Showing results by narrator "LIsa Flanagan LIsa Flanagan" in All Categories

By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson—the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan—and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique.

From the best-selling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives.

Babs Dionne, proud Franco-American, doting grandmother, and vicious crime matriarch, rules her small town of Waterville, Maine, with an iron fist. She controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her loyal lieutenants, girlfriends since they were teenagers, and her eldest daughter, Lori, a Marine vet struggling with addiction. When a drug kingpin discovers that his numbers are down in the upper northeast, he sends a malevolent force, known only as The Man, to investigate.

In the middle of an awful divorce, 53-year-old Georgia Carpenter finds herself out of luck, time, and money. Then her phone rings with the news that her great aunt has died and left her a cottage in the Gulf Coast town of Blackbird Beach. Georgia has no idea what awaits her on the other coast of Florida. All she knows is that she has nowhere else to go. And no reason to stay where she is.

New beginnings await Georgia Carpenter as opening day for the Sea Glass Inn approaches. It’s all very exciting, but there are a million things to be done. And a million fires to be put out. With the constant reminder that nothing good ever comes easy, she and Travis Taylor, her handsome handyman, conquer each problem that arises, bringing them closer than ever before. But is it all happening too fast? Georgia isn’t sure, and doubts begin to creep in. Maybe it’s time to put the brakes on things. Or is she letting her past dictate her future?

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

As Allied bombs rain down on Torino in the autumn of 1942, Stella Costa’s mother sends her to safety with distant relatives in a Tuscan villa. There, Stella finds her family tasked with a great responsibility: hiding nearly 300 priceless masterpieces from Florence, including Botticelli’s famous Primavera. With the arrival of German troops imminent, Stella finds herself a stranger in her family’s villa and she struggles to understand why her aunt doesn’t like her. She knows it has something to do with her parents.

With a hurricane barreling toward Blackbird Beach, Georgia Carpenter is faced with new problems and the need to work faster than ever. The last thing she needs is more damage to the inn, but she can’t control nature. What she can control is how the people around her weather that storm. In a bid to protect those she loves, she pulls them all close, opening her new home as a place of shelter. Everything’s going fine, too, until the man she’s falling for, Travis Taylor, reveals he has a storm of his own going on. Will the changes in his life mean changes in Georgia’s too?

With the storm behind her, Georgia Carpenter looks forward to reaching her goal of reopening the inn left to her by her great aunt. It seems very attainable, too, thanks to all the help she’s been getting from family and friends. She and Travis Taylor, her handsome handyman, seem to be on a good path, as well. In fact, everything is going swimmingly until a rival in town does the unthinkable and creates all kinds of chaos.

It is 1486 and Venice is a wealthy, opulent center for trade. Orsola Rosso is the eldest daughter in a family of glassblowers on Murano, the island revered for the craft. As a woman, she is not meant to work with glass—but she has the hands for it, the heart, and a vision. When her father dies, she teaches herself to make glass beads in secret, and her work supports the Rosso family fortunes.

There’s a wedding on the horizon, and Georgia Carpenter couldn’t be happier. But that doesn’t mean she’s lost sight of everything that still needs to be done to get the Sea Glass Inn ready for opening. Not only is she preparing for that, but the magazine photoshoot is right around the corner, too. As is the town council election. Most people think Travis Taylor, the inn’s handsome handyman, is a shoo-in, but with Lavinia Major as his opponent, anything could happen. And probably will.

Georgia Carpenter is hard at work on rehabbing her inherited inn with the goal of reopening as soon as possible. A goal that seems very attainable with the help of handsome handyman Travis Taylor and her family. But she wasn’t counting on her estranged sister, Lilly, showing up. Georgia and Lilly have never really seen eye-to-eye about anything, and Georgia worries that Lilly will cause trouble when she realizes their great aunt didn’t include Lilly in her will.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty - until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk - grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh - Miryem's fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered.

Mickey Gibson, single mother and former detective, leads a hectic life similar to that of many moms: juggling the demands of her two small children with the tasks of her job working remotely for ProEye, a global investigation company that hunts down wealthy tax and credit cheats. When Mickey gets a call from a colleague named Arlene Robinson, she thinks nothing of Arlene’s unusual request for her to go inventory the vacant home of an arms dealer who cheated ProEye’s clients and fled.

It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life - her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open.

The Christmas party at the Sea Glass Inn is a long-held tradition, one the townspeople of Blackbird Beach consider the kick-off of the Christmas season. Until, of course, the inn closed, and the party stopped happening. Now Georgia Carpenter has decided it’s time to restart that tradition, even though the party is a massive undertaking and one that will influence how people feel about the inn for the rest of the year. With the help of her sister, Lilly, Georgia hopes to put on an event that will be merry and bright and spark new interest in the business.

Cairo, the newest member of the City Spies, takes the lead when his sister disappears in Istanbul. Determined to save the family of one of their own, the team risks discovery as their search leads them to Rome. Meanwhile, there’s been intel that seems to threaten the royal wedding about to take place in Westminster, bringing the team back to the UK on an official case for MI6. With so much security all over the city, it’s harder than ever for the City Spies to go unnoticed. Will their skills be up to the task?

With the full realization of her inheritance before her, Georgia Carpenter is overwhelmed by the generosity of her late great aunt. What lays ahead of Georgia, however, is more work than she’s ever done in her life. Then another family member arrives unexpectedly, and things change in a way she never imagined possible. But what’s another curveball in the crazy game of life? She thinks she can handle everything being thrown at her, along with the help of Travis Taylor, the handsome handyman she inherited from aunt.

The City Spies are ready for their next mission—once again using their unique skills and ability to infiltrate places adults can’t. The sinister Umbra has their sights set on recruiting a North Korean nuclear physicist by any means necessary, and the City Spies plan to keep an eye on his son by sending Paris to the chess prodigy’s tournaments in Moscow and Beijing. Meanwhile, Sydney’s embedded as a junior reporter for a teen lifestyle site as she follows the daughter of a British billionaire on tour to uncover links to an old Soviet missile base.

After thwarting a notorious villain at an eco-summit in Paris, the City Spies are gearing up for their next mission. Operating out of a base in Scotland, this secret team of young agents working for the British Secret Intelligence Service’s MI6 division have honed their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. All of these allow them to go places in the world of espionage where adults can’t.