Showing results by narrator "Suzanne Barbetta" in All Categories

Jewel Mantelle has never lived in the South, much less on the coast, so moving from Chicagoland to the historic North Florida coastal town of Sophia Island seems like just the adventure to fix her marriage. However, when she arrives, she finds that it’s awfully hot and humid there and that these Southern folks really like to hug. Her husband’s past on the island includes a creaky old house in the historic district and lots of nosy relatives he’d forgotten to mention.

October arrives with Carolina holding way too many secrets...or you could say not holding them exactly. The town has barely gotten over the loss of their patriarch F.M. when one of the most stable marriages around is on the rocks, maybe completely over the cliff. Then the movie people hit town, and they don’t seem to be helping.

Overnight, a shiny new business opens on Chancey, Georgia’s Main Street, with a manager straight from New York City, who doesn’t find the South charming, at all. Carolina’s bookstore is also opening on Main Street. If she can keep Patty’s mind on books instead of a new romance. Then, when a secret wedding catches everyone off guard, a springtime tornado in Chancey just seems like icing on the cake. (Wedding cake, that is.) Trains still run by Crossings, the B and B for rail road enthusiasts. Ruby still sells coffee and muffins. And kids still get out of school for the summer.

Pretty paper and bows make promises, the gift inside rarely keeps. December comes to Chancey in this eighth audiobook in the series with promises of new birth, new love, new opportunities all tied up with shiny bows. Christmas is making a comeback in Chancey with Missus Blue ribbons tied on everything that stands still. Newcomers to town gussy up the gazebo complete with magnolia leaves, tiny lights, and even a chandelier. Remembering the Christmas of 1945, the Chancey Parlor and Depot is opened with solemnity, white roses, and a renewed feud.

In this final book of Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna Ferber's series featuring the indomitable Emma McChesney, Emma's newly married son Jock has relocated to Chicago, leaving Emma an empty-nester. Her secret romance and pending nuptials stall when their company is thrown into an uproar at the height of the selling season. To defeat her long-time nemesis and take the T.A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company international, the always-competitive Emma sails off on a whirlwind tour of South America.

Fourteen years ago, Lorelei Parker fell in love with her best friend, Cole Williams, but instead of forever, she ended up with a broken heart. Now, if they can put their past behind them, Lorelei and Cole may find a second chance.

Lynne Cox, internationally famous for swimming the world’s most difficult waterways without a wetsuit, and able to endure water temperatures so cold that it would kill anyone else, recognizes and celebrates all forms of athleticism in others, human or otherwise. And when she saw a video of a Newfoundland dog leaping from an airborne helicopter into Italian waters to save someone from drowning, Cox was transfixed by the rescue, and captivated by the magnificence, physicality, and daring of the dog.

Accepting second best is good for her career, but first-grade teacher Retta Curt delays signing up for the disappointment. Given two weeks to consider her contract, she retreats to Gram’s cottage on Moon Lake, the last place she felt contentment. But the cottage is derelict; Cousin Julie, distant; and Sweet Picks, the family ice cream stand, in danger of folding. A surly newcomer is buying and then running down properties until nothing remains of the idyllic lakeside community she remembers.

There aren't many women in professional auto racing - but that didn't stop Rebecca Moore from joining driver Ian Browning's pit crew. Working pit lane, her innate toughness shields her from the taunts and insults being tossed her way. But, the bullet that whizzes past her head, shattering the windshield of the vintage race car in her care, can't be as easily ignored - nor can the body she finds in the cockpit the day before the race. Once again, Rebecca's forced to uncover a killer and the deadly secrets awaiting her.

Between 1896 and 1922, in addition to a series of full-length novels Lucy Maud Montgomery published over 140 short stories. In general, these tales are reflective of the coming of age themes and the sylvan settings which are explored in greater detail in the novels.

Rebecca Moore thought she left violent death behind her, but the bodies keep mounting...and they're begging for justice. Having abandoned her career as a Washington, DC, reporter to run her late uncle's classic car restoration shop, Rebecca wants peace. Then the brutally stabbed corpse of a lovely dancer is discovered in the back seat of a vintage Bentley being towed by her ex-con workers - the cops' preferred suspects. When a second young dancer is pulled from the Potomac, Rebecca throws down her wrenches.

Rebecca Moore has had more than her fill of dead men.... The first, her lover David, took his own life in her bedroom just outside of Washington, DC - a totally senseless act of violence that causes a severely shaken Rebecca to quit her job as an investigative journalist and flee to rural Maryland to run her late Uncle Walt's classic automobile restoration shop.

Murder reignites dormant passions between Toledo Homicide Detective Veronica Jadzinski (Jadz) and her ex-husband, retired-cop-turned-PI Nate Solomon - not all of them good. He’s pushing to reopen the shooting of his boyhood friend, a case that Jadz and her partner wrote off as a drug deal gone bad. Emotions and egos collide as Nate and Jadz clash over who to believe: the victim’s grieving mother, his estranged sister with secrets of her own, or the demanding lieutenant who warns Jadz off the case for questionable reasons.

Once again, the Sophia Island Shrimp Festival is over. Thousands attended to eat shrimp, shop, and watch the pirates come ashore as usual, but this year’s temperatures were warmer than ever. Everyone is happy that the busy hot weekend is over, and everyone came through unscathed. Or so it seems. Jewel and Craig Mantelle also made it through their kids and families’ first visit to their new island home.

Jewel Mantelle is just beginning to get used to the humidity in her new Southern home on Sophia Island, when Turtle Season opens way too early. At least, it's too early according to her friends with Turtle Trackers. Is it a true sea turtle nest found on a stormy April morning? Not likely, when a body is eventually discovered buried where the eggs should be.

Employers consider communication one of the most critical skills for workers today. Written to address the needs of both students entering the workforce and business professionals looking to improve their written communication, Writing for the Workplace is a matter-of-fact how-to guide that provides strategies for effective professional communication.

Meet Mer, a seven-year-old mermaid who never gives up. When she finds a bicycle, everyone tells her mermaids can't ride bicycles, only humans can. She sets out to prove mermaids can ride bicycles.

For too long, victims have been told to be quiet, to keep a secret, to be ashamed, to be blamed, and we now say, "No more." It is time to speak. It is time to form a chorus of voices that demand change. This anthology is a way to channel those experiences into something inspiring, moving, and encourages others to action.

Devil Stories - Twenty tales of the demonic selected and edited by Maximilian J. Rudwin. The Devil is an old character in literature. Perhaps he is as old as literature itself. He is encountered in the story of the paradisiacal sojourn of our first ancestors, and from that day on, Satan has appeared unfailingly, in various forms and with various functions, in all the literatures of the world.

Pennsylvania writer Elsie Singmaster's collection of fictional short stories related to the bloody and pivotal Battle of Gettysburg presents a variety of colorful, compelling, and flawed characters profoundly affected by the famous battle. These stories span five decades, beginning on July 1, 1863, and concluding with the 50th anniversary of the battle, the year this collection was published.