Showing results by narrator "Carrington MacDuffie" in All Categories

In the bucolic mountain town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, a young woman is found dead of a heroin overdose, her baby lying at her side. While this should be an open-and-shut drug case, restraint marks on the victim suggest that the death might not have been completely accidental.

When you think of St. Petersburg noir, some of the greatest literary names immediately spring to mind - Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Gogol, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Modern day St. Petersburg lavishly offers the scenery and conditions for true noir stories, and the writers in St. Petersburg Noir succeed in concocting their own worlds within this city with stories ranging from mystical to outwardly grotesque.

Mindfulness offers us a way to be fully in the present moment—and as we start to embrace this practice, we learn that our lives are made of present moments. That gift of presence is the palpable experience of awareness that appears when we remember to be mindful of those moments. In twenty short chapters, meditation teacher Tracy Cochran encourages us to see presence as a living force—and to recognize and explore how that shows up in our lives.

Sixty-year-old Jane Hunter, forced into early retirement from her job as a university librarian, is seeking a new challenge to keep her spirits up and supplement her meager pension. But as she’s about to discover, a retiree’s life can bring new thrills—and new dangers. Cameron “Cam” Clewe, an eccentric 33-year-old collector, is also seeking something—an archivist to inventory his ever-expanding compendium of rare books and artifacts.

Barbara Holloway is a low-key attorney in Eugene, Oregon, who left her father’s high-powered firm to handle small legal problems for local residents and ponder her next move. But while trying to sort out her own future, two people, desperate for help, show up on her doorstep: former pro football player Martin Owens and his wife, Binnie. Binnie, who is mute, met her husband when she sneaked aboard his boat while it was docked in Haiti and smuggled herself into the US.

Venice: Ethan Gage has escaped after surviving the naval battle of Trafalgar. His plan: To circumvent the French Empire and rescue his wife, Astiza, and son, Harry, from imprisonment by a ruthless mystic who seeks revenge for disfigurement, and from an evil dwarf alchemist who experiments with the occult on Prague's Golden Lane. Using death as his ruse, Gage seeks an unlikely ally in the Jewish Napoleonic soldier Gideon Mandel, who saves Ethan's life at Austerlitz, and Gideon's father, Aaron.

What the Animals Taught Me is a collection of stories about rescued farm animals in a shelter in Sonoma County, California, and what these animals can teach us. Each story illuminates how animals can help us see and embrace others as they truly are and reconnect us with the natural world. A deeply inspiring collection, What the Animals Taught Me awakens our hearts and reminds us that our best life teachers sometimes come covered in fur.

Elizabeth Kurtz has taken her small son and fled her ex-husband and his mother after finding a file of explosive material incriminating the family. Although the wealthy family employs a detective agency to find her, she manages to elude them. When Elizabeth finally contacts Barbara Holloway for help, the defense attorney finds the woman dead.

Since opening up their day spa, The Haven, the wonderful women of the Hot Flash Club have been busy indulging the beleaguered, nerve-frazzled throngs. Now, in Nancy Thayer's hilarious new Hot Flash novel, it's the friends' turn to grab some soothing, and much-deserved R&R.

Controversial author and scholar David Etheridge is not the kind of company an aspiring politician wants to keep. But ambitious senator Robert McCrutchen has a history with Etheridge that he's desperately trying to keep under wraps: 22 years ago, both men were investigated in the still-unsolved death of a young coed.

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana, a 30-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a White mother and a Black father, the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King, her life was charged with its own drama long before she married.

Mara Coyne is one high-profile case away from making partner at her Manhattan law firm, and now the client that is sure to seal the deal has fallen into her lap. The prestigious Beazley's auction house is about to sell a lost masterwork, The Chrysalis, in an auction that is sure to become legendary. Standing in the way, however, is the accusation that the painting belongs not to Beazley's client but to Hilda Baum, the daughter of a Dutch collector who lost his paintings and his life to the Nazis.

We live in a world that's very different from the one in which Emily Post came of age. Many of us who are nice (but who also sometimes say "f*ck") are frequently at a loss for guidelines about how to be a good person who deals effectively with the onslaught of rudeness we all encounter. To lead us through this this miasma of modern manners, syndicated columnist Amy Alkon - The Advice Goddess - gives us a new set of manners for our 21st-century lives.

Bibi Fortunata was the hottest ticket in town; singer, actress, and celebrity. Two years ago she was arrested on suspicion of murdering her lover and his new mistress, who was also Bibi's best friend. Bibi was front-page news in a way her publicists had never dreamed. But the police were never able to prove anything and Bibi was set free, with the cloud of suspicion and murder still hanging over her. Bibi left for Barcelona where she quite simply disappeared. But when Bibi's daughter comes to Mac Reilly and Sunny Alvarez for help, they can't resist the temptation to solve this mystery....

In the wake of San Francisco Noir, Los Angeles Noir, and Orange County Noir - all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series - comes the latest California installment, Oakland Noir. Masterfully curated by Jerry Thompson and Eddie Muller, the "Czar of Noir", this volume will shock, titillate, provoke, and entertain. The diverse cast of talented contributors will not disappoint.

The intrepid women of The Hot Flash Club are back for the holidays, soothing jingled nerves and stressed shoppers in their exclusive spa and celebrating the joys of the season. In her witty and delightfully wisecracking prose, Nancy Thayer tells a heartwarming tale packed with fun, secrets, romance, and an ample dose of good cheer.

Jessica Hagedorn's edgy and entertaining new novel centers on the lives of two women who are neighbors in Manhattan's West Village. Mimi Smith is a filmmaker of low-budget slasher movies in search of new material. Her neighbor Eleanor Delacroix is a legendary writer of erotic fiction, now nearing eighty and addicted to cocaine and gin. Their personal and artistic lives begin to collide in unexpected ways.

Lessons and rituals from the women of the Bible, connecting contemporary women with their sacred stories. In this vivid collection, Judaic scholar Vanessa Ochs brings the legends of the biblical matriarchs to new life. Intimate, familiar, and wise, the heroines in Sarah Laughed are revealed to be inspiring role models for women today.

All his life, William Stanley searched for a wild place of his own. Growing up in the straightened-out city blocks of his childhood and finding some respite in summer trips to a cabin in the woods, he yearned for space, fragrant soil, tall trees, and the silence that surrounds them. In Hawaii, he learned of acres of land depleted from toxic agricultural practices, and he became determined to restore that land and create one of the most comprehensive palm gardens in the world.

In the 14th edition of this seductive series, erotica's veterans and up-and-coming new writers join forces to explore how tantalizing crossing the so-called Lolita gap between youth and middle age can be.