Showing results by narrator "Pilar Witherspoon" in All Categories

Eleven-year-old Amrie St. Pierre is catching tadpoles with her friend Finn O'Reilly when the Federal fleet first steams up the Mississippi River in the spring of 1862. With the surrender of New Orleans, Amrie's sleepy little village of St. Francisville - strategically located between the last river outposts of Vicksburg and Port Hudson - is now frighteningly vulnerable. As the roar of canons inches ever closer and food, shoes, and life-giving medicines become increasingly scarce, Amrie is forced to grow up fast.

It is 1864 and Eliza Spooner's husband Will has joined the Kansas volunteers to fight the Confederates, leaving her with their two children and in charge of their home and land. Eliza is confident that he will return home, and she helps pass the months making a special quilt to keep Will warm during his winter months in the army.

Eighteen-year-old Laurel Millard, youngest of seven children, is expected to stay home and "take care of Mama" by her older siblings, but Laurel has dreams of starting her own family. Operating a silk loom at the Atlanta Exposition will give her the chance to capture the heart of a man wealthy enough to take care of Laurel and any children she might bear, as well as her mother. Willie Sharp is not well-off and must take on an extra job at the Atlanta Exposition as a security guard.

After Aggie Dunkirk's career is unceremoniously ended by her own mistakes, she finds herself traveling to Wisconsin, where her grandmother, Mumsie, lives alone in her rambling old home. She didn't plan for how eccentric Mumsie has become, obsessing over an old, unsolved crime scene - even going so far as to re-create it in the dollhouse. Mystery seems to follow her when she finds work as a secretary helping to restore the flooded historical part of the cemetery. Forced to work with the cemetery's puzzling, yet attractive archeologist, she exhumes the past's secrets.

Alexandra Brighton has spent the last five years in Boston, with all evidence of the wild frontier girl she used to be erased. Before she settles down, she's determined to visit her childhood home. When she finds herself far from her destination, she has no choice but to have the rugged Malcolm Kincaid escort her to Montana. Now that Malcolm finally has the name and location of the man who killed his brother, he has no interest in protecting a pampered Eastern lady. But something about her tells him he just can't leave her behind.

Thirteen-year-old Loyal Raines is supposed to stay close to home on a hot summer day in 1934. When he slips away for a quick swim in the river and finds a dead body, he wishes he'd obeyed his mother. The ripples caused by his discovery will impact the town of Beverly, West Virginia, in ways no one could have imagined.

Left at an orphanage as a child, Thea Reed vowed to find her mother someday. Now grown, her search takes her to Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, in 1908. When clues lead her to a mental asylum, Thea uses her experience as a postmortem photographer to gain access and assist groundskeeper Simeon Coyle in photographing the patients and uncovering the secrets within. However, she never expected her personal quest would reawaken the legend of Misty Wayfair, a murdered woman who allegedly haunts the area and whose appearance portends death.

Holding her lovely head high, Wyoming schoolmistress Caroline Chalmers did what no lady should: She marched right into the local saloon to see the dashing and reckless Guthrie Hayes. Worse still, she went to ask him for help. She needed the former Confederate raider to plan a jailbreak to rescue her fiancé, Seaton Flynn, from the hangman's noose. An orphan by spinster sisters, Caroline was prepared do almost anything to save her beloved Seaton.

After almost 20 years of caring for elderly parents - first for their senile father and then for their cantankerous 93-year-old mother - author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, 23 rooms bulging with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum thought, How tough will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags. But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined.

May, 1924. It's been months since young British widow Emma Blackstone arrived in Hollywood to serve as companion to Kitty Flint: her beautiful silent-movie star sister-in-law. Kitty is generous, kind-hearted . . . and a truly terrible actress. Not that Emma minds; she's too busy making her academic parents turn in their graves with her new job writing painfully historically inaccurate scenarios for Foremost Studios. So when one of Kitty's old flames calls Emma and tells her it's imperative he meet with Kitty that morning, she's not surprised. Until, that is, he adds that lives depend on it.

