Showing results by narrator "Carrington MacDuffie" in All Categories

In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: "It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.” This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures. Pretend We’re Dead seeks to answer two big questions.

Perle Mesta was a force to be reckoned with. In her heyday, this wealthy globe-trotting Washington widow was one of the most famous women in America, garnering as much media attention as Eleanor Roosevelt. Renowned for her world-class parties featuring politicians and celebrities, she was very close to three presidents–Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson. Truman named her as the first female envoy to Luxembourg, which inspired the hit musical based on Perle’s life – “Call Me Madam” – which starred Ethel Merman, ran on Broadway for two years and later became a movie.

A woman ahead of her time, Mary Breydon knew how to get things done. Raised on a Virginia plantation, she learned how to care for livestock, respect her workers, and keep good books. But after her husband is killed, Mary must provide for her young daughter by running a stage coach station on the Cherokee Trail. With the help of an Irish maid and a mysterious stranger, Mary faces challenges that even the men eagerly anticipating her failure would have a difficult time overcoming.

Meet Noah - an A-honor-roll student, award-winning swimmer, and small-town star destined for greatness. There weren't any signs that something was wrong until the day he confesses to molesting little girls during swim-team practice. He's sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile sexual-rehabilitation center. His mother, Adrianne, refuses to turn her back on him despite his horrific crimes, but her husband won't allow Noah back into their home.

He is solitude. He is darkness. He is the ruler of the night. Yet Kyrian of Thrace has just woken up handcuffed to his worst nightmare: An accountant. Worse, she's being hunted by one of the most lethal vampires out there. And if Amanda Devereaux goes down, then he does too. But it's not just their lives that are hanging in the balance. Kyrian and Amanda are all that stands between humanity and oblivion. Let's hope they win.

For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, she experienced an unexpected awakening, and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, Kidd tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, and freedom she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost in the church.

Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming.

In need of a good adventure, Delaney Nichols takes the leap and moves to Edinburgh, Scotland, to start a job at The Cracked Spine. She doesn't know much about what she's gotten herself into other than that the work sounds exciting and that her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, has given her the opportunity of a lifetime.

Franny Marten's life is unraveling. Expecting to meet her boyfriend, Marcus Marks, for dinner, she finds his wife waiting for her instead. After the initial shock wears off, Franny finds she has more in common with Clare Marks than she could ever have imagined. And, amazingly, the women become fast friends. When Franny is unexpectedly offered an all-expenses-paid invitation to a family reunion in Provence, she goes, and takes Clare along for the ride.

Whether it is sex, drugs, or infatuation with the occult, Mrs. Manford and her extended family of socialites are determined to escape the pain, boredom, and emptiness of life through whatever form of “twilight sleep” they can devise or procure. Far ahead of its time, this Wharton classic employed modernist techniques such as an ever changing narration among the novel’s characters and a close examination of the characters’ self-identities and relationships with one another to tell a tale rich with irony and wit about the upper crust’s own undoing.

Husband and wife Jonathan and Faye Kellerman, both internationally best-selling authors, team up for a powerful one-two punch with Capital Crimes, a pair of original thrillers set in two cities rich in atmosphere: Berkeley and Nashville.

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.

As the mountain town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, shakes off a long, hard winter, famous photographer Rudolph Steiner arrives to do a feature on mountain tourism. Steiner is accompanied by his assistant and sexy young wife, but he has another reason for the visit: to reconnect with the woman, Eliza, who left him 25 years ago to marry another man: Trafalgar City police sergeant John Winters. When Steiner is found dead in his luxury hotel room, suspicion falls upon Eliza.

When an exquisitely crafted, authentic imperial Faberge egg mysteriously shows up at Laurel Swann's home studio, she knows it can only be from one person - her father, who has drifted in and out of her life for as long as she can remember. But this time Jamie Swann leaves her something too many people will kill for. Out of her league and desperate, Laurel is forced to accept help from the very man who is trying to ensnare her father in his own web of double crosses. Cruz Rowan can help her stay alive, but will he do the same for her father?

Lola Laforet seems to have it all - a whirlwind romance that turned into to have and to hold, a charmed life on the Cote d'Azur, and ownership of the magnificent Hotel Riviera. Tragically the dream ends as abruptly as it begins when her beloved husband mysteriously disappears. Heartsick, confused, and lonely, her life is thrown into further turmoil when a handsome stranger, Jack Ferrar, an American expatriate living on his boat, drops anchor in Lola's harbor and teaches her the meaning of instant attraction.

Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst.

Seventeen-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban family, headed off to college next year with hopes and dreams. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Caught tells the story of a missing girl, the community stunned by her loss, the predator who may have taken her, and the reporter who investigates.

It isn't every day a movie star steals your husband. When that day comes for Chiffon Butrell of Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, she looks to the Bottom Dollar Girls to help her out of one fine mess.

Jill Ellington's twin sister hasn't spoken a word since she allegedly murdered her husband, and her three-year-old son is missing. No one in the small, idyllic town of Paradise saw or heard a single thing. The chief of police already has Jill's twin convicted and her nephew dead and buried. Jill is going to need a miracle to uncover the truth.

As an ancient Celtic warrior, Talon made one giant mistake— he killed the son of the war god Camulus. In anger and outrage, Camulus cursed him—Everyone Talon loved would die a horrible death in front of his eyes. But when Talon's clan slaughters his young sister while he watches, powerless to stop them, he sells his soul for vengeance against them. Two thousand years later in modern-day New Orleans, as part of the bargain he made, he's now an immortal protector who keeps mankind safe from the creatures who would prey on them.