Showing results by narrator "Donna Postel" in All Categories

For dog trainer and search-and-rescue volunteer Raine Stockton, the last few months have been marked by murder, danger, and betrayal. A luxury vacation to the Caribbean resort island of St. Bart's sounds like the perfect antidote for stress, particularly since it includes three of her favorite traveling companions: her boyfriend, Miles; his daughter, Melanie; and Raine's happy-go-lucky golden retriever, Cisco. But even in paradise, trouble finds them.

Gilly O’Connell’s nightmares aren’t just bad dreams; they’re glimpses of terrifying realities to come. Gilly has spent her entire life trying to suppress the foreboding visions. So when a dismissed premonition leads to her husband’s murder, she buries the guilt and pain by running from it. Three years later, after overcoming a battle with addiction and starting over in a small Texas town, Gilly dares to believe the worst is over. That is, until another crime rips her heart open: the abduction of a three-year-old girl. Gilly knows more about it than anyone.... She’s dreaming again.

Birmingham detectives Kerri Devlin and Luke Falco arrive at the scene of a double homicide to discover that nothing makes sense. A woman and her child are dead, and though the husband says he killed them, the evidence says otherwise. Why would a man confess to unspeakable murders he didn’t commit? What starts as an open-and-shut case explodes into a web of new leads. Devlin and Falco get to work tracking down every single one - including a disturbing connection between the murders and Falco’s dark past.

Raine Stockton and her high-spirited, big-hearted golden retriever, Cisco, are accustomed to being heroes wherever they go. But there's a new dog in town, and Raine and Cisco find themselves upstaged by a flashy K-9 addition to the sheriff's department. Nike and her handler, Jolene, are part of a new government-funded program. Though Raine admires Nike's talent almost as much as she resents Jolene's arrogance, she wonders why the Department of Homeland Security would send such an expensive gift to their sleepy Smoky Mountain community.

Tyler, Channing, and Sammy Clauster have descended on their childhood home, with significant others and four-year-old twins in tow, for another good old-fashioned Christmas. Overwhelming holiday magic, as always, comes courtesy of their mom, Claire. They know she’s thrilled to cook, wrap gifts, decorate, accommodate, play games, overprepare every Christmas Eve Eve Eve tradition, and still let Dad be known as the Fun One. It’s her thing, right? Maybe the family should have paid closer attention. Because this year, something is a little off-key - and it’s not just the carols.

A weekend competition turns deadly in this seventh Raine Stockton Dog Mystery. While Raine and Cisco stalk a killer, back home a 20-year-old mystery is unfolding--one that will have devastating consequences for Raine and those she loves. And every hour that passes brings a deadly threat closer.

Raine Stockton knows dogs, not kids. Nonetheless, she is supremely confident in her ability to take care her fiancé’s 10-year-old daughter Melanie for a week while he is out of town. After all, how hard could it be? But things get complicated when Raine and her golden retriever Cisco rescue a dog who is locked in a hot car in a remote Smoky Mountain park and subsequently discover the owner of that car drowned in the creek only a few dozen yards away. Was it an accident, or was it murder?

The name Stockton has always carried weight in the small Smokey Mountain community of Hanover County, North Carolina, and Judge Jonathon Stockton was one of the most respected men in the county… until a scandal was uncovered that destroyed his legacy and shook his daughter, Raine, to the very foundation of her being. Now her father’s misdeeds are once again threatening to upend Raine’s world, this time in the form of a relative she never knew she had.

Dog trainer Raine Stockton has lived all her life in the quiet community of Hansonville, North Carolina. She is the daughter of a judge, the niece of a sheriff, and the ex-wife of a deputy. She does not lead the kind of life, generally speaking, in which people get buried in her backyard. But when Cisco, Raine's mischievous golden retriever, digs up human bones beneath the site of what will soon be her new training kennel, mayhem ensues.

Used for thousands of years by indigenous tribes of the Amazon rain forest, the mystical brew ayahuasca is now becoming increasingly popular in the West. Psychologist Rachel Harris here shares her own healing experiences and draws on her original research (the largest study of ayahuasca use in North America) into the powerful medicine's effects on depression, addiction, PTSD, and anxiety.

In these moving stories of Angelina Grimke Weld, wife of abolitionist Theodore Weld; Varina Howell Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis; and Julia Dent Grant, wife of Ulysses S. Grant, Carol Berkin reveals how women understood the cataclysmic events of their day. Their stories, taken together, help reconstruct the era of the Civil War with a greater depth and complexity by adding women's experiences and voices to their male counterparts.

Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon...and Beyond, the first full-length biography of Ron Howard, takes an in-depth look at the Oklahoma boy who gained national fame as a child star, then grew up to be one of Hollywood's most admired directors. Author Beverly Gray, an entertainment industry veteran, has spoken to teachers, friends, and professional colleagues from all phases of Howard's career. She has also combed the archives to gain further insight into this very private man whose accomplishments have brought pleasure to so many.

The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder's deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You'll learn details about Wilder's life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder's books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world.

Loving a woman you can’t have isn’t easy. Ben Gaines knows this all too well. He endured the slow torture of watching Shannon Miles live a life with another man - a man who didn’t deserve her - but he doesn’t regret a minute of it. And he has his reasons. Now, she’s free. No longer shackled to a loveless marriage, bound to someone who was unfaithful and heartless. But Shannon thinks her time has passed; that she won’t get another chance at love, especially with Ben.

The Galápagos archipelago is often viewed as a last foothold of pristine nature. For 60 years, conservationists have worked to restore this evolutionary Eden after centuries of exploitation at the hands of pirates, whalers, and island settlers. This book tells the story of the islands' namesakes - the giant tortoises - as coveted food sources, objects of natural history, and famous icons of conservation and tourism. By doing so, it brings into stark relief the paradoxical, and impossible, goal of conserving species by trying to restore a past state of prehistoric evolution.

The annual Hansonville, North Carolina Founder’s Day Festival it’s a perfect opportunity to raise money for the local animal shelter for Raine Stockton...but when a stranger wanders into her fund-raising booth, the peaceful country afternoon is turned into chaos.... When the unthinkable happens and an innocent life is placed in jeopardy, Raine is forced to make a terrible choice: one that will shake her to her very core and cause her to question not only herself, but everything she has ever believed.

In Uncovered, Leah Lax tells her story - beginning as a young teen who left her liberal, secular home for life as a Hasidic Jew and ending as a 40-something woman who has to abandon the only world she's known for 30 years in order to achieve personal freedom.

It's Christmas time, and for Raine Stockton and her Search and Rescue dog, Cisco, Hansonville, North Carolina is just like a Norman Rockwell painting - except for the rash of thefts of baby Jesus figurines from nativity scenes, an abandoned box of golden retriever puppies that someone leaves beside her mailbox, and a mysterious gift from one of Cisco's a grateful admirers. Raine already has her hands full with her own misbehaving pooches, unexpected house guests, and a complicated new relationship.

Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, two young Americans, Mark and Delia Owens, caught a plane to Africa, bought a thirdhand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working along animals that had never before been exposed to humans.

It's not news that Americans are sicker than ever. Seventy million of us suffer from digestive problems like acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or gastro esophageal reflex disorder (GERD). Another 40 million have been diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression and a staggering 50 million Americans live with an autoimmune disease. But what is newsworthy is that all of these conditions share a common thread you've probably never heard of: candida.