Showing results by narrator "Liza Ross" in All Categories

Ohio, 1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled in the Black Swamp, planting apple trees to claim the land as their own. As fever picks off their children, husband and wife take solace in separate comforts. Fifteen years later their youngest son, Robert, is drifting through gold rush California. When he finds steady work for a plant collector, peace seems finally to be within reach. But the past is never really past, and one day Robert is forced to confront the brutal reason he left behind everything he loved.

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.

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

This is a story from the More Classic American Short Stories collection....

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

When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, Betty, he was 78 years old and she was 75. The Weissmann sisters, Miranda, a successful literary agent, and Annie, a library director, unexpectedly find themselves the middle-aged products of a broken home. Dumped by her husband of nearly 50 years and exiled from their elegant New York apartment, Betty moves to a small, run-down Westport beach cottage. Joining her are Miranda and Annie, who comes along to keep an eye on her capricious mother and sister.

When Lana and Todd win a trip to Blue Crest Adventure Park, their four-year-old Cooper is ecstatic, but when Lana goes to meet them, Todd is out cold, and Cooper is missing. No one stopped the man carrying the sleeping boy. The cameras don't show where he went. Then Lana receives an anonymous message, telling her to visit a local school with a horrifying history. Whoever took Cooper is playing a twisted game, and if Lana wants to find him, she must participate.

On a clear day, you could see America from Edinburgh's Castle Rock - or so said Alice Munro's great-great-great-grandfather when he had had a drink. Then, in 1818, he left and sailed to the New World with his family. This is the story of those shepherds from the Ettrick Valley and their descendants. They were a Spartan lot: showing off was frowned upon, and fear was commonplace, at least for females. But opportunities present themselves for two strong-minded women in a ship's close quarters.

The art of writing a short story can be barely noticed by a reader or listener - such is the quality with which they are usually written. It is a difficult trade, an unforgiving discipline, but for those who master it, the rewards are many. In this series of works by our greatest female writers, we bring you a selection of those we consider the best. In Volume 2 we bring you the classics 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and 'Roman Fever' by Edith Wharton.

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....

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families. For V.I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango?

The Early Birds is the feel-good and funny follow-up to The Future Homemakers of America that proves that no matter what life throws at you, great friends and regular cocktails will always see you through. In this hymn to lifelong female friendship, Peggy soldiers on through new upheavals, including her ex-husband Vern's Alzheimer's diagnosis, the death of one of her nearest and dearest, a life-changing house move and the world-shattering events of 9/11.

As students at the prestigious Anya Sedgwick School of Decorative Arts in Paris, Alexandra Gordon, Kay Lenox, Jessica Pierce and Maria Franconi share the challenges and excitement of developing their artistic talents to the fullest under Sedgwick's caring and demanding guidance. But once best friends, they part enemies, and after graduation they go their separate ways, pursuing careers and establishing lives in different corners of the world.

In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family's summer house on a remote Minnesota lake. Her mother and two sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she leaves the house to her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability - a way to give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning....

This is a story from the More Classic American Short Stories collection.

Here are eight stories from master American writers of the 19th century. They vary from sinister tales by Ambrose Bierce - why is that window boarded up? - and a reflective moment in the life of a woman without children, but forced to look after children, to classic short stories by O. Henry and Stephen Crane. There is even an elegiac description of an eclipse by James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans.

The discovery of a destitute family in her office basement leads V.I. Warshawski to homeless charity Home Free. But the organisation's frosty reception gives V.I. cause for concern, especially when one of its board members is then found murdered, sprawled across her desk.... Taking on the case, V.I. uncovers a framework of domestic abuse and fraud which spreads across the whole of Chicago, as well as into the abandoned tunnels beneath the city streets - where more dark secrets have been buried....

Darkness falls. The undead rise to feast on the succulent blood of the living. For years vampires have fascinated great writers of the occult such as De Maupassant, Count Stenbock, E. Nesbit, and E.F. Benson. This is The Story Circle's collection of some of their spine-chilling tales told by award-winning actors.

The new VI Warshawski novel from the New York Times best-selling author pits acclaimed detective VI Warshawski against some of today's most powerful figures. Legendary sleuth VI Warshawski returns to the Windy City to save an old friend's nephew from a murder arrest. The case involves a stolen artifact that could implicate a shadowy network of international criminals. As VI investigates, the detective soon finds herself tangling with the Russian mob, ISIS backers and a shady network of stock scams and stolen art that stretches from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East.

An essential for life. Without it life is impossible. Was it always that way? In this volume of stories, water becomes the landscape and narrative, a character more deadly and perhaps more aware of its power than us mere mortals. We are beguiled by its sight, whether softly breaking waves on a sandy beach or a thunderous storm engulfing the cliff face. But also in other forms; as lakes and lagoons. Water is everywhere, and where there is water is the shadow of menace.