Showing results by narrator "Karen Peakes" in All Categories

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined.

At 5:02 p.m. on June 5, 1986, an emergency call came into the local sheriff’s office in the small town of Auburn, Washington State. A distressed housewife, Stella Nickell, said her husband, Bruce, was having a seizure. Officers rushed to the Nickells' mobile home to find Stella standing frozen at the door…. Bruce was on the floor fighting for his life.

Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her hus­band, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted and, as the company’s legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.

Savannah Webster is trying to find her way forward. She and her husband, Hez, have been separated since tragedy tore them apart and he began numbing his grief and guilt with alcohol. She returned to Tupelo Grove University, which her family helped found over a century ago, to teach history. When Hez turns up in her classroom asking for a second chance, she rejects the idea immediately. But twenty-four hours later she’s under suspicion for murder, and since Hez is the best attorney she knows, she reluctantly asks him for help.

Terror stalks the streets of Bayou Breaux, Louisiana. A suspected murderer is free on a technicality, and the cop accused of planting evidence against him is ordered off the case. But Detective Nick Fourcade refuses to walk away. He’s stepped over the line before. This case threatens to push him over the edge. He’s not the only one. Deputy Annie Broussard found the woman’s mutilated body. She still hears the phantom echoes of dying screams. She wants justice.

In a secluded farm house in the Pacific Northwest, a family has been slaughtered - and a teenage son has disappeared. Single mother and cop Emily Kenyon spearheads a dark hunt for a killer. But Emily's teenage daughter, Jenna, is one step ahead of her. Then another family is butchered, and another. As Emily fits the puzzle pieces together, she makes a chilling discovery: The killer is coming after her and her daughter....

Savannah Webster's life finally seems to be going right. She's happily planning her second wedding to attorney and ex-husband Hez and dreaming of their future at TGU, the university founded by her family. But a string of earthshaking blows threatens to destroy it all. Savannah is passed over for a tenure position but is then offered the role of university president. But saving her beloved university will put her at odds with her father--and there haven't been many times in her life that she's been able to stand up to him.

Since her police-officer husband Eric's mysterious murder, Carly Harris has been struggling to support herself and their infant son. Her career as an antique dealer isn't sustainable, nor is her dream of becoming a novelist. So, when her grandmother proposes she and her two sisters restore the family's large Beaufort home and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, she immediately gets to work clearing out the house. In the process, she uncovers a family secret that Eric kept hidden. And an heirloom that the wrong person wouldn't hesitate to kill for.

They call it the Bone Box. A collection of old cases, solved and unsolved, that continue to haunt forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman. None is more disturbing than the first. After two decades, Birdy still remembers the screaming. The blood on the boy's hands. The body of a girl, butchered in the woods. Birdy's testimony helped put her own cousin behind bars. It was a sacrifice for what she thought was right - but now, 20 years later, she wants to reopen the box.

When Victoria Marsh disappears from her family’s exclusive resort in Cougar Point, Washington, her family is devastated. A charity worker and pillar of the local community, how could she just vanish without a trace? Though not officially her case, Detective Megan Carpenter races to the scene for a very personal reason. Victoria is Ronnie’s mother and Megan will do anything to help her when she has sacrificed so much.

Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.

The community along Oregon’s Deschutes River is one of successful careers and perfect families. For years, up-and-comers Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all - security, happiness, and a beautiful young son, Charlie. Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible - except to Liz.

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer....

Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up - one of them her mother's. The killer was never found....Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. A killer with unfinished business is on the hunt. And an anonymous message turns Hannah's blood cold: Your Mom called....

Colorado, 1976. When Reverend Mike Fuller and his beautiful wife, Sharon, arrive in the sleepy town of Rocky Ford, local residents think something’s off about the new couple. The God-fearing minister is gruff and cold, while charismatic Sharon has her husband wrapped around her finger.

Each winter the crew at the Shackleton South Pole Research Facility faces nine months of isolation, round-the-clock darkness, and one of the most extreme climates on the planet. For thirty-something mechanical engineer Cass Jennings, Antarctica offers an opportunity to finally escape the guilt of her troubled past and to rebuild her life. But the death of a colleague triggers a series of mysterious incidents that push Cass and the rest of the forty-four-person crew to the limits of their sanity and endurance.

Born in rural Palestine, just before the dawn of the 20th century, Miriam adores her father and is certain his love will protect her, but she soon finds that tradition overrides love. Uprooted by war, Miriam enters a world where the old constraints slip away with thrilling and disastrous results. Miriam's rebellious daughter, Nadia, is thrilled with the opportunity for a modern life that her elite education provides. But when she falls in love with an outsider, the clan reins her back with a shocking finality.

Having grown up on the mean streets of nineteenth-century London, Caroline St. James is used to fighting to survive. So when her beloved mother - abandoned and ignored by her wealthy family - suddenly dies, the scrappy twenty-two-year-old devises a plan to right this terrible wrong. With nothing to lose, she sails to New York to find the man who turned a cold shoulder to her mother's suffering: Caroline's grandfather.

Through her transcendent imagery, distinct punctuation, experimental slant rhyme, and wordplay, Emily Dickinson set herself apart from every other poet of her time. These essential works - thematically divided into poems on life, nature, love, and time and eternity - reveal a keen, humorous observer whose art, like the artist herself, defied tradition.

Life is about to get complicated for Amelia Montgomery, a prominent litigator in Chicago. She’s been fired for not compromising her principles in a high-profile case and then punching her partner in the nose for the misogynistic comment he made in retort (not her finest moment). Leaving a career that gave her purpose, Amelia can only ask, What next? Let it be better than her epic failure of a fortieth birthday party: an open bar full of no-shows except for John Ellis, a total stranger and the new associate at her ex-firm.