Showing results by narrator "Caroline Shaffer" in All Categories

Everyone has skeletons in the closet, but Simone Cooper Sheridan’s involve secret CIA operations in the steamy jungles of South America. Now, after years of disguising her true identity, she’s finally come face-to-face with her previous life. Reece Sheridan knows that a smart man doesn’t think with his heart. After all, he is the one who divorced Simone, when their marriage just couldn’t overcome her mysterious past. But he’s never gotten over her.

In a Russia where the Decembrists’ rebellion was successful and the Trans-Siberian railroad was completed before 1854, Sasha Trubetskaya wants nothing more than to have a decent debut ball in St. Petersburg. But her aunt’s feud with the emperor lands Sasha at university, where she becomes one of its first female students - an experiment, she suspects, designed more to prove female unsuitability for such pursuits than offer them education.

Foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is livid. She's been downsized from her Kabul posting. Her editor reassigns her to a stateside suburban beat formerly the province of interns. When she arrives in Montana for some R&R at a friend's cabin, her friend is nowhere in sight. Anger turns to terror when Lola discovers her friend shot dead. She can't get out of Montana fast enough, until she finds that she can't get out at all.

Ballerina Lucia del Mar has two great passions: dance, which consumes most of her waking hours, and the Internet, which brings the outside world into her tightly regimented life. These two passions collide when a White House performance and reception leads to an encounter with handsome Moroccan businessman Rashid al-Jazari, creator of a brilliant technology that has set the Internet rumor mill ablaze.

In one night, Leanne Summers has lost her home, her every possession, and learned that everything she's ever believed is a lie. So when she witnesses a bank robbery in progress, she doesn't think of the consequences. She steals a gun, barges in - and finds herself being held captive within minutes.

In the wake of the financial crisis, investors are faced with a stark choice: entrust their hard-earned dollars to the Wall Street casino or settle for anemic interest rates on savings, bonds, and CDs. Meanwhile, small businesses are being starved for the credit and capital they need to grow. There's got to be a better way. In Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit from It, Amy Cortese takes us inside the local investing movement, where solutions to some of the nation's most pressing problems are taking shape.

This groundbreaking anthology presents 40 narratives, both nonfiction and fiction, that together capture the impact and complexity of Alzheimer’s and other dementias on patients, as well as their caregivers and family. Deeply personal, recounting the wrenching course of a disease that kills a loved one twice - first they forget who they are, and then the body succumbs - these stories also show how witnessing the disease and caring for someone with it can be powerfully transformative, calling forth amazing strength and grace.

Plus-sized Rachel Simon has settled into her life. But in a lifetime of not-quite fitting in and battling demon food issues, she has given up on finding love, despite the nagging of her close circle of friends. Now, Rachel has received some big news: a fashion blog, which she secretly wrote on the side, has caught the eye of a major fashion magazine, who not only want her to write a column, but are giving her an award at an upcoming banquet. The problem? She used Lisa’s picture on her bio and believes they expect a tall beautiful blonde to walk through the doors of the magazine.

Living in the present as well as the past, Montserrat de la Rosa plans a grand escape from her assisted living community, banking on the help of her deceased husband.

A newly blended Irish-Chilean Jewish family sits down for their first Passover dinner together. Joe Wenderoth, who chose Ghost Deer was the winner of the 2015 New Guard Machigonne Fiction Contest, writes, "Ghost Deer, for me, is nothing less than the conjuring of human beings. They have grown strange - they appear haunted - from years (and centuries) in the trap of loving one another."

Stuck in a dead-end job at the DMV, Brenda feels invisible, certain no one could guess she was once loved by someone who's now a famous movie star. But when she fails an angry woman on her driving test and the woman turns the situation into a violent standoff, Brenda discovers just how grand her own stage can be in this funny, wrenching story of how past loves can reverberate for years and keep us going in ways we never imagined.

Three men are trapped in time. One woman could save them all. Historian Lia Carrer has finally returned to southern France, determined to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. But instead of finding solace in the region's quiet hills and medieval ruins, she falls in love with Raoul, a man whose very existence challenges everything she knows about life - and about her husband's death.

Possibly the only romance ever set in a high-end Montreal kosher restaurant, A Taste of Heaven layers spicy love scenes with directions for making velvety pâté and musings about babies. Will Dena and Richard Klein's marriage overheat - or will they find more savor and sweetness?

Within the course of a week, Natalie is dumped by her husband, receives an urgent call home from her father, and discovers her estranged sister is pregnant. A road trip on Route 66 may not help, but it sure couldn't hurt. Or so Natalie thinks until Lindsay's boyfriend starts stalking them. Will their trip down the Mother Road bring the two sisters closer together or turn out to be the biggest wrong turn yet?

In the still of the night... Christmas is coming and Jenny Fitzgerald couldn't care less. She's getting divorced, and her life is in tatters. And just when she's thinking it couldn't possibly be worse, her husband is killed on the job, an undercover operation gone bad. In the midst of her grief, Jenny is confronted with a killer. A hunter who will stop at nothing to see her dead.

Artist Mia Kearney has the perfect life: A successful career, a home she loves, amazing friends... until her world explodes one hot August morning. Lone survivor of a nuclear accident, Mia awakens in a government facility, faced with Homeland Security agent Nicholas Price, a man who wants answers she knows she doesn’t have. When Mia escapes, Nick has a choice to make. The CIA wants him off the case, but instinct tells him not to let Mia out of his sight.

The dream always started the same…. Psychology Meredith Morgan understands the how and why of dreams. She understands that dreams are how our subconscious mind tells us things we are too busy to notice. It was a nearly senseless dream…. She understands that some see dreams as prophetic, as the future reaching back and giving us a clue as to what is to come. Some see dreams as open doors through which the past can claw its way into the present. Dreams are where time and space collapse. Meredith awoke…. But dreams are dreams, and when you wake up, the people you meet in your dreams shouldn't still be with you….

Gwendolyn Golden and Armand Leopold have been America's go-to couple for home decorating tips, letting the cameras into their So Perfect house, their So Perfect life, their So Perfect marriage. One problem: It's all an act. Actually, two problems: America just found out it's all an act. When a picture of Armand kissing another man hits the newsstands, everyone knows the jig is up. Both are evicted from their home and eviscerated by the press.

At first, Manhattan financial planner Melanie Banks adores Dan Swain, her pro-football player husband who has a sexy Oklahoma drawl to go with his athletic good looks. But then his career comes to a screeching halt, and he spends the next few years out of a job, seemingly unconcerned about it. Suddenly, she's the one bringing home the bacon and falling out of love with the paycheck-devouring, couch-sitting mooch. Divorce is the answer, she decides - only to learn she has to fork over alimony while he lives like a prince on her income, and she has to share custody of their precious dog.

Master short story writer Ellen Gilchrist, winner of the National Book Award, returns with her first story collection in over eight years. In Acts of God, she has crafted 10 different scenarios in which people dealing with forces beyond their control somehow manage to survive, persevere, and triumph, even if it is only a triumph of the will. For Marie James, a teenager from Fayetteville, Arkansas, the future changes when she joins a group of friends in their effort to find survivors among the debris left when a tornado destroys a neighboring town.