Showing results by narrator "Jenny Hoops" in All Categories

English hairdresser, Ethel, is alone after the deaths of her family and her wartime fiancé. Widow and single mother, Alice, bringing up two daughters, receives an unexpected inheritance that will transform her life. War bride, Joan, is mother to three small children with a fourth on the way and money in short supply. All are brought together in a rural Canadian town where they each try to build a future - often in spite of the men in their lives. 

Greg Hallstead lost the championship buckle to Terry McCaskill at this year's Policemen's Rodeo. Now, he's partnered with his rival, working undercover at a Florida resort while sparks fly between them at every turn. Greg and Terry are unconvincing as a brother/sister duo, but even less convincing are the cops pretending to be their "parents": a gay "dad" and sexy, flirty "mom". Still, the four cops may survive, if the resort owner's wife, Emerald, doesn't reveal she dated Greg years ago. And if a hotel hooker doesn't recognize him from past arrests.

With Kansas City, Missouri as a backdrop, you will enjoy a humorous behind-the-scenes peek at a four part harmony that can only be sung by women. This year in the life of a barbershop baritone tells why these women will wear identical dresses as their riser mates, slather makeup on their faces, endure hours wearing all-in-ones and high heels, and love every minute of it. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, but you know who you are!

On a bitterly cold night in December, 1943, government girl Louise Pearlie and her friend Joe Prager are enjoying a quiet drink in the Baron Steuben Inn, when a bloodstained body is discovered behind the bar. Although the victim had been a regular customer, no one seems to know anything about him. When it turns out there is a link to Louise’s top-secret work at the OSS, she is ordered to find out as much as possible about the murder while keeping the connection secret from those involved, including the investigating police detective.

What does a boy do when his imaginary friends never die? Oliver (Olly) Frampton fights back his parting tears. It’s all his fault they fought. He stares into the blackness, terrified his mother will careen off the mountain at any moment in the storm. Ahead, police lights streak through the sky.

Hester Prynne has been marked as an outcast from the society of colonial Boston for the sin of bearing a child out of wedlock. Her punishment? When she is released from jail, she must endure public shaming at the pillory with her baby. And then—worse yet—she is forced to spend the rest of...

Haunted by her student's disappearance for more than a decade, Elaine finally stumbles onto a vital clue, only to discover someone will do anything to keep the truth buried. When her life is threatened, she allows the one person she trusts to whisk her away to Texas for safety. But assuming a false identity and hiding among the quirky residents of a nursing home is not what she had in mind.

Elsie Neufeld loves to sit on her porch and watch the children grow in the Mennonite community near Landmark, Manitoba, Canada. Returning to the area after moving to Paraguay for a time, Elsie is happy to be living on the wild rose dotted prairie of south-eastern Manitoba.  

French-Canadian soldier Napoleon proposes to lovely and charming Lea in Belgium during WWI, promising golden fields of wheat as far as the eye can see. After the armistice, he sends money for her passage, and she journeys far from her family and the conveniences of a modern country to join him on a homestead in Saskatchewan. There, she works hard to build their dream of a prospering farm, clearing fields alongside her husband through several pregnancies and even after suffering a terrible loss.

It is 1896, and 19-year-old Pearl Owens wants adventure. To fulfill her dream, Pearl is on her way to the Yukon with her cousin, Emma, to write articles and do illustrations about the woman and men who are looking for gold in the north. Sam Owens, Pearl’s cousin and Emma’s brother, is in the Yukon searching for gold with two friends, Gordon and Donald. After five years of barely making a living at gold panning, Gordon and Donald have decided their quest is futile, and it is time to return home. But Sam wants to stay a while longer.

The youngest child of the local doctor and evangelical preacher, Annie Baldwin was expected to work hard and not protest. George Richardson, the underage Doctor Bernardo boy, orphaned and shipped to Canada a few years earlier, is loaned to the Baldwins to help bring in the hay. The Great War brought a lot of changes to life, even in the back woods of Ontario. In spite of the differences in their social standing, George and Annie fell in love. When George departed for France, he promised to return to her when the war was over. Like so many others, Annie waited and hoped.

In the Dirty Thirties, jobs were hard to come by. Having lost her father and her home in southern Alberta, Tilly McCormack is thrilled when her application for a position as a chambermaid at the prestigious Banff Springs Hotel, one of Canada’s great railway hotels, is accepted. Tilly loves her new life in the Rocky Mountain town and the people she meets there. Local trail guide Ryan Blake is taken with Tilly’s sparkling blue eyes and mischievous sense of humor and thinks she is just the girl for him.

In Beneath the Full Moon, psychiatrist Nan Nelson invites you inside the mental hospitals and psych wards where she’s practiced for over 30 years and shares her personal anecdotes and insights from working with the mentally ill. Told with humor and heart, Nan recounts stories and case studies of patients suffering from depression, PTSD, OCD, addictions, and more. Dr. Nelson ends each chapter with valuable and practical tips for how family members can support their loved ones who may be struggling with mental illnesses.

Every girl's favorite book about horses, this beloved autobiography of a carriage horse in 19th-century England is filled with humor, drama, intrigue, and hope. Follow Black Beauty as he leaves his happy colt-hood home to follow his destiny as a carriage horse, and to the destructive life of a cab horse in London. You'll meet the whole series of Black Beauty's people, from devious, nasty Seedy Sam to the most wonderful of grooms, James Howard, and his cab-driver Jerry Barker and his cheerful family, and finally Black Beauty's saviour, Joe Green.

When Lillian Stone lapses into a coma and is admitted to a San Francisco hospital in the spring of 1969, her only child, twelve-year-old Maggie, is temporarily taken in by her best friend's family. More than a month later, the neighbors can no longer afford to provide for Maggie's room and board. Uprooted again, she is sent to a local orphanage. Just as she's beginning to adapt to life at the orphanage, Ira Stone, a grandfather she never met, shows up unexpectedly and shuttles her 1200 miles away to live at his ranch on the isolated plains of eastern Montana.

Edna Coffman, School Board Chairperson and community icon, hires thirty-something coaches Luke Carter and Madison Danielsen with the specific directive of returning the town sports fortunes to its former championship status. The unique-to-small-town interactions are at the forefront in this tale, and clearly demonstrate the close interconnections between school, sport and community in rural small-town America.

Eager to move on from a master’s thesis that left her questioning her passion for history, Josie dives headlong into her new job and life in a small town. Faced with the prospect of remaining long-term, she must decide if she will fight to carve a place for herself in Wells’s idiosyncratic community. What follows is the story of a young woman trying to find connection and purpose in the twenty-first century while living in a village seemingly frozen in the past.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by all the good advice in a self-help book? Too many to-do’s, and not enough time to-do them? Jenny Hoops has your back! The Dance of Success is a practical, easy-to-do system for taking solid steps towards a life of purpose and joy.

In a world expected to reach a staggering population of 10 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. Uncertain Harvest brings together scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food to answer questions on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future.

French journalist Marc Taragon is trying. A tenacious idealist, Taragon has spent the last thirty years attempting to bring to readers the truths about the wars and political intrigues of the region. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremists and has earned many enemies. He agrees to be interviewed in Cyprus, by a young Canadian journalist, Marie Boivin, not knowing that Marie has a hidden agenda: to discover through Taragon the truth about her childhood.