Showing results by narrator "Laura Jennings" in All Categories

Meet nine courageous young adults who have lived in the United States with a secret for much of their lives: they are not U.S. citizens. They came from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea. They came seeking education, fleeing violence, and escaping poverty. All have heartbreaking and hopeful stories about leaving their homelands and starting a new life in America. And all are weary of living in the shadows.

Three college freshmen go missing from their rural hometown of Kelly's Falls while on Christmas break. Their cell phones, coats, and purses are left behind, but the girls have disappeared without a trace. As the days turn into weeks and the investigation grows cold, 23-year-old Buffalo police officer Shea O'Connor is called on to dig up leads undercover.

The hot, powerful Wolff brothers have moved to the outskirts of Silver Town and opened a ski lodge. They've always wanted to live in a wolf-controlled area, and now they have their chance. Private investigator and gray-wolf shifter Josie Grayson is hot on the trail of a dangerous criminal hiding out at the ski lodge when her partner takes ill and must leave her to pursue the mission alone. Blake Wolff steps in - he can't resist the allure of this brilliant and focused she-wolf whose presence awakens a long-dormant yearning in his heart.

Making a fresh start in a new part of the country is challenging, but fate and good fortune lead young single mother Josie Waterhill and her six-year-old daughter to a cozy Midwestern town right on the river. There, Josie can raise Zoe away from the violence of the life she once knew and make a new home in the historic tea house where they've been invited to stay. The tea house seems too good to be true - that is, until Josie's elderly landlord Myra welcomes more guests.

When a young woman is found strangled to death and left on a park bench in Santa Rosa, California, Detective Eddie Mahler and his Violent Crime Investigations (VCI) Team are called to the scene. The crime immediately flashes Mahler back to two unsolved homicides - young women who were also strangled - that took place at this same location a couple of years earlier. His inability to find evidence against the man he knows was responsible for their deaths has haunted him since.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, the year-round population of Key West, Florida, faces a tsunami of tourists and snowbirds. It doesn't help that outrageously wealthy key-lime-pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his pie-baking contest. Every pie purveyor on the island is out to win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City, and Key Zest food-critic Hayley Snow is on the scene to report it. Meanwhile, Hayley's home life is turning more tart than sweet.

Natalie is propelled through life by pica, a disorder that has her eating a wide variety of inedibles. A lowly staff worker for the local news, she follows the inane demands of the station’s senile weatherman and comes home to an empty apartment. With her mother recently killed in a tragic house fire, and her runaway brother, Eliot, missing for years, Natalie and her father Boris only have each other. When a cryptic voicemail implicates her mother’s Gypsy roots in her untimely death, Natalie begins to consider the demons that consumed her mother, and drove her brother away.

Poland, July 1944. Sixteen-year-old Maria is making her way home after years of forced labor in Nazi Germany, only to find her village destroyed and her parents killed in a war between the Polish Resistance and Ukrainian nationalists. To Maria’s shock, the local Resistance unit is commanded by her older brother, Tomek - who she thought was dead. He is now a “Silent Unseen”, a special-operations agent with an audacious plan to resist a new and even more dangerous enemy sweeping in from the East.

When a young woman linked to a list of missing Fire-Sky tribal members commits suicide, Pueblo Police Sergeant Nicky Matthews is assigned to the case. As the investigation unfolds, she uncovers a threat that strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a Fire-Sky Native: victims chosen and murdered because of their genetic makeup. But these deaths are not just about a life taken. In a vengeful twist, the killer ensures the spirits of those targeted will wander forever, lost to their family, their people, and their ancestors.

Nathan Starr has lived an honorable life. He married a good woman, raised a family, turned their struggling farm into a thriving business, and founded a town in the process. But now, watching his children and grandchildren, he fears the next generations of Sweetheart, Montana never learned about love. Free-spirited Pansy Oppenheimer aches for her dear friend Nate. Although he stayed behind while she traveled the world, together they know this town and its secrets better than anyone. No one wishes a bright future for the Starrs of Sweetheart more than they do.

