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.

Grace MacKinnon’s widowhood promises little but a life of drudgery under her father-in-law’s oppressive rule. When quiet rebellion turns to opportunity, she books passage on an Atlantic steamer only to face near disaster in Halifax harbor. Her future looks doomed from the start until, with the help of a sympathetic stranger and a chance meeting with Lucy Maud Montgomery, she changes destination and arrives on Prince Edward Island. Her newfound independence drives her to undertake a brave new adventure in a male-dominated world.

Faced with financial ruin and the loss of her good name, Rose Chadwick decides to make a new start for herself and her young daughter Hannah in the rough-and-tumble gold rush town of Barkerville, British Columbia. However, making a new life is not so easy when it’s built on lies. Viscount Harrison St. John knows he’s expected to marry well to bolster his family fortunes. Instead, he leaves England to pursue riches in the gold fields of a town in the wilds of Canada. Will dark secrets from Rose’s past keep them apart? Or will they find love, happiness, and a new life together?

It’s 1942 in Washington, DC. Louise Pearlie is now a chief file clerk at the legendary OSS, the precursor to the CIA, and enjoys being an independent working woman despite wartime privations. But a casual friendship struck up with Alessa di Luca, a secretive war refugee, sucks Louise into a dangerous game of mafia bosses, Nazi spies, banished royalty, and Sicilian aristocracy - placing not only her job but her life in jeopardy.

Inspired and inspiring, award-winning author Jane Enright’s extraordinary, uplifting memoir captures her journey as she survives three life-altering events in the span of a year, losing almost everything, and comes out the other side stronger, more resilient, and happier than ever before. Compelling and thought provoking, Butter Side Up is not only a feel-good story that everyone can relate to and learn from, but also proof there can be happiness and joy after the unexpected—and a super awesome life, too.

A 2023 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize finalist, Jane's Jam leads listeners through a fresh, thought-provoking playbook approach to creating new beginnings after seeming endings—finding good during and after handling unexpected change. Packed with timely, uplifting, practical strategies for overcoming obstacles in our lives and increasing outside-in thinking, mindfulness, and gratitude, Jane's Jam can help you develop a healthy mindset, respond more positively to and thrive during unwanted change, and inspire choices that create joy, happiness, and the super awesome life you deserve!

The Call of the Wild is Jack London's most popular and enduring work. Set in the frozen wilderness of the Yukon, it tells the story of the magnificent dog Buck, who is a loyal family pet until cruel men steal him and make him a pawn in their feverish search for the gold of the Klondike. Brutally beaten into serving as a sled dog, Buck finds the blood of his wolf ancestors rising within him.

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.

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.

Until she saw the horror on Ben’s face, it hadn’t occurred to Samantha that a menacing murder of crows had congregated in this Attic Windows quilt. It gave her pause to examine it more closely, and what she discovered gave her chills. Who was this woman, L. Bennett, so tormented by suspicion she hid clues to her own murder in a quilt for her son, Nicky? Or was it a daughter? Was she murdered, or is she alive, steeped in paranoia?

Walking is a form of exercise that’s available to most people. You don’t need any special equipment other than some supportive walking shoes. And there’s no need for an expensive membership at a fitness center. I wrote this book to break down the myths about physical, mental, and spiritual walking, to share the successes and challenges of my lifelong walking journey, to provide strategies and tools to embrace different types of walking at every age and stage of life, and to help teach others about building physical, mental, and emotional resilience and inner strength.

For many Loyalists during the American War for Independence, the perilous journey to Canada is just the beginning of a long and arduous struggle to find a new home and a new life amid the upheavals of war and separation, death and privation. For Elisabeth Van Alen, it also means finding new strength and the will to survive in a new country. Married to Gerrit, an educated Mohawk warrior, she is filled with fears when he must go away shortly before the American rebels force her and her family out of their ancestral home.

It’s a decade following WWI, in a small village of Nova Scotia. Maggie Conrad, a young war widow, lives with her father and younger brother, helping them manage a small store. After the sudden death of her father, Maggie finds their finances in shambles. Instead of moping around or choosing to "settle down", she decides to sell the store and relocate to the city in the hope of finding a job. Thus starts her adventure.

In 1784, Englishwoman Amelia Latimer sails to the new colony of New Brunswick in faraway Canada. She’s to marry a man chosen by her soldier father. Amelia is repulsed by her betrothed, refuses to marry, then meets the handsome Acadian trader, Gilbert, a man beneath her in status. Gilbert must protect his mother, who was attacked by an English soldier. He fights to hold on to their property, to keep it from the Loyalists who have flooded the colony, desperate men chased from the South after the American Revolution.

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.