Showing results by narrator "Natalie Ross" in All Categories

Paradise, Idaho, may not be the largest town, but for newly minted professor Zoe Santangelo, it's the first step on the path to her big break. After teaching in a small Idaho school, her next stop is the Ivy League, and no one is going to stand in her way. She'll do what it takes to move up, to protect her students from a creepy campus stalker - and to protect her heart from Cal Jackson, the hot, hunky cowboy who keeps coming to her rescue.

On a cool October morning, Lauren Wilder is shaken when she comes close to striking Bo Laughlin with her car as he's walking along the road's edge. A young man well known in their small town of Hardys Walk, Texas, Bo seems fine, even if Lauren's intuition says otherwise. Since the accident two years ago that left her brain in a fragile state, she can't trust her own instincts - and neither can her family. Then Bo vanishes, and as the search for him ensues, the police question whether she's responsible.

Construction tip #1: Never anger a hot-tempered woman who knows how to wield a sledgehammer. And right now, Jill Sadler is spitting mad. Her company is competing on the wildly popular show Texas Dream Home, and she intends to give it her all. The opposition: We Nail It Contractors, helmed by the man who once married her...and walked out twenty-four hours later. Jill can't let Cal Reynolds take this round. Not when she has her foster sisters and years of righteous resentment spurring her on.

When Liz Dougherty’s first reporting assignment for her North Carolina college newspaper finds her covering a state senator’s impromptu press conference, she has no idea how drastically her life is about to change. Senator Brady Maxwell may look the part with his devastating good looks and impeccable style, but his politics rub Liz the wrong way, and she’s not going to let him off easy. Liz’s hardball question catches Brady off guard and shows her editor, Hayden Lane, that she’s headed places as journalist. But to Liz’s surprise, she’s also headed for a secret, high-stakes romance with Brady Maxwell.

Gabe Wilde has never been more ready for a change. Thirty-three and in the midst of a divorce, he's packed up his second-grade daughter and come home to Birch Bay, Montana. New house, new career, new life. Only, with changes come stress. His daughter is struggling with the transition to their new norm - and Gabe is out of ideas as to how to help.

With Congressman Brady Maxwell up for reelection and journalist Liz Dougherty about to graduate into a promising career, the ambitious couple's future is brighter than ever. They share a passion for their work… and for each other. But when Brady holds a press conference to officially introduce Liz as his girlfriend, reporters hungry for a scandal bombard her. Now, her every move is under a vicious magnifying glass, and her life feels like it's falling apart.

It should be the best day of their lives. Too bad they never get to see it. On the cusp of their 21st birthday, he strikes. His victims are always twins, their ritualistic murders planned in exquisite detail, down to the moment when they breathe their last together....

Joanie Bigbee, cupcake baker extraordinaire, likes to keep her options open - and she's good at it. She's started and sold some 30 businesses in her postage stamp-sized Tennessee town, and at the moment she can be found in a short skirt and go-go boots, selling cupcakes out of the back of a converted Volkswagen van. What she moves on to next is anybody's guess. She knows better than to be tied down. In any way. She's watched every woman in her family fall head-over-heels, only to find herself wondering how to pick up the pieces when love is lost.

After a devastating flood orphaned Noelle Brown, she thought her handsome and charming benefactor, Andrew Paige, could be the man of her dreams. So why did his steely-eyed older stepbrother, Jared Dunn, make her heart race and her breath catch in her throat?Desperado turned lawman, Jared had come home to Fort Worth, Texas, ready to leave his dangerous past behind. The green-eyed, feisty young woman his stepbrother had taken in wasn’t the gold digger Jared had expected. Far from it....

As a therapist specializing in sexual issues, psychiatrist Dr. Morgan Snow isn't easily shocked, or shaken, as readers of the popular "Butterfield Institute" novels know. There are times, however, when the need for her services leads her out of the office... and into unfamiliar worlds. In these stories, the therapist matches her wits -and her training - against three men of mystery: Jack Reacher, John Rain, and Cotton Malone.

