Showing results by narrator "Melinda Cumming" in All Categories

Downsized from her job. Dumped by her boyfriend. Depressed about that upcoming 60th birthday. Not a good week for Andi McConnell. But now there's good news: She's just inherited a limousine, a long, sleek, black limousine, from an eccentric uncle. There's also bad news: The dead body that soon turns up in the trunk. And Andi is the top suspect in the murder. Enter Keegan "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, former TV detective, very interested in the case - and in Andi.

Ivy and Mac are on the road, headed for their long-delayed honeymoon. Baja! Beaches! Romance and shrimp tacos and sunshine! But then comes a panicky phone call from good friend Magnolia, who is, as usual, looking into her complicated family genealogy. What she’s found this time is not another...

What follows a wedding? A honeymoon, of course. The beginning of a happily-ever-after future in which Ivy and Mac will travel the country in their motorhome searching for the perfect place to settle down and live. No more dead bodies. No more murders. Instead, here they are on a detour to an old dinosaur park, and Ivy is up to her possum-gray hair in ghost goats, deteriorating dinosaurs, and… what else? A dead body, of course.

Martha Moses Kane—a former rodeo queen and a shirttail relative of Annie Oakley—sees being an 80-year-old widow as no obstacle, but a banquet. By staying fit, loving pets, and baking pies for a cafe and her daughter’s Bed, Barn & Breakfast, she blows a raspberry at old age. But she’s bored. She wants more. Color. Excitement. Maybe a man. When her daughter dragoons her into headlining a Wild West show like her famous 19th-century sharpshooter cousin, she reluctantly agrees. But practicing is a blast.

Danger and desire swirl about modern cowgirl-sleuth Pepper Kane as she uses her ex-reporter skills to solve mysteries she suspects are related.

The Lowell Brothers have seen a lot of marrying since coming to Fontaine, Washington. Now Carl’s three older brothers all have wives, but romance is a risky business, and Carl is in no hurry to follow in their footsteps! He’s busy building up the general store in Fontaine, and he’s doing quite well in his vocation. But when Harriet Finch, an orphaned girl who was exploited by her own relatives and made to work as a maid in their home, shows up late at night with a broken wrist and a broken spirit, Carl can’t turn her away.

Dennis didn’t figure on marrying, but he finds himself falling in love with Isabelle du Pres, the widowed daughter of his boss. Not able to make his affections known, he yearns for an opportunity to prove his love. When unexplained, troubling things start happening in the rail yard, it seems that Martin Crawler, Isabelle’s father, has an enemy.

Mayor Townsend has plans for Ridge, the makings of a political dynasty. It’s a dream opportunity that includes marriage to the most beautiful and powerful lady in Spruce. Ridge is dazzled by the beauty and elegance of the mayor’s daughter, Miss Robin, but his brothers are offended by the way she addresses people who are not of her status.

Jack Pennington has a heart as big as Oregon’s Rogue Valley, where he’s delivered agricultural equipment and taken in foster children for years. Stalled in his marriage, dreading retirement, and making his final runs over the pass to Klamath Basin, he sees an old, abandoned horse that won’t make it through the coming blizzard.

The Lowell Brothers are used to hard luck and hard times. But when they decide to leave their rough-and-tumble neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio, they hope their fortunes will change in Spruce, Washington, where they go to mine for gold. But they are not the only gold-diggers. Victor Lowell, the eldest brother, loses his heart to a conniving beauty whose father has cheated them out of the worth of the gold they’ve mined....

An unexpected—and unrecognized—visitor attends veteran writer Esmé’s reading and brings events of 40 years past squarely into her present. Struggling with writer’s block and uncertain about a future with her romantic partner, Esmé undertakes a journey through her own history. Esmé revisits a particular year she had written off as the worst of her life as well as her whirlwind early marriage. In the process, Esmé ultimately overcomes the wounded hesitancy that has characterized her life and rediscovers her former courage and openness to risk.

Enoch Miller was Kate Bieler’s first love, but when it was time for her to go on rumspringa, he cut all communication with her. Furious, Kate married another Mann. Now she is a widow, her parents are dead, and she has an orphaned child to raise. Out of options, she turns to Gott for help. One night while praying, she realizes she must marry, and quickly. Unfortunately, the only single Mann in her Amish community is Enoch Miller, who hasn’t spoken to her in years. Trusting in His guidance, she summons her courage and asks Enoch to marry her. Will Enoch agree to marry her?

The things 17-year-old Erin Post wants are drastically different from the things she needs. A junior in high school, Erin wants nothing more than to be thin. In reality, she's a depressed girl with a serious eating disorder who needs to stop starving herself. When Erin’s mother insists that she see a psychiatrist, Erin runs away to Chicago. There, she meets Lin and Ari, two homeless teens who show her that there’s a lot more to the world than being thin and fitting in.

Trading her reporter’s ID badge for the vocations of selling horse tack and showing horses, Pepper enjoys her new life and friends in Oregon’s Rogue River Valley. While line-dancing with her Brassbottom Barn buddies one night, she learns a prize show horse has been killed. A suspect herself, she must find the killer before the killer closes in on her.

In the 25th century, the recently widowed Prince Jack Windsor escapes his grief after the death of his wife and child by fleeing to Mars to solve the mystery of the dormant HMS Ares. When Harlow Hanson, the Robin Hood of the Martian colony, sneaks aboard to plunder the ship in order to save her people, the Ares springs to life and begins communicating with her. Prince Jack realizes the woman stealing from him is the key he's been searching for.

Carlie is not merely traveling. A child trauma survivor as a teen, she steals ten thousand dollars and runs away to Asia. Through Hong Kong, The Philippines, Bali, and Thailand, the Lonely Planet path of hookups, heat, alcohol, and drugs takes on a terrifying reality for the young survivor. Trading sex for protection, Carlie retreats to alcohol and self-starvation. Finally, on the tiny island of oh Phangan, Thailand—home to the infamous Full Moon party—Carlie falls in with an international crew of Tai chi-practicing backpackers.

Early Alaskan military and bush pilots navigated some of the highest and most rugged terrain on earth, taking off and landing on glaciers, mudflats, and active volcanoes. Although they were consistently portrayed by industry leaders and lawmakers alike as cowboys—and their planes compared to settlers’ covered wagons—the reality was that aviation catapulted Alaska onto a modern, global stage; the federal government subsidized aviation’s growth in the territory as part of the Cold War defense against the Soviet Union.

Perfectly Hugo is a gently provocative and emotionally layered novel that explores the boundaries of love, memory, and identity in an age of advancing technology. Enid and Hugo built a life together—full of quiet joys, deep conversations, and unshakable devotion. But when faced with the inevitable, they make a decision few would dare: to sign with Assembled Souls, a cutting-edge company that offers the ultimate promise—rebirth through AI. If one of them dies, the other can bring them back.

Spirited ex-reporter Pepper Kane and her business partner, cowgirl poet Tulip Clemmons, have poured their life savings into The Best Little Bed, Barn & Breakfast in Oregon. Things look rosy until the hot new wrangler is murdered in a horse stall. Guests fear for their lives and the two friends fear for their future. The fright factor ratchets up when a pretty female guest turns up dead and police put the ranch on lockdown.

Emily Sweeney, MD, is a vibrant young trauma physician at a major Seattle medical center who is tragically taken from the comfort of her 21st Century life. Suddenly, dropped into the 1880s unforgiving frontier, she is determined to survive, or die all over again. Using her knowledge and skills as a physician, Emily struggles to save a stranger in the desert hills of the Arizona Territory. In the end, can she return to her previous life and leave behind the man she's come to love?