Showing results by author "Donna Foley Mabry" in All Categories

The stories shared with me about Lena, my husband’s mother, were extraordinary. I heard many of them over the years, tales told to me by her son and his father, accounts that were often shocking, sometimes heart-wrenching, and always fascinating.

Kansas, 1852. Half-breed Everett Snipes discovers a newborn baby crying by the body of her mother. He recognizes the mother as the second wife of his cousin Wakiza, chief of the Village of Scouts located a few miles from the Army base. Everett rescues the infant and takes her to her family. The child’s people are being pushed out of their ancestral lands. In the East, rumblings of the coming war over slavery are already spreading across the nation, and Kansas, Bloody Kansas, will not escape the carnage.

Gramma was a showgirl, and under her direction, child prodigy Kaleigh McKenna hones her many talents. She sings! She dances! She plays a half-dozen instruments! As a teenager, Gramma takes her to Hollywood. With the aid of Gramma’s old friends in the business, Kaleigh lands a contract at Warner Brothers Studios, where she works with stars like Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland.

Meaghan Curran Quinn has her life all planned out. Newly graduated from Manhattan high school, she expects to study law at Kansas State and then to marry Arthur Franklin, her childhood sweetheart. Fate takes the future in its own hands and sends Meaghan on more than one dangerous journey. Before the storms pass, both her faith and her physical strength will be tested.

Eighth in The Manhattan Stories by Wall Street Journal top 10 best-selling author Donna Foley Mabry, Dan Curran Quinn | The Manhattan Stories: The Currans, Book Four continues the saga of the Curran Family. After a romance that started when he was still in high school, Dan Curran Quinn marries his longtime love, Kathleen O’Malley. They begin their lives together with a bright future, but a vengeful killer from Dan’s past has other plans.

The Civil War ended, but the turmoil of D’Arcy Curran’s life did not. Rather than give up the child she raised from birth, 16-year-old D’Arcy kidnaps her sister Suzanne’s son. The only safe place for her and little Danny is home…Manhattan, Kansas. Once there, D’Arcy learns that danger comes in many forms, and some of them are too close for comfort. Her father is murdered by marauding Jayhawkers. Her mother is lost in grief. D’Arcy faces the disapproval of many when she wears trousers, carries a gun, and takes over the responsibility for the farm.

On the Manhattan, Kansas, frontier of the 1870s, D’Arcy Curran, her adopted son, Dan, and her new husband, Royce Quinn, want nothing more than to raise a family and live in peace. Their plans are waylaid when the renegade Jayhawker who killed D’Arcy’s father returns from prison looking for revenge. Human treachery isn’t the only thing D’Arcy and Royce battle on their prairie home.

D’Arcy, 12, redheaded and freckled, curious and rebellious, wants to grow up and dominate her world. Suzanne, not yet 18, wants only to marry her handsome lieutenant from Fort Riley, Jonathan Taylor. The beginning of the Civil War and Suzanne’s one night of passion sends both girls' lives in an unexpected direction. A rash decision changes everything. Will D’Arcy and Suzanne be prepared for the consequences?

When an unspeakable tragedy destroys Barbara Winters’ life, she retreats into emotional isolation. Over two years pass before she decides to take a vacation, alone to Hawk Lake, at the top of Michigan’s lower peninsula. When she comes across a run-down building that once housed a nightclub, she is both mystified and intrigued. In her search for answers, she comes across a man who will change her life.

When Roxanne Russell’s mother dies, her father is away on a business trip. The young military widow leaves dozens of messages for her father, but receives no response. Looking for a copy of her mother’s obituary, Roxie reads an article in the newspaper and discovers her entire life is a web of lies, secrets, and deceit.

President Tim Connors is slipping badly in the polls and doesn’t stand a chance of being re-elected. Chief of Staff Arthur Locke blames the First Lady, abrasive feminist Congresswoman Rachel Connors. Locke thinks he has the solution. Wouldn’t it be easier to re-elect a handsome, grieving widower? When his plan to assassinate the President’s wife goes terribly wrong, Locke sets in motion a chain of events that could allow him eventually to place himself in the presidency.

After serving during WWII as a WAC armorer, Molly Evers partners with army buddy, Jake Kent, to open a private investigator’s office. Romantically involved with a Detroit police detective and sometimes working with the Detroit mob, she walks a tightrope that won’t give her room for a single wrong move. Follow Molly as she recounts five of her most memorable cases, including one she solves with help from Humphrey Bogart himself, during this most memorable year.

Las Vegas casino owner Alberto Minnelli has everything a man could want: wealth, power, family, friends, and a woman he loves. The only thing he needs that he can't buy is time. He finds there are still three people on his list: his nephew, Michael Bart, whom he raised as a son; his beautiful, talented young director of entertainment, Alexandra Merritt; and Dr. Zachary Peters. Before it's too late, Alberto wants to care for two of them, and he intends to kill the third.

When feisty redhead Alexandra Merritt inherits a Las Vegas casino, she finds she has her hands full. In addition to learning the ins and outs of running the Desert Flower, she must learn to deal with the famous and the infamous. Hot-shot athletes, movie stars, hookers, and stand-up comics come to her establishment, and when more than one of them winds up dead, Alex becomes embroiled in a mystery as hot as the Nevada desert. Alex isn't sure who wants her dead, but she better figure it out before the Desert Flower becomes Vegas's next morgue.

When Abigail Hightower’s father loses his bid for re-election as mayor of Skylark City, the young woman searches for a way to support her family. Her greatest asset is a lovely singing voice. All she has to do is find the right style. With her Aunt Winifred’s advice and the help of a handsome young musician, she’s soon working her way to a career.

La storia che ha commosso gli Stati Uniti. La storia vera di Maude, sposa a quattordici anni. "Era il 1906, avevo appena quattordici anni, ed era il giorno del mio matrimonio. Mia sorella maggiore, Helen, venne in camera mia, mi prese per mano e mi fece sedere sul letto. Aprì la bocca per dire qualcosa, poi arrossì e si voltò a guardare fuori dalla finestra. Dopo qualche istante, mi strinse la mano e tornò a guardarmi negli occhi.

In this collection, Donna Foley Mabry brings us a novella, a selection of seven short stories, and reminiscences of growing up in Detroit. In "Killer Coffee", four retired women gather daily on their patios in the 55-plus community where nothing exciting ever happens. They pass the time plotting imaginary murders. An unforeseen tragedy turns their murders into the real thing and reveals the one woman among them who might be capable of actually committing the crime. In “The Trade”, an aging actress will do anything to look younger.

Intrigue. Danger. Drama. All in a day’s work for Detroit detective Molly Evers and her partner Jake Kent. Follow their case files of 1949, from one that breaks Molly's heart and sets her on a path of revenge, to the last that draws her back to Hollywood and the biggest leading man in town.

After closing the memorable cases of 1947, private investigator Molly Evers finds that the end of one year and the beginning of the next doesn’t mean a break in the line of desperate clients looking for her help. This year she finds it’s her personal friends, some rolling in dough and others not knowing where their next meal is coming from, who need her skills. The year 1948 brings travel, murder, and mobsters as Molly solves cases from Vegas to Detroit to Hollywood and back again.