Showing results by narrator "Erin Bennett" in All Categories

In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture - one that marijuana built. Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana.

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

After breaking or tying more than 60 records in hockey, it's no wonder that Wayne Gretzky is known as "The Great One". Born in Brantford, Ontario, on January 26, 1961, in a nation obsessed with the sport, he threw himself into the game practically from the time he first laced up a pair of skates. When he retired from the NHL in 1999, he had led several teams to Stanley Cup victories, competed in the Olympics, and changed the way hockey was played forever.

Kelsey is on her way to a life do-over. And it's not the first time. Abandoned by her drug-addict mother as a teen, she landed in a foster-care group home where she experienced faith and community - and met her best friends, Jazz and Theadora. The trio stuck together like sisters and vowed to make their lives mean something. Now Kelsey's pushing thirty, and her life has taken a wrong turn. Pregnant and alone after loving the wrong man, she's on her way to making another life-changing decision when a blizzard strands her outside the sleepy town of Wishing Bridge.

This is the spellbinding tale of a mysterious doctor who revolutionized neonatal care more than 100 years ago and saved some 7,000 babies. Dr. Martin Couney's story is a kaleidoscopic ride through the intersection of ebullient entrepreneurship, enlightened pediatric care, and the wild culture of world's fairs at the beginning of the American Century.

When Jesse Crane returned to his roots to serve on the Miccosukee police force, he'd hoped to leave behind the violence of the city and the memories of his murdered wife. But bodies start to pile up in Jesse's corner of the sultry Florida swampland. As he probes these crimes, Jesse is drawn to the beautiful Lorena Fortier, a new hire at the local gator farm and research facility. Lorena is a little too interested in Jesse's investigation, but before he can uncover her true motives, they're both pulled into a dangerous web of greed, ambition, and animal cunning.

A hard-hitting reporter, Kate Beaumont unearths the deepest lies and brings harsh truths to light. But the story that lures her to the gentle town of Laurel Ridge, Pennsylvania, is closer to her heart than anyone knows. The details of her half brother's sudden death have never made sense. She owes him justice, yet the one man who can help her is the stubborn sheriff she can't stand.

Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the 20th century. Tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls were locked up - usually without due process - simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just "promiscuous." This discriminatory program, dubbed the "American Plan", lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness.

Sunny, the Ice Maiden, was the victim of a shocking crime. She and her date, abducted by strangers after a high school dance, were both assaulted, shot in the head, and left for dead in a remote farm field. The boy did die. Sunny barely survived and is now a reclusive artist and sculptor. As Britt and Miami's Cold Case Squad search for answers, nothing is as it seems.

Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.

It's the first day of school at Frederick Douglass Elementary and everyone's just a little bit nervous, especially the school itself. The school has a rough start, but as the day goes on, he soon recovers when he sees that he's not the only one going through first-day jitters.

Hollows Bend is a picture-perfect New England town where tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate – zero – is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett. The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can’t – or won’t – answer any questions. She won’t even tell them her name. While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town.

Life is hard. Life leaves you beaten, broken...alone. Then one day a stranger touches your hand, and you feel something intense, unforgettable, yet you want to forget. You need to forget. It's safer than believing in things you've decided don't exist. You know all about shattered promises and lost hope. You know them so much better than you know this excited, warm, wonderful feeling, and it scares you. He scares you, but he also makes you feel alive again. He makes you realize you haven't really been living.

Stricken. Dying. Laid low by the accursed dragon haters, Hualiama must confront the greatest powers of the age as Dramagon's disciples encircle the ultimate prize - her. A girl born of fire, raised by dragons, and imbued with the terrible, corrupting power of ruzal. Now, portents fill the sky. Legendary armies fly to war. The prophesied comet crashes into the Island-World, bearing the spirit of a malevolent ancient dragoness, Numistar Winterborn.

As the Empress ascends her throne and Numistar Winterborn plots to gain unstoppable power, it falls to a hatchling Star Dragoness to navigate the clash between two almighty forces. Upon her tiny shoulders rests the future of all Dragonkind. Yet, does a sinister mastermind lurk behind the war convulsing the Island-World? A supremely twisted, devious foe? Islands will be toppled from their roots. Nations will be ravaged by sword and talon. Legends will rise. And the courage of a girl born to dance, born to the flame of Dragon life, must withstand the ultimate test.

For twenty-one-year-old Gemma, life has never been normal. She knows nothing about her past and has been haunted by the same monsters in her nightmares for months. Unemotional and numb to life, she feels disconnected from everyone—until the very first day she cries. After that, nothing in her life is the same. Her emotions slowly begin to surface, and she starts experiencing love, happiness, and anger, feelings she never knew existed.

Catherine Eliot was born to a world of privilege and prestige, with a family whose last name and vast fortune provide her with access to almost anything she could wish for. But what Catherine craves most is independence. So while her friends settle into comfortable lives financed by doting parents and indulgent husbands, she moves to New York City, determined to make it on her own. Taking a demanding job in a bustling flower shop, she works hard and learns the trade until, with courage and determination, she’s able to open Blooms, an exclusive floral boutique on the Upper East Side.

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way. Hard work and immaculate planning turned her from invisible wallflower to prominent socialite, but there have been bumps along the way. Less than a year after her husband Jackson's tax-evasion scandal, Amber reigns supreme over the Bishops Harbor community. But with Jackson being released from prison, Amber's free time - and money - is vanishing. With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.

With a dying detective as her friend and source, Britt Montero probes the long unsolved sex murder of a small girl, which may implicate the front-runner in the governor's race. Britt also follows the trail of a diseased serial rapist who ambushes career women in the restrooms of the gleaming downtown towers that spike the Miami skyline. But soon, it's turnabout; the rapist is trailing Britt. Enraged by her stories, the rapist escalates his violence and focuses his obsession on her.

As a child, Meryl Frank was the chosen inheritor of family remembrance. Her aunt Mollie, a formidable and cultured woman, insisted that Meryl never forget who they were, where they came from, and the hate that nearly destroyed them. Over long afternoons, Mollie told her about the city, the theater, and, above all else, Meryl’s cousin, the radiant Franya Winter. Franya was the leading light of Vilna’s Yiddish theater, a remarkable and precocious woman who cast off the restrictions of her Hasidic famiy. Yet there was one thing her aunt Mollie would never tell Meryl: how Franya died.