Showing results by narrator "Mandy Kaplan" in All Categories

Doreen is slowly recovering from the mad yet joyous ending to last year, as she faces the new year and what it might bring. Since she’s now engaged to Mack—and everyone around her is pressuring her to pick a wedding date and hopefully soon—she yearns for another case to keep her busy. So, when an older gentleman calls and needs help fulfilling his wife’s last wish, Doreen is right there to help.

Mia Alcott was in a whole crap load of trouble. The only witness to a horrific crime, she’s on the run, trying to figure out who she can trust and who is out to get her. In come the Malones. They’re loud. They’re violent. They’re rude. And right now, they’re her only shot at survival. Of course, she has to survive living with them. She also has to resist her attraction to Alec Malone. It should be easy, considering he’s an arrogant, bossy ass.

Can Christmas get any crazier? A new case for Mack and, lucky for Doreen, she finds a cold case connected to it, making her year end on a high note. All the while she struggles to navigate gift giving and a special party that Nan wants to put on for her at Rosemoor—except Doreen has to solve all kinds of issues, including the missing mistletoe, which Nan insists on having for the party.

Bad things don’t happen in Cason Glen. The locals make sure of it. So, when the residents of the town’s most exclusive subdivision discover one of their own is missing, it sends a wave of panic and discord throughout the neighborhood. They are supposed to be safe. But they quickly realize not everything is as it once seemed in their idyllic world.

What was supposed to be a leisurely stroll through a peaceful cemetery after a recent funeral turns into the start of a new case. Someone clobbers Doreen over the head and leaves her facedown among the funeral flowers. Is it random violence? Revenge? A warning of worse to come?

Riches to rags...Chaos might be slowing...Only a new murder occurs...Sending her off the trail again... It’s been a tough few weeks since Robin and Mathew, Doreen’s ex-lawyer and her ex-husband, slid back into her life. Okay, so maybe Robin isn’t here any longer to cause torment, but Mathew is. And he’s not planning to leave Doreen alone anytime soon, although thankfully he’s gone back home for a while. Trying to recuperate looks doubtful for Doreen, when a local gardener is kidnapped, while picking nasturtiums for dinner.

It was never my plan to wake up in a Vegas hotel room as Dominic Mancini’s wife. The man has brought me nothing but heartache since I was 16. At least we agree on one thing - a quickie annulment and we can both get on with our lives. I can go back to teaching little girls to dance, and he can go back to making millions in Wall Street. But sometimes, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.

Being a suspect in the murder of her ex-lawyer is not the fun Doreen thought it would be. And, of course, she’s been ordered to stay away from the case, but she can’t help being interested. So, she enlists Mack’s brother, Nick - her new lawyer - to help. Mack’s first priority is to clear Doreen as a suspect. No one in their right mind would seriously believe she’d done the deed, of course.

Needing a break from all the murder and mayhem, Doreen and Mack plan an outing to see the local orchid show. Some of the displays are in the community center, but the more prized specimens of this genus require a visit to some of the gardeners’ homes, a rare opportunity not afforded to everyone. This trip, not quite a date, affords Doreen a chance not only to enjoy the company of Mack, but to get to know a few more of the colorful locals. But when one of these locals ends up dead just after their visit, the dark underbelly of orchid growing is exposed, and with it, an old murder…

Doreen knows her relationship with the police captain has always been on thin ground. She has helped them solve a lot of cases, but she’s quadrupled their work and constantly gets in their way. So no one is more surprised than Doreen when the captain stops by and asks for a personal favor, concerning a cold case from his own childhood.

Riches to rags...Chaos has calmed...At least while out on the lake...Until poison is found, blowing up the peace again...Enjoying a beautiful day on the lake, while Doreen tries her hand at paddleboarding, ends up on an odd note after finding poison in a bed of pansies. She garners a tidbit of information out of her BFF, Corporal Mack Moreau, about a man who’d recently walked into the emergency room, complaining he’d been poisoned.

Spending time with Mack is always fun, but, when Doreen overhears a conversation that sounds like a murder confession, he disagrees, … until a body shows up. Then he’s suddenly a whole lot more interested. The deceased young man had planned to attend the local college and had hoped to rekindle a relationship with an ex-girlfriend.

The machines started popping up around the world. The offer was tempting: with a simple blood test, anyone could know how they would die. But the machines didn't give dates or specific circumstances - just a single word or phrase. DROWNED, CANCER, OLD AGE, CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. And though the predictions were always accurate, they were also often frustratingly vague.

Chaos surrounds both. Doreen has had enough of her estranged husbands antics, but, when he shows up dead in the garden outside her favorite Chinese food restaurant, she's horrified and anxious. And, of course, in the eyes of the rest of the world, guilty. There's no Doreen for her to call to help out this time, but she knows Mack has her back, although he's being questioned too. The police force rallies around her, as their history rips apart her former life and finds out that all her suspicions about Mathew were correct, and he'd been in deep trouble.

Finding an Uzi in the urn at the shattered mausoleum is exciting and frustrating. Yet, Doreen can’t delve into the case, and Mack has been firm about that. She struggles to focus on other cases from her journalist files, in particular the Bob Small file. Only her plan goes off the rails when Nan and her cronies show up at her door with the Rosemoor bus, intent on heading to the excitement happening at the cemetery.

Who knew a simple trip to the consignment store would find Wendy being strong-armed by two strangers? So not allowed—especially as it could affect Doreen getting her month-end check! Trying to get to the bottom of this is one convoluted story to sort out. Corporal Mack Moreau is not at all happy with Doreen’s new male friend, Bernard, who has the money to keep her in the style she was accustomed to. However, Mack is happy Doreen is staying out of his cases. If only she could stay out of trouble! Then again, Doreen can find trouble like this without any effort on her part.

With her estranged husband still pestering her, Doreen is looking for a new case to keep her interest and to help her dodge Mack and his brother’s scoldings. So she decides to delve deeper into the Bob Small case, especially since it pertains to Nan’s now-deceased friend.

Doreen loves gardens, all kinds of them. In the Okanagan, situated at the tip of the desert, water-frugal gardening makes sense. When Doreen sees a lovely xeriscaped garden from a drone video, she’s fascinated. When Mack mentions a mystery surrounding the property, she is mesmerized. Getting the details, however, is no easy feat. That’s because there aren’t many. But digging in and asking questions is something Doreen and her clan are good at, and it doesn’t take long to delve into the mystery in a big way—much to Corporal Mack Moreau’s disgust.

With Mathew’s murder done and dusted, and her future now wide open, Doreen turns to sorting out her financial world, particularly as her antiques are sold. And helping others is moving up her list of things she wants to do. Especially after finding a young woman who wants to get out of the streetwalker world and to move back home.

Women who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true - that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds, sociologist Orna Donath treats regret as a feminist issue: as regret marks the road not taken, we need to consider whether alternative paths for women currently are blocked off.