Showing results by narrator "Eileen Smith" in All Categories

The stories shared with me about Lena, my husband’s mother, were extraordinary. I heard many of them over the years, tales told to me by her son and his father, accounts that were often shocking, sometimes heart-wrenching, and always fascinating.

Living Folklore is a comprehensive, straightforward introduction to folklore as it is lived, shared and practiced in contemporary settings. Drawing on examples from diverse American groups and experiences, this text gives the student a strong foundation—from the field's history and major terms to theories and interpretive approaches. The volume moves beyond genres and classifications, and encourages students who are new to the field to see the study of folklore as a unique approach to understanding people, communities, and day-to-day artistic communication.

Kansas, 1852. Half-breed Everett Snipes discovers a newborn baby crying by the body of her mother. He recognizes the mother as the second wife of his cousin Wakiza, chief of the Village of Scouts located a few miles from the Army base. Everett rescues the infant and takes her to her family. The child’s people are being pushed out of their ancestral lands. In the East, rumblings of the coming war over slavery are already spreading across the nation, and Kansas, Bloody Kansas, will not escape the carnage.

The Civil War ended, but the turmoil of D’Arcy Curran’s life did not. Rather than give up the child she raised from birth, 16-year-old D’Arcy kidnaps her sister Suzanne’s son. The only safe place for her and little Danny is home…Manhattan, Kansas. Once there, D’Arcy learns that danger comes in many forms, and some of them are too close for comfort. Her father is murdered by marauding Jayhawkers. Her mother is lost in grief. D’Arcy faces the disapproval of many when she wears trousers, carries a gun, and takes over the responsibility for the farm.

Sara Mason joins in searching for Huxley's MIA brother's remains in the Vietnam jungle. She is joined by her friend Esmerelda. Later in Hawaii, Sara learns that a six-year-old neighborhood girl had gone missing 10 years earlier. Something odd is going on at the nearby forest cliffs; someone wants this cold case to stay cold. But even after attempts are made on Sara's life, she pushes on with the investigation and pursues the leads that take her on a path of danger. Can she solve the mystery of the Howling Cliffs?

D’Arcy, 12, redheaded and freckled, curious and rebellious, wants to grow up and dominate her world. Suzanne, not yet 18, wants only to marry her handsome lieutenant from Fort Riley, Jonathan Taylor. The beginning of the Civil War and Suzanne’s one night of passion sends both girls' lives in an unexpected direction. A rash decision changes everything. Will D’Arcy and Suzanne be prepared for the consequences?

Meaghan Curran Quinn has her life all planned out. Newly graduated from Manhattan high school, she expects to study law at Kansas State and then to marry Arthur Franklin, her childhood sweetheart. Fate takes the future in its own hands and sends Meaghan on more than one dangerous journey. Before the storms pass, both her faith and her physical strength will be tested.

Both a memoir in travel essays and an anti-guidebook, Bad Tourist takes us across four continents to 15 countries, showing us what not to do when traveling. A woman learning to claim her own desires and adventures, Suzanne Roberts encounters lightning and landslides, sharks and piranha-infested waters, a nightclub drugging, burning bodies, and brief affairs as she searches for the love of her life and finally herself.

On the Manhattan, Kansas, frontier of the 1870s, D’Arcy Curran, her adopted son, Dan, and her new husband, Royce Quinn, want nothing more than to raise a family and live in peace. Their plans are waylaid when the renegade Jayhawker who killed D’Arcy’s father returns from prison looking for revenge. Human treachery isn’t the only thing D’Arcy and Royce battle on their prairie home.

In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the late 20th century was a time of unprecedented hope for democracy and freedom in Eastern Europe. Young writers, journalists, and adventurers such as Katya Cengel flocked from the West eastward to cities like Prague and Budapest, seeking out terra nova. Despite the region’s appeal, neither Kyiv in the Ukraine nor Riga in Latvia was the type of place you would expect to find a 22-year-old Californian just out of college. But Cengel ended up living and working in both. This book is her remarkable story.

