Showing results by narrator "Kate Reading" in All Categories

A wedding on the edge of a Hawaiian volcano sounds risky to Dinah Pelerin, the bride’s best friend and maid of honor. The bride, Claude Ann Kemper, has bet her heart that she’s found the right man at last. The groom has gone all in on a real estate deal that he believes will set him and his new wife up for life. But Hawaii is a tinderbox of ancient myths and modern conflicts over who should control the land so cherished by its native people. A group of native Hawaiians claims that the sacred bones of an ancestral king are buried on the land that the groom plans to sell, and one of them has vowed do whatever it takes to stop him.

Dinah Pelerin’s wealthy American uncle, dying of cancer, has summoned his entire family to a remote lodge in upper Australia, where he intends to end his life. Dinah hopes to at last learn the truth about her father, who died while committing a felony when she was a child. But the truth, she discovers, has darker ramifications than she’d bargained on.

Paris, France: 1860’s. Hundreds of houses are being razed, whole neighborhoods reduced to ashes. By order of Emperor Napoleon III, Baron Haussman has set into motion a series of large-scale renovations that will permanently alter the face of old Paris, moulding it into a “modern city.” The reforms will erase generations of history - but in the midst of the tumult, one woman will take a stand. Rose Bazelet is determined to fight against the destruction of her family home until the very end; as others flee, she stakes her claim in the basement of the old house on rue Childebert, ignoring the sounds of change....

July 13, 1938: The renowned nuclear physicist Lise Meitner, approaching the age of 60, sits on the train that will take her to the German-Dutch border and then to the safety of exile in Sweden. After months of uncertainty and fear, as a Jew in Nazi Germany, she has abandoned everything: her friends, her career, and her beloved adopted home, the city of Berlin, where she had become a pioneer in the world of nuclear physics.

Big Anthony Tagliabue is a local character whose fiancee Agnes Ann owns a stable on the eponymous offshore island. She is secretly training a promising filly for the track when she discovers that Tagliabue also harbors a secret: He's a deep-cover operative who is called to duty when a Russian spy ship transits the coast on her way back to St. Petersburg. Giselle, Tagliabue's enigmatic and exotic handler, intimates that his mission to rescue a defector from the Leonov might also ameliorate his thirst to find the killers of his mate. Agnes Ann is not so sure about Giselle.

Gretel has never had any time for sorcerers, considering them nothing more than show-offs with questionable fashion sense. It is with some reluctance and a deal of grumpiness, then, that she agrees to look into the matter of a murdered magician. All that is left of him is a grisly remnant, which the police quack confirms is the murdered man’s appendix. What has become of the rest of him is baffling the local constabulary, the Sorcerers’ Society, and, not least, the hapless trickster’s widow.

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.

Annie Darling, owner of the Death on Demand mystery bookstore, is hosting a party to celebrate successful Southern literary icon—and former Broward’s Rock resident—Alex Griffith and his bestselling new novel, Don’t Go Home. But after the local paper announces that Griffith aims to reveal...

When Dorothy Martin and her husband Alan meet the wealthy Ahmad family, they are charmed by their courtesy, their perfect English, their delightful children, and their commitment to peace. Following a concert at Sherebury Cathedral, the Ahmads offer to host a party afterwards at the Rose and Crown pub. But Mr. and Mrs. Ahmad don’t show up. Their children are asleep upstairs at the inn, but the parents are nowhere to be found. With suspicions of kidnap and even murder being raised, Dorothy and Alan feel compelled to assist the police and MI5 in their efforts to find their new friends.

When Dorothy Martin and her ex-policeman husband Alan are asked by some friends to look into a series of petty crimes that are perplexing the local Mounties in the picturesque Canadian city of Victoria, they immediately jump on a plane to British Columbia and settle themselves into the heart of the local community. Drinking champagne with the local businessman and would-be politician as well as cups of tea with the local recluse, they infiltrate all ranks of Victoria society. But when a young woman goes missing and a body is discovered, it would appear that the petty crimes have turned deadly.

Dorothy Martin and her husband Alan have been invited to rural Suffolk to take part in the christening of the newest member of the aristocratic Montcalm family. But on arriving at Dunham Manor, they discover the household in turmoil as the ceremonial dagger used in Montcalm family christenings for generations past, has gone missing. Dorothy and Alan offer their help in locating the ancient heirloom, but when a stranger is murdered in the village—stabbed in the back with an ornate dagger—Sir Edwin Montcalm finds himself the prime suspect in a very puzzling murder.

What if Mistborn and Treasure Planet had a baby—and that baby stole an airship? In the floating world of Sora, magic isn’t wielded—it’s lived, breathed, and burned. Valeo’s the last of his kind—a luck-bending thief forged by loss. Breeze is fury incarnate—bloodied fists a vow to the family that left her behind. Falling in with a patchwork Corsair crew, these would-be pirates uncover a storybook ship and a thousand-year heist still haunting the skies.

The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father's farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transform her father's patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life.

Christian History takes a look, in this issue, at how Tolkien influenced culture and what the influences in his life were. How his Catholicism and friendship with C.S. Lewis influenced what he wrote about Hobbits, dragons, and overcoming great evil. This issue takes the time to examine many areas of the life of the man who created the 20th century's greatest myth.

A powerful reckoning over the people we might have been if we’d chosen a different path, from a master of the short story In this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices...

The stories in this anthology have been published before, but they have not been widely circulated. These stories are some of my favorite works, and I created this book to put them all in one place for the listener. The Fall of Tryos is a retelling of the fall of Troy but on a planetary scale with spaceships and freaking lasers built into swords. The Emperor's Will, Sergius the Sorcerer, Living Ink, and Reset are a few of my first publications, so they will always hold a special place in my heart.

The holiday comes to an abrupt halt when David’s elderly great-aunt is accused of the murder of a fellow patient at her nursing home. How could a frail dementia sufferer commit such a terrible deed? Dorothy is determined to prove Aunt Amanda’s innocence, and launches into an unofficial investigation. But as she and David navigate their way amongst reckless students, inefficient police work, and witnesses who have lost the ability to remember, the investigation soon becomes as twisty, slippery, and treacherous as the damp cobblestones outside.

Retired chief constable Alan Nesbit and his wife Dorothy Martin are in the beautiful historic city of Bath to celebrate Dorothy’s birthday, enjoying the city’s elegant surroundings, sightseeing, shopping—and champagne. But the celebrations are curtailed when they discover a curious assortment of loot in their car boot during a trip to Stonehenge—from precious artifacts to cheap jumble sale trinkets. The stolen items are linked to various historic sites in Bath, but how did they end up in the Martins’ car?

In Hudson River Bracketed, Edith Wharton illuminates the creative process of writing. Vance Weston, a young Midwesterner yearning to be a writer, travels to New York in pursuit of his dreams. On the Hudson River, in an old house called The Willows, he meets a kindred spirit. Halo Spear is the privileged daughter of an old New York family, a lover of poetry and literature who educates and inspires him as he hones his craft.

When Rachel Cohen is born, her parents’ marriage begins to crack. As she grows, and her village teeters on the brink, it is up to Rachel and The Council of Wise Women to cook up a plan and step in. Family breakdowns, a village on the edge of famine, and the challenges of a beloved community…