Showing results by narrator "Laural Merlington" in All Categories

His quest might be the salvation she needs… Cowboy-turned-banker Sam Castlerock arrives in Bear Creek, Wyoming, in a last-chance bid to prove himself to his father. He has one job to do: make the local bank profitable. The last thing he needs is a distraction—but she's the first thing he runs into. Emily Sands has never forgotten the cowboy she fancied as a teenager. And now he's back in town. But she's not the carefree youngster she once was. She's a woman now—with a woman's worries. Top on the list: keeping the family store afloat. Next: caring for her younger sister who needs extra help.

Between hosting a haunted house on her lawn, serving on the town’s 400th Anniversary Planning Committee, and prepping for the Fall Festival’s 10k fundraiser, Lilly has her hands full. She doesn’t have time for prickly newspaper reporter Tyler Crane, who’s been creeping around town, looking for dirt on Goosebush’s most notable families...until he’s found dead on the race route moments before the start. An unfortunate accident? Or did Tyler unearth a secret that someone in Goosebush is willing to kill to keep?

When Sol and Connie Blink move to Grand Creek, one of the first people to welcome them is an odd older woman, Fay Holaderry, and her friendly dog, Swift, who carries a very strange bone in his mouth. Sol knows a lot more than the average 11-year-old, so when he identifies the bone as a human femur, he and Connie begin to wonder if their new neighbor is up to no good.

College friends of Megan's beau, the handsome veterinarian Dr. Denver Finn, are in Winsome for a corporate volunteer event. They will be mentoring troubled kids from a nearby school during a hiking and camping trip. When one of Dr. Finn's friends is murdered at the state park, a student - a boy with a brutal history - becomes the prime suspect. With a teen's life at stake, Megan digs into the victim's past to clear the boy's name.

Megan Sawyer is determined to farm year-round. She's braving a December snowstorm after pitching her greenhouse greens to Philadelphia chefs when she sees a stranger stranded on the side of the road. It's Merry Chance's niece Becca, and she's headed to Winsome to sell her love potions at holiday events - or so she thinks. Merry has an ulterior motive in inviting her niece to Winsome, but her plan to reunite Becca with her estranged father goes awry when Becca's father turns up dead.

"A Rose for Her Grave" - the principal story of this collection - vividly recreates the cautionary tale of Randy Roth, a misogynistic sociopath from the Pacific Northwest whose rage was directed primarily at women and children. Addicted to his own greed, Roth exercised a powerful aura of control over his victims, using his ability to charm and boyish good looks to lower their defences. By the time they saw the reality of the madness in his eyes, it was usually too late. This, along with five other chilling cases, bears the stamp of classic Ann Rule.

It's the foundation of any enduring relationship between friends, lovers, spouses, and families. But when trust is placed in those who are not what they seem, the results can be deadly. Ann Rule, who famously chronicled her own shocking experience of unknowingly befriending a sociopath in The Stranger Beside Me, offers a riveting, all-new collection from her true-crime files, with the lethally shattered bonds of trust at the core of each blood-soaked account.

How often have you seen a teenage girl pretend to be perturbed, but secretly smile, when she is told that she acts or looks just like her mother? Fathers, brothers, and friends sometimes shake their heads in wonder as girls "turn into their mothers". This new collection from Chicken Soup represents the best stories from Chicken Soup's library on the special bond between mothers and daughters, and the magical, mysterious similarities between them.

With bravura storytelling, daring imagination, and fierce narrative control, this dazzling debut introduces that rare writer who finds humanity in our most unconventional behavior, and the humor beneath our darkest impulses. In these strange, funny, and unnerving stories, animals become the litmus test of our deepest fears and longings

Dasher is an adventurous young reindeer with a wish in her heart. She spends her days with her family under the hot sun in a traveling circus, but she longs for a different life - one where there is snow beneath her hooves and the North Star above her head. One day, when the opportunity arises, Dasher seizes her destiny and takes off in pursuit of the life she wants to live. It’s not long before she meets a nice man in a red suit with a horse-drawn sleigh - a man named Santa. And soon, with the help of a powerful Christmas wish, nothing will be the same.

Acclaimed for her "devastatingly accurate insight" ( The New York Times Book Review) into the criminal mind, Ann Rule has chronicled the most fascinating cases of our time in her best-selling Crime Files series. For this sixth stunning collection, Rule has culled from her private files the most-asked-about homicide cases – riveting accounts of seemingly normal men and women who are compelled by a murderous rage to suddenly lash out at innocent victims.

A harrowing stand-alone novel from Seatbelt Suspense author Brandilyn Collins. Seven years after her the disappearance of her best friend, Linda Jackson, skip tracer Joanne Weeks must locate a witness who can put the man who Joanne knows to be Linda's killer behind bars - before he silences Joanne for good.

After losing her father and her husband, Selina Peake is left to raise her only son on the farm that was left to her. Dirk Peake, a tenacious boy who grows up to be a successful bond salesman, must come to terms with his own regrets later in life after he decides not to pursue architecture, a passion that both he and his mother shared.

In the magical lands of Noland and Ix, two regions adjacent to Oz, the fairies of the forest of Burzee have made an incredible magic cloak that grants its wearer one wish. Queen Zixi, who is now 683 years old but appears just 16, covets the cloak in the hopes of reversing a curse that makes mirrors reflect her true age.

"Mackie dreaded the mail." From the simple beginning, Peter Abrahams opens the curtains on a mesmerizing world down on the Mexican border, a world of complex and passionate people whose ambitions will lead them on a relentless collision course, a desert world that rises to the mythic in Their Wildest Dreams. The suspense will grab you and not let you go, the surprises will shock you, but in the end it will be the wonderful characters who remain in your mind.

Rosie Gardener Bliss loses her best friend and business partner Vickie Winters the day she marries sweet-talking Kent Bliss. Vickie tried to warn Rosie that Kent is a handsome womanizer who's only marrying her for her money. Rosie believes Vickie is jealous, because overweight Rosie is getting married while slim Vickie remains single. On her third wedding anniversary Rosie decides she's had enough of Kent. He's ignored her, cheated on her, and spent her hard-earned money.

Darby Lane and Russell Gunn had been inseparable friends from their early years in the Horseshoe, their wonderful Baton Rouge neighborhood, all the way through to graduate school dreams and beyond. Then the unthinkable happens: a tragic accident takes Russ' life, and Darby's world is shattered.

These treasured stories from the most influential authors of the 19th and early 20th centuries are selected for their literary importance as well as their dramatic, oral qualities. Listen to these 10 unabridged classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, O. Henry, and Willa Cather.

The Reagans is a penetrating portrayal of one of the most powerful couples of the 20th century. Distinguished biographer Anne Edwards paints the first in-depth, intimate portrait of the man who became our 40th president and the woman without whom he might never have reached such heights. It was a dramatic love story from the start: Nancy was always first in Reagan's thoughts, and he was paramount in Nancy's actions. But this obsessional love had a darker side for the four Reagan children.

With her family’s safety at stake, Megan must pick her way through the von Tresslers’ sordid family secrets and colorful personalities. She discovers that the malice that’s befallen Winsome has roots in the past, and she’ll need to dig deep to weed truth from lies and innocence from guilt, or the body count will grow even higher.