Chastity Lilly is no flapper. In 1920s New York, she's determined to find a career as a teacher so she can support her family upstate. But one thing leads to another, and the company she keeps in the big city leads her down a very different path than the one she sought. When she helps a handsome rancher in town looking for his own errant sister, can she turn her act around? Will she take his offer of a teaching position in Wedlock, Montana, and make a brand-new start? And if she does, can she - and the rancher - leave the past behind to forge a new future together?

Eighth in The Manhattan Stories by Wall Street Journal top 10 best-selling author Donna Foley Mabry, Dan Curran Quinn | The Manhattan Stories: The Currans, Book Four continues the saga of the Curran Family. After a romance that started when he was still in high school, Dan Curran Quinn marries his longtime love, Kathleen O’Malley. They begin their lives together with a bright future, but a vengeful killer from Dan’s past has other plans.

Joseph Collins had a near-death experience when he was 14 years old, after which his mother, who had committed suicide two years earlier, spoke to him. Doubted by his family and labeled psychotic, he lost that connection. Now, Joseph is 35 years old, divorced and resentful. He is also a professional psychic. Or is he crazy like his mother was?

Carla has known nothing but the orphanage for all her life. Derided because of the birthmark that covers half of her face, her only friend is Sally. When Sally dies in childbirth, she begs Carla to save her baby’s life. With Baby Marsha wrapped in her arms, Carla runs for their lives, making the long walk to the next town, Carrick Plains. There she finds comfort and help in a way she never expected. Soon she begins to relax, but Sheriff Bud Jeffries is curious about this newcomer.

When Garth lost his arm, he didn’t expect to lose his love. Will he find a new start with a mail order bride? Miner Garth Warrington was all set to marry his sweetheart, Caroline, when a devastating accident leaves him with just one arm. Soon after, the pretty, and spoiled Caroline abandons him as well. Desperate and dejected Garth places an advert looking for a bride. Recent widow Amy Moorland is desperate. At a young age, she was forced to marry a cruel and abusive man but now her husband is dead. Amy cannot support herself and knows her only hope is to become a mail order bride.

When Phoebe Ross's employer dies, leaving her with a wedding gown, Phoebe feels she has no choice but to answer the call for mail order brides to Angel Vale, Wyoming. When she arrives, her groom-to-be is nowhere in sight. With the other brides claimed, she sets off to find her groom. He is nothing what she expected.

When Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) published Three Stories and 10 Poems in 1923, he was 24, a wounded veteran of the Great War, and still three years away from publishing his debut novel (The Sun Also Rises). So the "Three Stories" give us a unique look into Hemingway's developing writing skills and his very particular areas of creative interest.

Raymond O’Connell was the love of Iris’s life - from the day she met him, to the day a year later when she married him, to the tragic night before she never saw him again. Some would say they had the perfect all-American life. Now, 18 years later, questions arise about the night her husband disappeared, leaving a bloody knife and a letter addressed to her, in which he said goodbye and told her not to look for him, with not even a second thought for her and their six children.

Ayasha is part Chippewa-Cree Indian and part White. Protected by her powerful father, the town of Waverly let her be. Now that he has passed, the town lets Ayasha know exactly how they feel about her. She has no family and no money. What can she do? In desperation, she answers an advert from an injured man looking for a bride. Farmer Joe Warner was injured in a plowing accident. His younger sister has been caring for him, but Joe knows that she is putting her own life on hold.

Jessica is the quintessential 1920s wealthy bad girl from Montana with a penchant for running away from home if things don't go her way. As her brother's wedding to the sugary sweet Chastity nears, Jessica grows stir-crazy yet again. This time, however, fleeing south to Wyoming turns out to be much more dangerous than she ever could have predicted. When her brother hires skilled tracker Sleeping Fox to find her and bring her home, her life is forever changed.