Showing results by narrator "Meredith Mitchell" in All Categories

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Some young ladies marry for money and social standing, a few lucky ones marry for love - but Tiffany Warren is marrying to end a feud. Honoring her mother’s promise, Tiffany reluctantly travels west to meet her estranged father and his enemy’s eldest son, rancher Hunter Callahan. Once the Warrens and the Callahans are united by marriage, both clans will stop squabbling over a disputed strip of land. In the chaos of a train robbery Tiffany seizes a golden opportunity. By assuming the identity of her father’s new housekeeper she can live with the father she never knew and assess his true character, as well as that of the neighboring cowboy to whom she is betrothed.

It's the end of the summer and prodigal daughter Maggie Crozat has returned home to her family's plantation-turned-bed-and-breakfast in Louisiana. The Crozats have an inn full of guests for the local food festival. But when the elderly couple keels over dead within minutes of each other - one from very unnatural causes - Maggie and her family suddenly become suspects in a murder.

The Crozats feared that past murders at Crozat Plantation B&B might spell the death of their beloved estate, but they've managed to survive the scandal. Now there's a très bigger story in Pelican, Louisiana: the upcoming nuptials between Police Chief Rufus Durand and Vanessa Fleer. Maggie Crozat, inexplicably tasked with being Vanessa's maid of honor, quickly discovers why everyone else refused the assignment when the bridezilla hands her a long list of duties.

The day Danielle Harding takes her 11-year-old son, Simon, and flees from her abusive husband is the same day Kurt Harding dies. A relieved Dani believes that she and her son are finally safe, but in reality, things are just heating up. When Kurt was alive, he took something important to a mysterious person. That person wants the item back and believes that Dani now has it. As she and her son run for their lives, they have nowhere to turn.

Summer Abernathy wakes up one morning to find her husband missing, three men in her home intent on finding him, and the life she's been living based on a lie. Which Kyle Abernathy did she marry? The computer programmer she met in line at the bank? Or the one who was apparently using that image as a cover story? The search for her husband - and answers - takes Summer ever deeper into a world of organized crime, where people are used one moment and discarded the next.

In her warm and inimitable way, M. J. Ryan guides us to look at our lives from a different perspective. To imagine what they would be like if we practiced an attitude of self-trust, if we received the gifts trusting ourselves might give us. In an age of constant media messages and so-called expert advice telling us to be richer, thinner, smart, and faster, we're all dogged with worry and self-doubt. Best-selling author M. J. Ryan believes we've become so dependent on "experts" to tell us how to live our lives that we listen to everyone except ourselves.

Seeking to fulfill the promise she made to her dying father, 18-year-old Jesselynn Highwood determines to take her little brother and the family's remaining thoroughbreds from the Twin Oaks plantation in Kentucky to her uncle's farm in Missouri, where they will be safe for the remainder of the Civil War.

Open adoption isn't just something parents do when they exchange photos, send emails, share a visit. It's a lifestyle that may feel intrusive at times, be difficult or inconvenient at other times. Tensions can arise even in the best of circumstances. But knowing how to handle these situations and how to continue to make arrangements work for the child involved is paramount. This book offers listeners the tools and the insight to do just that.

Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops… just another day for Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.

When a disastrous decision by the trainmaster forces Jesselynn Highwood and her companions to separate from the wagon train, she races back to Fort Laramie to find a guide to take them to Oregon. But the guide has a far different plan, and following her heart, Jesselynn agrees to join him, her ragtag band in tow. Back east, Louisa Highwood and her brother, Zachary, are captured by Union soldiers for smuggling medical supplies into Richmond.

While her sister fights to hold on to the family legacy, Louisa Highwood works tirelessly to save the lives of wounded soldiers. Putting her own safety on the line, she covertly ventures behind enemy lines to procure desperately needed supplies for the army hospital in Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, Jesselynn Highwood and her ragtag band of freed slaves and thoroughbred horses seek refuge along the Oregon Trail, unable to imagine what awaits them.

Grenadine Scotch Wild has only vague memories of the parents she last saw when she was six years old. But she's never forgotten their final, panicked words to her, urging Grenadine to run. The mystery of their disappearance is just one more frayed strand in a life that has lately begun to unravel completely. One year into her rocky marriage to Covey, a well-known investor, he is arrested for fraud and embezzlement. And Grenadine, now a successful collage artist and painter, is facing jail time despite her innocence.

Dr. Susan J. Noonan provides people experiencing depression with strategies to take stock of their mental state, to chart a course toward emotional balance, and to track their progress on the journey to well-being. Dr. Noonan explains how to obtain care from professionals, outlines what medical options are available, and lists everyday things people can do to feel better. Integrating medicine, psychology, and holistic care while exploring the basics of mental health, she touches on diet, sleep habits, physical activity, and mindfulness techniques.

A collection of timeless Westerns from some of the most well-known authors of the genre, including Zane Grey and Max Brand: "The Little Gold Miners" by Joaquin Miller, "Bulger's Reputation" by Bret Harte, "The Leaf of Red Rose" by W.H.H. Murray, "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch" by Ambrose Bierce, "The Californian's Tale" by Mark Twain, "Twelve O'Clock" by Stephen Crane, "The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo" by Gerturde Atherton, "A Deal in Wheat" by Frank Norris, "The Caballero's Way" by O. Henry, and more.

Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services is a fixture in San Francisco at the dawn of a new century. While the future is unclear, Sabina and John know one thing for certain: they will protect their clients from flimflammers, thieves, and murderers, and do whatever it takes to run these dregs of society into the arms of the law. Sometimes, that requires a subtle touch. Professor A. Vargas, self-styled medium extraordinaire, and his partner Annabelle, use guile and trickery to swindle bereaved men and women eager to contact the spirits of deceased loved ones.

When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to unravel are not difficult: Wrixton, a wealthy banker, has met his extortionist's first demand, but the order to pay another $5,000 is too much to face. The banker's real problem is something he doesn't want to reveal.

A con man always has a bag of tricks, ready to fool the unsuspecting, and almost everyone is unsuspecting until they get taken. When that happens, they turn to Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, to recover their money and what’s left of their dignity, and perhaps even to save their lives.

Meet Julie Chavan. Julie is trying to rescue the legendary New York publishing house West 57. Everyone else in her life is trying to rescue Julie - her mother, her ex-fiancé, her ex-best friend, and even the ghost of her dead father. They all think they know what Julie needs. What Julie actually needs is a big best seller for West 57, but her debut of the year's hottest book is spinning wildly out of control.

A surprise trip to Barcelona with her boyfriend, Jake, seems like the perfect antidote to Grace Sawyer's current woes. The city is dazzling and unpredictable, but the biggest surprise for Grace is discovering who arranged and paid for the vacation. Carrie Ann wasn't just Grace's foster sister. Clever, pretty, and mercurial, she was her best friend - until everything went terribly wrong. Now, as she flees an abusive marriage, Carrie Ann has turned to the one person she hopes will come through for her.