Showing results by narrator "Judith West" in All Categories

When Cat arrives in Portugal, she discovers that her friend Tónio has installed his ex-lover, Mateus, in the apartment, where he too is dying - of AIDS. As Cat struggles to untangle a complicated web of present desires and past secrets, she makes a series of shocking discoveries.

After spending a year in prison, Ralph Fisher has explicit plans for his first night of freedom: tonight, someone will be held accountable. He goes to murderous lengths to obtain the address of his former wife - the woman he blames for his fate and against whom he has sworn vengeance. Determined to bring her to his idea of justice, Ralph's next step is to travel from Florida's sandy beaches to Dayton, Ohio, where his ex-wife is struggling to make ends meet on Mad River Road.

Disturbed when five books about death are returned overdue to the library, slashed and containing a warning on a bookmark, library employee Kathleen is terrified when people close to her start falling victim to tragic "accidents".

From the introduction by James Thompson: Finland, the myths and truths. Internationally, it has a reputation as perhaps the best place in the world to live. A great economy. A low crime rate. Good and nearly cost-free health care. The needy are provided for by the state and live in reasonable comfort. Finns: peaceful and quiet people, living in the perfect example of a social democracy functioning as it should. A tourist, or even a person who has lived here for a length of time, might well view Finland as such.

Based on an acclaimed short story that was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, "Darker Angels" takes the reader from the bloodstained battlefields of Virginia to the slave auctions of Haiti. Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, Lord Byron, and Marie Leveau, the legendary voodoo queen of New Orleans, all have a part to play in the epic tale of a mysterious, one-eyed shaman who dares to raise the dead from the battlefields of the Civil War.

Though Carolyn’s mother never expected to inherit Glanton House from long-lost Aunt Hazel, she wants to make the most of the opportunity. Planning to turn the creaky waterfront mansion into a hotel, she moves Carolyn down to the seashore. But this house has a nightmarish history. As the story goes, Captain Glanton spent so long at sea that his wife, believing him dead, took a new lover. When her husband finally returned, her new love - a mysterious drifter - brutally murdered him, and she went mad with grief.

In the midst of the Great Depression, seventeen-year-old Lanie Freeman hopes to keep her family together, become a writer, and find love. But an unexpected health crisis and a devastating town scandal leave the Freeman family reeling. Will their faith uphold them as they struggle to survive?

When their vehicle is hit by a truck, that did not have its lights on, Gayle and Stephanie seek refuge at the deserted farmhouse of Gayle's Aunt Pat. They soon become suspicious after a series of strange events...

It's Darcy Thomas' summer home: the Dungeon of Horrors, owned by Jake, the gorgeous green-eyed uncle she's just met. But the gory fun turns to terror when real bodies are found with the mark of a vampire on their throats - and Darcy is targeted as the next victim.

Born into affluence, Mia Stanley is a winsome socialite with a knack for matchmaking. She's also a writer for Godey's Lady's Book magazine, much to the dismay of her family and their society friends. A proper young lady of her social standing isn't meant to labor in such a way, but Mia has always had a way with words. When her writing draws her into the world of downtrodden seamen's wives on Philadelphia's docks, Mia uncovers an alarming scheme that puts her in harm's way.

The unimpeachable Elenora Villars is the pride of New Orleans. Her magnificent auburn hair is her crowning glory and her benevolence is the talk of the town. Once a nurse to injured Americans in Niagara, Elenora has become famous for her compassionate works. The widow of a Spanish nobleman, Elenora has secured herself a respected place in high society. But she has a secret that could destroy her good name. Colonel Grant Farrell is the only man who knows what Elenora really is and the secrets she is hiding, but he doesn't care.

In 1941, with America at war, Ann Pollock falls in love. Handsome, charming attorney Phillip Coulter is everything she could want in a man and mate. But soon after they marry, Phillip leaves to fight for his country. When he comes home, he's a stranger, his body and spirit broken in a Japanese POW camp. It is only Ann's indomitable will and determination to succeed against all odds that keeps her family together.

A riveting memoir of the first Israeli-born Jewish American to be sent as a Peace Corps volunteer to a closed Arab society. A good memoir is a survivor's tale - the story of a person who has faced obstacles and made it through well enough to tell it. Dalya Cohen-Mor, a Sabra-born American woman, volunteered to serve in the Peace Corps, went through a lengthy and highly competitive application process, was accepted, and was sent to serve in the predominantly Palestinian country of Jordan.

Five Lessons I Didn't Learn From Breast Cancer is Shelley Lewis' thoroughly modern, slightly contrarian take on "doing" breast cancer in an epiphany-free zone, where the goal is simply to get through it and get the hell back to your life. She proves chemotherapy can eradicate everything except a sense of humor.

Beginning with "Why Women Fight Pirates," Walley writes, "A real woman will not be content with one man. With one man, she will rage, eat into herself and him. She will jump off the pirate ship onto a ship that is gracefully billowing with sails of humanity and the caring of, a ship full of love, of fools. She will not stay isolated in one man's private war with his maleness."

This year, a modern-day Scrooge learns the true meaning of Christmas with the help of a suddenly sexy old friend. A down-on-his-luck baseball star finds a beautiful new beginning with a hometown girl. And a prim-and-proper teacher is determined to bring out the holiday spirit in a grumpy tree farmer. Settle in for the season with this collection of very merry short fiction.

Almost everyone prays: believers, unbelievers, wannabe believers, and might-have-been believers. It assures us all in our many parts and many moods that everything is going to be okay, despite any evidence to the contrary. When people say, “I don’t know how to pray,” what they often mean is “I don’t believe.” Or perhaps they are struggling with disappointment or anger with God and have taken a break from their prayer life.

Janet works as a telephone operator in 1950s Richmond, Va. When she patches through a call for help from a child reporting an intruder at an isolated farm, she realizes she knows the family. Enlisting the help of the man she desires, she makes an emergency trip to help someone in danger - or is it, really, to help herself?

The Capulets and the Montagues had nothing on the Ryders and the Morgans! But despite the fact that each one was from one of the rival ranching families, Jenny Ryder and Win Morgan had a passionate summer affair four years ago - one that resulted in pregnancy. They got married and promptly lost the baby. Heartbroken, Jenny let herself be talked into divorcing Win…without ever having revealed the marriage to her family - or his. Now Jenny's back, and one impulsive night means that Jenny and Win are about to be parents again! This time, they have to fess up.

Hearing an old lover’s song on the radio while she’s taking her daughter to kindergarten carries the narrator back to her complicated affair with the singer, and to a meditation on what is, what was, and what might have been.