Showing results by narrator "Liza Ross Ross" in All Categories

After her husband's sudden death over 10 years ago, Kate Waithman never expected to be lucky enough to find another love of her life. But now she's planning her second walk down the aisle to a perfectly nice man. So why isn't she more excited? When she starts seeing Patrick, her late husband, in her dreams, she begins to wonder if she's really ready to move on....

Cleo Duvall is a middle-aged baker who runs the Clamshell Bay Bakery and Cafe in the pretty tourist town on the Washington State coast, and her cinnamon buns are Instagram-famous. The coffee shop is the heart of the village—neighbors gossip over coffee and pastries, and if you want to know anything about anyone, the cafe is the place to ask. As a way to share her love for the art and craft of baking, Cleo teaches a weekend class.

A dangerous, depressed place reeking of bad memories, South Chicago is a neighbourhood private investigator V.I. Warshawski left a long time ago. But now she's back, drawn to the streets of her childhood once again to do a favour for a friend. It was never going to be easy - and when the mother of a local girl asks her to look into claims of sabotage at the factory where she works, V.I. quickly finds herself caught up in something far more sinister.

Beautiful, headstrong Pilar Sandoval y Serna will pay any price to escape the tyranny of her stepfather, Don Esteban. She turns to handsome, moody El Leon, a nobleman turned to a life of outlawry by the depredations of Don Esteban. Together in the hills, Pilar and El Leon find their wills in constant battle and their hearts in secret accord.

Marnie FitzPatrick is a reclusive sixth-former from Hertfordshire with a dysfunctional family, a penchant for Pythagoras' theorem and an addiction to doughnuts and gin. Julie Crewe is a disillusioned maths teacher who lives vicariously through the girls she teaches, yet who once danced barefoot through Central Park with a man called Jo she has never been able to forget.

When V. I. Warshawski, the hardest-working of private eyes, goes out one night, a stranger is shot and dies in her arms. V.I. has been visiting Club Gouge, where a woman known as the Body Artist turns her naked body into a canvas for the audience to paint on. The show attracts all kinds of people, from Ukrainian mobsters and Iraq war veterans. A tormented young painter shows up too, and the intricate designs she creates drive one of the soldiers into a violent rage.

V.I. Warshawski's Chicago neighbourhood is prospering. As it's out with the old and in with the new, long-term residents like elderly Hattie Frizell find themselves viciously under threat.... But that's not all that's troubling V.I. When the body of her neighbour's friend is found washed up in the Sanitary Canal, her investigations lead her to uncover a world of corporate conspiracy and political corruption involving some of Chicago's most prestigious industrial players. And after several attempts on her life, it seems that this time, V.I. may have dug too deep....

Libby’s life seems picture-perfect. She lives in her dream home, raising two precious children and supported by her loving husband, Victor. Sure, he’s away a lot with his job, but she has always accepted that he works hard to make their beautiful life possible. But then, one day, Victor asks for a divorce, and suddenly Libby’s whole world falls apart. Libby never expected to find herself a single mom, and when she receives a letter from the bank, it’s clear that Victor hasn’t been paying the mortgage. Her husband has been keeping secrets from her, and this isn’t the only one.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

When private eye V.I. Warshawski is called out to a derelict drug house in a rural town just south of Chicago, she discovers something she wasn't expecting: the mutilated corpse of a man, dumped in a cornfield. It is a discovery that throws V.I. into the fascinating world of physics and invention: a design that sparked the construction of the computer as we know it, the development of nuclear weapons, the wonder of Newton's prisms and a train of dramatic events that occurred in wartime Vienna.

One of the most popular female sleuths in modern crime fiction, Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski is a strong, smart, independent heroine in a male-dominated world. She tracks down corrupt businessmen, ruthless blackmailers and cold-blooded murderers - while trying not to get killed herself. Included in this collection are the first four best-selling V.I. Warshawski novels from Sara Paretsky - plus a short story featuring the hard-boiled PI, read by Buffy Davis.

While driving home after celebrating friend Murray Ryerson's big break into TV hosting, V.I. almost collides with a fatally wounded woman lying in the street. The deceased is Nicola Aguinaldo, former employee of security giant B.B. Baladine and recent prison runaway. Taking on the case, V.I. finds herself plunged into a sinister network of corruption that pits her against the police, the prison and the entertainment industry - with potentially lethal results.

Twenty-five years ago, Stella Guzzo beat her daughter to death and then walked up the street to play bingo at her church. V. I. Warshawski grew up with the Guzzo family. She dated Frank Guzzo when they were teens and knew Stella's murderous rages firsthand. She didn't think about the family again until the day Frank came to her office, wanting V. I. to help his mother with an exoneration claim. The detective wants no part of Stella Guzzo's world, but she doesn't feel able to say no.

When V.I.'s close friend Lotty Herschel is approached by a man claiming to be a fellow Holocaust survivor, she's forced to recall a painful past she's tried desperately to forget. Coming to Lotty's aid, V.I. decides to investigate the mysterious stranger. But her findings lead to the exposure of something much darker involving an international conspiracy reaching all the way back to Nazi Europe - as well as a shocking truth which could potentially devastate her friend....

Danutia is observing a youth rehabilitation program in England when Arthur returns to the Peak District to attend his mother’s funeral. Suspecting foul play in her death, Danutia and Arthur question the feuding village. They soon discover that the practice of ancient Celtic rituals persists and has evolved into a dangerous and deadly ceremony....

RCMP Constable Danutia Dranchuk is investigating a mysterious death at Sitting Lady Falls. The evidence she gathers points to three separate stories, leaving her with more questions than answers. Is this murder connected to two earlier killings of Aboriginal women? Are all three the work of the same killer? Some of the details are hitting a little too close to home, and Danutia is forced to examine her friendship with forensics head Corporal Surinder Sharma and his family.

On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski's dogs lead her on a mad chase that ends when they find a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago power brokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl before VI can save her.

This is the moving and powerful story of Edna Pontellier, a beautiful young wife and mother who discovers her true feelings and identity through her love for Robert Lebrun, and in so doing challenges the bourgeois assumptions of her day. First published in 1899 in America, it prompted shock and outrage, but has since come to be recognized as a modern classic.

Sixteen thrilling and chilling stories by some of the greatest writers of horror and the supernatural.

This is a story from the Classic Women's Short Stories collection.