing more contemporary issues such as the morality of drones, gun control, and the gender divide.

Edgar-award winning author Dana Stabenow is best known for her Kate Shugak novels, but the unifying protagonist of almost all her writing - be it crime, fantasy, horror, or science fiction - is Alaska. This genre-spanning collection of 16 short stories features familiar characters like Kate and Jim, Liam and Wy, and Bill and Moses, but also ranges farther afield than many listeners will expect.

With a Hollywood film crew in town to shoot a remake of the horror classic The Perishing, the residents of Wildwood Cove are all abuzz. Even Marley McKinney, owner of The Flip Side Pancake House, can overlook the fact that the lead actress, Alyssa Jayde, happens to be an old flame of her boyfriend. After all, the crew loves Marley's crêpes - so much so that Christine, the head makeup artist, invites her on set for a behind-the-scenes tour. But when Marley arrives, the special-effects trailer is on fire...with Christine inside.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...except when it doesn't. Kitty and Ben return to their werewolf pack in Denver only to discover an invisible evil that smells of brimstone and plays with fire has followed them home. Stalking the whole pack, it leaves a charred trail of ashes and death across the city. Kitty seeks help from Rick, the master vampire of Denver, as well as from the paranormal investigators on a popular reality television show.

Katie Lapp's identity has been shattered ever since she was painfully torn from her close-knit community in the frightening ordeal called the shunning. Katie, now Katherine Mayfield, sets out to find the ailing birth mother she has never known. Her journey takes her to places where electric lights and telephones set Katherine's mind whirling with "fancy" things and where she stumbles into a world of betrayal, where the plain garb of the Amish is misused to disguise an evil conspiracy.

An excerpt from the book: "In the dimness of the early morning I could see field after neighborhood field as I let my gaze wander around me. First there was ours, I supposed I would always think of the farm as ours, Grandpa's, Uncle Charlie's, and mine, though in truth it really was just mine now. Guess that was one of the reasons I was whistling. Just yesterday Grandpa and Uncle Charlie had signed all the official papers to make the farm mine, really and legally mine."

A vision in a dream. A long-awaited healing. Protection from an accident waiting to happen. Angels Among Us is a collection of stories of everyday people - little children, old women, young men, and more - who had their lives stopped for a moment and redirected with a little help from above.

Hannah Whitall Smith originally wrote The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life in 1875 as an article for her husband's inspirational magazine. The book subsequently became a worldwide best seller that has influenced generations.

Chester Henry and his adult granddaughter Clare lovingly repair old typewriters and restore old books. Who ever thought their quaint store would hold the key to some modern-day trouble? When a stranger to town demands they turn over an antique Underwood typewriter they're repairing for a customer, Clare fears she may need to be rescued. A call to the police scares the man off, but later Clare finds his dead body in the back alley. What about a dusty old typewriter could possibly be worth killing for?

Motherhood often looks like bottomless piles of laundry; a sink full of dishes; sleepless nights; and unshowered, nonstop, endless days. No wonder "Grumpy Mom" sometimes sneaks into your heart and home. Journey with Valerie and be inspired and equipped to find energy in the most unlikely places, pursue your own dreams, be set free from mom guilt, feel content despite unfinished to-do lists, spend purposeful time with God amid the daily chaos, and discover more joyous moments of motherhood. So take a holiday from Grumpy Mom, and enjoy life as the mom God made you to be.

A mushroom hunting foray turns gruesome when Kate Shugak stumbles across a burnt, decaying corpse amid a grove of morels. Was the deceased the hapless victim of last year's forest fire? Why has no one reported him missing? And why wasn't he wearing any clothes? Absent evidence of foul play, the troopers are inclined to call it death by misadventure; Kate's instincts suggest otherwise, leading her down a path that requires her to confront issues of community, faith, and free will.

On New Year's Day, Fran takes her dog Latte on a walk. Luck of all luck, she finds a dead blonde on the sidewalk—right outside Ryan's house. Sammy, Fran's best friend, has been staying with Ryan, and she becomes the police's number one suspect. Fran can't just sit back and watch her best friend—and the cafe's best latte-maker—go to jail.

When winter's done, but spring has not yet fully sprung, much of Alaska turns to slush. Locally, it's called "breakup," and it's a…messy time of year. It's certainly messy for Kate Shugak; between doing her taxes, being chased by grizzlies, and getting shot at by feuding families, she has to cope with an NTSB investigation that hits very close to home. Then, of course, there's the body in the woods. And up at the old mining town. And…being Kate Shugak, somehow she can't leave well enough alone, and begins to tease apart a well-planned and surprising crime.