Sweetheart’s official photographer has a problem. The boudoir photos Carrie Logan used to do, long ago and far away, have come back to haunt her. So she turns to Ethan Nash, the mysteriously gorgeous guy with big dogs and a bad attitude, for help containing this secret and the scandal it will cause. Ethan takes one look at the photo of young Carrie and his harsh cyber-security specialist exterior begins to melt. For some reason, he feels the need to help this beautiful photographer.

The Silk Road begins on a mat in yoga class, deep within a labyrinth on a settlement somewhere in the icy north, under the canny guidance of Jee Moon. When someone fails to arise from corpse pose, the Astronomer, the Archivist, the Botanist, the Keeper, the Topologist, the Geographer, the Iceman, and the Cook remember the paths that brought them there - paths on which they still seem to be traveling.The Silk Road is Davis' most explicitly allegorical novel and also her most profound vehicle. Its revelations are ravishing and desolating.

For answers, Millie turns to the Gypsies who caravan through town each spring. The travelers lead Millie to a key that unlocks generations of shocking family secrets. When tragedy strikes, the mysterious contents of the box give Millie the tools she needs to break her family’s longstanding cycle of madness and abuse. Through it all, Millie experiences the thrill of first love while fighting to trust the God she believes has abandoned her. With the power of forgiveness, can she finally make her way into the free?

Jacklyn Stone’s freedom is tainted with guilt. Rebuilding after her conniving son’s attempt to dispose of her in a secluded mental facility, the loyal sixty-something is haunted by memories of other sane residents abandoned by their families. Desperate to save those held against their will, she recruits a group of big-hearted friends for a daring Christmas Eve mission.

Just before fiery food-critic Hayley Snow's mother's decadent flan is put to the test, Key West's most prized possession, Hemingway's Nobel Prize gold medal for The Old Man and the Sea, is discovered stolen from its case. Unsavory suspicions point to Gabriel, a family friend and one of the new busboys working the event, who mysteriously goes missing moments later. Anxious to clear his name, Gabriel's family enlists Hayley to help find him, but right as they begin their search, his body is found stabbed to death in the storeroom.

Ex-military man Derrick Richmond: Solitary and satisfied... until little Timmy was dropped into his lap and Derrick had to learn to be somebody's daddy. Schoolteacher Anna Maxwell: Fate might have denied her a family of her own, but Anna still had plenty of love to give, if only someone would notice. The Solution: Anna would teach Derrick all he needed to know about kids. Father and son would give Anna some precious memories. Then the schoolteacher and the single dad would go their separate ways. Unless one little boy figured out a way to make Miss Maxwell become his mom!

Kaiya Parks was certain in her uncertainty. The end of college was supposed to be a time of new beginnings, but she had no idea what she wanted to do next. An afternoon in the forest was supposed to clear her mind, not plunge her into the middle of a decades-old battle. When the shadows stir, three wielders are chosen to stand against them, gifted unimaginable power and a destiny they never thought possible. With more questions than answers, Kaiya and her friends race to find the truth before all of their futures are plunged into darkness.

When you feel your soul being afflicted with anxiety and turmoil, return to Scripture to find rest. Listening to the Gospels enhanced with peaceful nature sounds in the background will restore the calm your heart needs. Be refreshed and renew your walk with God as you listen to his Word in the most-trusted modern English Bible translation, the New International Version.

When you feel your soul being afflicted with anxiety and turmoil, return to Scripture to find rest. Listening to the Gospels enhanced with peaceful instrumental music in the background will restore the calm your heart needs.

Friend, we were never meant to walk in darkness. But no matter how dark the world seems, the good news is that even in the darkest places, God still pursues us. There is no place too dark, because wherever God is, light is there too. And you can be sure there will be enough light for your next step.