Courtney Adams never questioned the future her parents laid out for her...until the day she was to marry one of Boston's elite. Desperate, she flees the church in a flurry of bridal finery and trades her pearls for a train ticket to Montana - only to be mistaken for a surly cowboy's mail order bride.

Although Everett Cline can hardly keep up with the demands of his homestead, he won't humiliate himself by looking for a helpmate ever again--not after being jilted by three mail-order brides. When a well-meaning neighbor goes behind his back to bring yet another mail-order bride to town, he has good reason to doubt it will work, especially after getting a glimpse at the woman in question. She's the prettiest woman he's ever seen, and it's just not possible she's there to marry a simple homesteader like him.

In 1929, a spark forms between talented watercolorist Eliza and William, a charming young man who has been hired to forge her popular paintings. Her aunt makes it clear Eliza should stay away from him because of a feud between their families over missing heirloom silver. But the source of the rivalry was long ago, and as the two get to know each other, they fall in love. William regrets the job that desperation led him to take and their families' ongoing bitterness, but setting things right comes at a cost.

Alice runs a New Orleans flower shop alongside her aunt, but thoughts of her mother, who went missing during Hurricane Katrina, are never far from her mind. After getting off on the wrong foot with a handsome yet irritating man who comes to her shop, Alice soon realizes their worlds overlap - and the answers they both seek can be found in the same place.

Colt Brannigan always does the right thing, so he hires vulnerable Geena Williams as his housekeeper. But is this beautiful stranger trouble with a capital "T?" Geena is overwhelmed - it takes a brave man to hire a woman with a past like hers. In return for the second chance, she'll make his house a home he'll want to come back to after a hard day's work.Colt can be gruff, but to Geena his hard-won smile is as tender as a caress. He's let her into his home; maybe one day he'll let her into his heart?

Clay Gregory's known Megan Briggs her whole life, and he's been plenty worried about her while she's been getting medical treatment. Now she's back home and hiding away on the family ranch. Knowing the stubborn cowgirl won't accept his help willingly, he invites her to a family wedding to help him avoid his aunt's matchmaking! He plans to remind Meg she's still the girl who can beat him in a horse race! But as she steps out in her curve-hugging red dress, her skills on a horse are suddenly the furthest thing from his mind….

When Frances Bumgarten encounters a handsome stranger in her kitchen in the middle of the night, her first impulse is to wallop the scoundrel on the head with a bread paddle. And when Frankie discovers he is "The Fox", a disarmingly arrogant purveyor of gossip among England's aristocracy, she's tempted to take a second swing. Never mind that Reynard Boulton, nephew of the Viscount Tannehill, is returning her inebriated uncle safely home. This chiseled intruder has sparked an infuriating physical sensation unlike anything the feisty Nevada silver heiress has experienced.

In Massachusetts in 1824, Josephine Clayton awakes on the table of the doctor she's assisted all these months. She was presumed dead by all and has become the doctor's next corpse for his medical research. Frightened, the doctor tries to kill her, but Josephine begs to be spared. A deal is struck - Josie will leave her village and work at a distant cotton mill.

The youngest of four spirited American sisters, Sarah Bumgarten has studiously avoided her mother's attempts to find her a titled husband among London's aristocracy. Now, after an earl's very public rejection, it seems her ideal mate will be anyone but a duke, a marquis, a baron, or a viscount. Thankfully, there are no noblemen in sight at Betancourt, the country estate where Sarah takes refuge. Its rightful owner, the Duke of Meridian, sibling to Sarah's brother-in-law, has been absent for years.

Abandoned by his mail-order bride, Silas Jonesey has fought an uphill battle to recover from a pattern of poor choices. Now his prayers for reconciliation have finally come true, and his estranged wife has contacted him with her whereabouts. Kate Dawson was supposed to be a mail-order bride, but upon realizing she'd been deceived about her intended groom, she's now settled into life as a schoolteacher. When the mother of a student passes away, Kate assumes she'll take on care of nine-year-old Anthony - until two men suddenly show up in town, claiming to be the boy's father.