Showing results by narrator "Laural Merlington" in All Categories

With bravura storytelling, daring imagination, and fierce narrative control, this dazzling debut introduces that rare writer who finds humanity in our most unconventional behavior, and the humor beneath our darkest impulses. In these strange, funny, and unnerving stories, animals become the litmus test of our deepest fears and longings

A peaceful, neighborly village, darkened by legends of death. Who is Nathaniel? For a hundred years, the people of Prairie Bend have whispered the name in wonder and fear. Some say he is simply a folk tale - a legend created to frighten children on cold winter nights. Some swear he is a terrifying spirit returned to avenge the past. And soon...very soon...some will come to believe that Nathaniel lives still - darkly, horrifyingly real.

With yet another assignment behind them, the ladies have enjoyed a break together and celebrated the wedding of Myra and Charles. But then they get some exciting but unsettling news. It seems their dear ally Lizzie Fox is rumored to be near the top of the short list for a soon to be vacated seat on the Supreme Court. While the Sisters are thrilled for Lizzie, they are concerned about her being ripped to shreds in the approval process, partly due to her connections with the Sisterhood.

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment is a deeply researched - and deeply disturbing - history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of US guns, from their role in the "settling of America" and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.

College friends of Megan's beau, the handsome veterinarian Dr. Denver Finn, are in Winsome for a corporate volunteer event. They will be mentoring troubled kids from a nearby school during a hiking and camping trip. When one of Dr. Finn's friends is murdered at the state park, a student - a boy with a brutal history - becomes the prime suspect. With a teen's life at stake, Megan digs into the victim's past to clear the boy's name.

While Lilly digs into a town beautification project, her friend Tamara O’Connor has greater concerns than well-pruned geraniums. The real-estate-firm owner hasn’t been shy about blaming perennial grouch Gladys Preston for thwarting her many attempts to sell off a beautiful beachside property. But accusations fly when Gladys is suddenly found dead - and Tamara is caught standing over the body with a bloody weapon in her hand. As Tamara becomes the prime murder suspect, Lilly and the Garden Squad ladies set out to prove that someone planted the evidence.

An English emigre who became America's first professional architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe put his stamp on the built landscape of the new republic. Latrobe contributed to such iconic structures as the south wing of the US Capitol building, the White House, and the Navy Yard. He created some of the early republic's greatest neoclassical interiors, including the Statuary Hall.

Nobody's Child traces the legal definition of "insanity" back to its inception in Victorian Britain nearly 200 years ago, from when our understanding of the human mind was in its infancy, to today, when questions of race, class, and ability so often determine who is legally "insane" and who is criminally guilty. Vinocour explains how "competency" and "insanity" are creatures of a legal system, not of psychiatric reality, and how, in criminal law, the insanity defense has too often been a luxury of the rich and white.

With her family’s safety at stake, Megan must pick her way through the von Tresslers’ sordid family secrets and colorful personalities. She discovers that the malice that’s befallen Winsome has roots in the past, and she’ll need to dig deep to weed truth from lies and innocence from guilt, or the body count will grow even higher.

Between hosting a haunted house on her lawn, serving on the town’s 400th Anniversary Planning Committee, and prepping for the Fall Festival’s 10k fundraiser, Lilly has her hands full. She doesn’t have time for prickly newspaper reporter Tyler Crane, who’s been creeping around town, looking for dirt on Goosebush’s most notable families...until he’s found dead on the race route moments before the start. An unfortunate accident? Or did Tyler unearth a secret that someone in Goosebush is willing to kill to keep?

With the explosion of the older adult population, this important book explores the opportunities and challenges that this presents for the Christian community. Amy Hanson challenges us to let go of many old stereotypes regarding aging and embrace a new paradigm that sees older adults as active, healthy, and capable of making significant contributions. The author shows church leaders how they can unleash the power of the baby boomer population to strengthen their congregations.

The Widow Washington is the first life of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, based on archival sources. Her son's biographers have, for the most part, painted her as self-centered and crude, a trial and an obstacle to her oldest child. But the records tell a very different story. The Widow Washington is a necessary and deeply insightful corrective, telling the story of Mary's long, arduous life on its own terms, and not treating her as her son's satellite.

In Bad Medicine, Sarah A. Whitt exposes how Native American boarding schools and other settler institutions like asylums, factories, and hospitals during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worked together as a part of an interconnected system of settler domination. In so doing, Whitt centers the experiences of Indigenous youth and adults alike at the Carlisle Indian School, Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, Ford Motor Company Factory, House of the Good Shepherd, and other Progressive Era facilities.

In a period of just three days, everything changes for young painter Eduardo “Tato” Simmone, who has never sold a painting. During the funeral of Tato’s renowned and beloved mentor, Aníbal Marsotti, Tato meets two people who will determine his fate: a beautiful young woman who may be a vampire and a major dealer of art forgeries. Tato gets caught up investigating the theft of famed Italian figurative painter Amadeo Modigliani’s tombstone, and all signs point to Curitiba, Brazil - Tato’s hometown.

United by a desire to overcome their personal misfortunes, seven very different women formed an indelible bond and vowed to right wrongs wherever they found them. They’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. After years known as the Vigilantes, Myra, Annie, Kathryn, Alexis, Yoko, Nikki, and Isabelle are enjoying their hard-won freedom and the chance at a normal life. But as it turns out, once you’re a part of the Sisterhood, normal is a relative term....

Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Resolution gives you great stories with practical ideas for today's times – for your mind, your body, and your wallet! Everyone makes resolutions – for New Year’s, for big birthdays, for new school years. In fact, most of us are so good at resolutions that we make the same ones year after year. They can be life-changing or really quite simple. Listen to real stories from real people about their year-round resolutions.

Once there was a little girl from Fargo, North Dakota, named Maggie Goldfarb who grew up, moved to Manhattan, and morphed into Magnolia Gold, the highly paid editor in chief of Lady magazine. With a corner office, a designer wardrobe, and dozens of loyal employees, Magnolia has been hired to update the dowager of women's magazines. She's on her way to giving Lady a face-lift when she is ignominiously replaced.

A harrowing stand-alone novel from Seatbelt Suspense author Brandilyn Collins. Seven years after her the disappearance of her best friend, Linda Jackson, skip tracer Joanne Weeks must locate a witness who can put the man who Joanne knows to be Linda's killer behind bars - before he silences Joanne for good.

The Opioid Epidemic: What Everyone Needs to Know is an accessible, nonpartisan overview of the causes, politics, and treatments tied to the most devastating health crisis of our time. Its comprehensive approach and Q&A format offer listeners a practical path to understanding the epidemic from all sides: the basic science of opioids; the nature of addiction; the underlying reasons for the opioid epidemic; effective approaches to helping individuals, families, communities, and national policy; and common myths related to opioid addiction.

I woke up this morning, the day of Barbara's funeral, and I fell out of bed. And so begins the tale of one-hundred-and-one-year-old Martha Mayhew. Born in southern New Hampshire in the early 1920s, Martha meets her new neighbor Barbara Brown at the tender age of three and a half. The two girls learn immediately that they are bound to each other, and as the years progress, their friendship blossoms.