Showing results by narrator "Carrington MacDuffie" in All Categories

Ida grew up with Jackson and James - where there was “I” there was a “J.” She can’t recall a time when she didn’t have them around, whether in their early days camping out in the boys’ room decorated with circus scenes, or later as teenagers when they were drinking on rooftops. While the world outside saw them as neighbors and friends, to each other the three formed a family unit - two brothers and a sister - not drawn from blood but from a deep need to fill a void in their single-parent households.

A 30-something tax auditor who doesn't overlook a thing, Lucy Shoreman had been blind to her husband's philandering. Now, as he lies on his deathbed, she decides she's not going through it alone. She opens Artie's little black book and begins calling his sweethearts. And to her great surprise, one by one, they show up.

In Breaking In, veteran journalist Joan Biskupic tells the story of how two forces providentially merged - the large ambitions of a talented Puerto Rican girl raised in the projects in the Bronx and the increasing political presence of Hispanics, from California to Texas, from Florida to the Northeast - resulting in a historical appointment. And this is not just a tale about breaking barriers as a Puerto Rican. It's about breaking barriers as a justice.

On a cold January morning, Susan leaves her husband alone for a few minutes and returns to find him gone. He has Alzheimer’s disease, and he has wandered alone into a frigid landscape with no sense of home or direction. The massive search for her husband brings Susan together with Jeff, a search-and-rescue expert and social worker preoccupied with his young wife’s betrayal. In Jeff’s care is Corey, a young boy rendered mute and abandoned by his family after setting a fire in which his older brother was killed.

Everyone around Prudence Whistler, 36, seems to be settling down. Her once single girlfriends have lately married and had babies. Her gay best friend is discussing marriage with his partner. Even her irresponsible sister is the single mother of a two-year-old. Setting about redesigning her life, Pru finds herself accumulating an unusal ad hoc family around her, both within her crowded apartment and in the broader community of Adams-Morgan of Washington, D.C.

Master mechanic Denise Conroy - with a reputation for being as steel-clad as the aircraft she keeps aloft - shuns useless flyboys who don't know one end of a wrench from the other. Firehawk pilot Vern Taylor - known for unstoppable charm and a complete lack of mechanical skills - proves his talent for out-of-the-box thinking with every flight. He's a survivor and a natural-born heli-aviation firefighter. When Denise and Vern crash together in the Central American jungle with wildfire on one side and a full-fledged military coup on the other, their newly forged partnership is tested to the max.

Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy 28-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity.

Lopsided is not your ordinary cancer memoir. Meredith Norton displays the razor-sharp wit of a master humorist as she chronicles her experience, from the first appearance of her bizarre symptoms to moving in with her compulsive parents and their five television sets.

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.

In this, the third tale of the Nedao people, Nisana the AEldra of the cat-kind narrates her experience among the beleaguered humans. She wishes that there were others left to speak of such a story, yet she is the only witness able to tell of it. Sharing both the agonies and the victories of her companion, the warrior queen Ylia, Nisana is determined to see things through to their conclusion.

Whether you're hoping to obtain a raise from your boss, convince an insurance claim representative to reimburse your medical treatment, or persuade your spouse into spending less time watching TV, Winning Every Time will be your guide for truly practical and helpful advice about how to make that case effectively, and win it hands down.

Welcome to the Lazy Windmill, where guests find that life is what you make it, love is priceless, and family is determined by far more than DNA. Casie Carmichael's accidental dude ranch is well on its way, but the residents of her Hope Springs haven are running wild. With an unwed mother-to-be, a turbulent teen romance, and a bronc-riding grandmother to contend with, the last thing Casie has time for is a romantic relationship. But convincing the recently returned Colt Dickenson that she's not interested in him - or the confusion he causes her - is easier said than done.

In 2031 mankind's survival instinct is put to the test when a civil war in China spirals into a global conflict. Nations are torn apart. Millions are killed. And for many, like Air Force pilot Alec Killian, survival will mean shedding some of their flesh in exchange for biotech and machine.

Twelve short stories, 12 points of view, 12 neighborhoods of the same town, and finally, 12 pieces of the same puzzle. Paris Noir takes you on a ride through the old medieval center of town with its intertwined streets, its ghosts, and its secrets buried in history. You'll cruise Paris with its nightclubs full of mysterious beauties who seem to have a lot to hide.

Spend time in the funny, oddball village of Arnold Falls, where larger-than-life characters deal with the smallest of problems. Somehow, it all comes out right in the end. Given the choice of go big or go home, nine times out of 10 the townspeople of Arnold Falls will go home, get back into their house slippers, and forget about the whole thing, whatever the whole thing was this time. Tempests great and small (mostly small) are always brewing in this tiny, upstate hamlet where half of the residents are fighting to preserve Arnold Falls as it was in its red-light-district heyday.

International human rights activist Lisa Shannon spent many afternoons at the kitchen table having tea with her friend Francisca Thelin, who often spoke of her childhood in Congo. Thelin would conjure vivid images of lush flower gardens, fish the size of small children, and of children running barefoot through her family's coffee plantation, gorging themselves on fruit from the robust and plentiful mango trees.

>Elaine Benson, a successful novelist who let love in the person of an unreliable screenwriter jettison her career, is now divorced, broke, and on her way to a so-called primitive, untamed northern forest on Canada’s Lake Muskoka to interview for a job. Elderly Miss Moira Madison of the fabulously rich Canadian family wishes to write her memoirs. Settling into the family “cottage” and what remains of a lifestyle long gone, Elaine reconnects with her love of researching the past - until she discovers that the first such writer hired died under suspicious circumstances.

For Gwen Merchant, love has always been doled out in little packets - from her father, who buried himself in work after her mother's death, and from her husband, Peter, who's always been respectable and safe. But then an old college boyfriend, the irrepressible Elliot Hull, invites himself back into Gwen's life with a surprising proposition. Elliot, it turns out, is in need of a pretend wife, just for the weekend, in order to fulfill his dying mother's last wish.

As manic teens in the ’90s punk scene, Gogo Germaine and her girl gang of delinquents engage in a vivid spectrum of misbehavior—from truancy to tattoos to trespassing. Here, in the underbelly of adolescence, music is God and the rest is a rush of nihilism. Gogo and her friends stumble through sound and fury into questionable firsts at varying degrees of sobriety. Many of us blunder through that black hole. It is a point of universal convergence, manifested by divergent experiences. Gogo’s rebellion may look different from yours, but the visceral highs and lows will be familiar.

Casie Carmichael is hardworking but softhearted. She has a broken-down mare, two lambs, three lost teens, a busted-up bronco rider, and a whole lot of trouble. Casie has returned home to Hope Springs, South Dakota, to sell the family’s tumbledown ranch with the hope of returning to Sioux Falls and her very practical fiancé. But leaving Hope Springs isn’t quite as easy as she thought it would be, especially since her barn seems to have a homing beacon leading every stray in the territory straight to it.