It was stolen from a New Orleans grave - the centuries-old bust of an evil man, a demonic man. It’s an object desired by collectors - and by those with wickedness in their hearts. One day, its current owner shows up at Danni Cafferty’s antiques shop on Royal Street, the shop she inherited from her father. But before Danni can buy the statue, it disappears, the owner is found dead…and Danni discovers that she’s inherited much more than she realized. In the store is a book filled with secret writing: instructions for defeating evil entities. She’d dismissed it as a curiosity...until the arrival of this statue.

Nestled among rolling hills and painted with vibrant wildflowers, the bucolic town of Storm, Texas, seems like nothing short of perfection. But there are secrets beneath the façade. Dark secrets. Powerful secrets. The kind that can destroy lives and tear families apart. The kind that can cut through a town like a tempest, leaving jealousy and destruction in its wake along with shattered hopes and broken dreams. All it takes is one little thing to shatter that polish.

Sandrine Salome flees New York for her grandmother's Paris mansion to escape her dangerous husband. The house, famous for its lavish art collection and elegant salons, is mysteriously closed up. Although her grandmother insists it's dangerous for Sandrine to visit, she defies her and meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing young architect. Together they explore the hidden night world of Paris, the forbidden occult underground, and Sandrine's deepest desires.

A story that tugs at the heartstrings...Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with a stern, inaccessible father following her mother’s death. Unable to fit in at school, she forges alliances where she can: With her housekeeper, with a pimply fellow misfit named Cynthia, and with the gorgeous Taylor, who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. Most frustrating of all is Katie’s imperfect friendship with the proprietor of a local gas station, a handsome twenty-three-year-old who shares her love of checkers but doesn’t return her crush.

Macy Lockhart’s life shattered in a moment with the news that her husband, Finn – serving in the military overseas – has been killed in the line of duty. Their ardent marriage is over, leaving Macy alone, empty, directionless. But while she tries to sustain herself with memories of Finn, who made her and their small Texas ranch the center of his life, it is wealthy Wyatt Clark who slowly brings joy back into her life - until the day that Finn, miraculously spared from death, returns home to claim his bride….

Elementary school teacher Jane Aaron cancels her summer vacation plans and heads to Cedar Springs, Texas, to find her birth mother. While there, she’s hired by Asher Price, a wealthy widower, to look after his 13-year-old daughter, Riley, and five-year-old son, Levi. Around town, Jane also hears rumors that an older woman was killed in the same car accident that claimed Asher’s wife.

Cole Whitehall had asked Lacy Jarrett to wait for him. But after the war, he returned to the rambling Whitehall cattle ranch a changed man, the promise of lasting love replaced by a cold, hard distance. Lacy yearned to reignite the once inseparable couple’s unquenched passion. Unwittingly compromised into marriage, the handsome Texan refused to come under Lacy’s thumb. But the hard press of aching desire had her longing to learn the secrets Cole harbored in his heart. Tormented, she wouldn’t let him shoulder the burden alone....

A body washes up on a pristine beach. The dead man's skull has been bashed open, and his upper body is covered in neo-Nazi tattoos. The cops pick up Homer, a schizophrenic, who has been showing off a wristwatch he says God gave him. The watch is engraved with a symbol that matches one of the dead man's tattoos. Even though Homer could never have inflicted such damage on a man twice his weight and half his age, he is immediately arrested.

Cole Whitehall had asked Lacy Jarrett to wait for him. But after the war, he returned to the rambling Whitehall cattle ranch a changed man, the promise of lasting love replaced by a cold, hard distance. Lacy yearned to reignite the once inseparable couple’s unquenched passion. Unwittingly compromised into marriage, the handsome Texan refused to come under Lacy’s thumb. But the hard press of aching desire had her longing to learn the secrets Cole harbored in his heart. Tormented, she wouldn’t let him shoulder the burden alone....

Betty Jewel Hughes was once the hottest black jazz singer in Memphis. But when she finds herself pregnant and alone, she gives up her dream of being a star to raise her beautiful daughter, Billie, in Shakerag, Mississippi. Now, ten years later, in 1955, Betty Jewel is dying of cancer and looking for someone to care for Billie when she’s gone. With no one she can count on, Betty Jewel does the unthinkable: she takes out a want ad seeking a loving mother for her daughter.