Showing results by narrator "C.S.E. Cooney" in All Categories

Martha Sue Helmuth wishes she could just relax and enjoy her extended visit with her beloved grandparents. Instead, she is nursing a broken heart over gentle widower Yost Beiler. Yost's thirteen-year-old son, Jonah, refuses to accept Martha Sue, and she refuses to risk coming between them. For now, she is just trying to avoid her Mammi's choice of yet another eligible suitor. But when Yost moves himself and Jonah to Huckleberry Hill to change Martha Sue's mind, she can't help dreaming that somehow, some way, she and Yost will have a miraculous second chance to be together.

Most folks associate the city of Salem, Massachusetts, with witches, but for Lee Barrett it's home. This October she's returned to her hometown - where her beloved Aunt Ibby still lives - to interview for a job as a reporter at WICH-TV. But the only opening is for a call-in psychic to host the late-night horror movies. It seems the previous host, Ariel Constellation, never saw her own murder coming.

Rarity is excited about expanding the romance section of her store—but not nearly as excited as her best friend Sam is about reuniting with her brother after many years. Marcus makes the trek from California to Arizona, is welcomed with a party, and hints that he may stick around now that remote work is an option. But is it just a coincidence that not long after his arrival, a body is found near a local swimming hole? Especially considering that the dead woman had recently gone on a date with him—and even worse, that Marcus has a startling secret in his past?

Originally meant to be brief and exceptional, solitary confinement in US prisons has become long-term and common. Prisoners spend 23 hours a day in featureless cells, with no visitors or human contact for years on end, and they are held entirely at administrators' discretion. Keramet Reiter tells the history of one "supermax", California's Pelican Bay State Prison, whose extreme conditions recently sparked a statewide hunger strike by 30,000 prisoners.

When Mandy Helmuth hears that her best friend Kristina's heart has been broken, she decides to visit her grandparents and cheer her up. Mandy never liked Noah Mischler anyway, with his rough exterior and outspoken ways. Unfortunately, she can't avoid him - especially after he saves her life.

Rarity is grateful for many things and people in her new life, including her friend Shirley, who is helping to provide backpacks and supplies for kids going back to school. But Shirley needs a big favor. With her husband in a memory-care home, she wants to attend an art opening with a male friend but fears local gossip. She asks Rarity, her friend Sam, and their boyfriends to come along as cover. It would be fun if not for the fact that the two couples are barely speaking . . .

For residents of Salem, Massachusetts, the day after Halloween brings empty candy wrappers, sagging pumpkins, and a community-wide identity crisis. That is, until Lee Barrett's TV production class suggests extending the spooky season with the traditional Mexican celebration Dia de Los Muertos. But when the students discover not all of Salem's dead are resting in peace, the post-October blues don't seem so bad after all....

Lee Barrett has agreed to attend a storage auction with Aunt Ibby - even though she suspects the forgotten rooms will yield more junk than treasure. Her skepticism vanishes once the two win a bid on an overlooked locker and uncover a trove of beautiful curiosities, including a stunning wooden carousel horse with gentle eyes and fading paint. But just before Lee leaves the fairground relic at a local repair shop, the sight of a silver samovar awakens her psychic abilities and conjures visions of murder.

When Lee Barrett joins a former student's bridal party as maid of honor, she expects cake tastings and dress fittings. But wedding planning becomes more peculiar than Lee's scrying talents could ever predict. There's a magical baker, a best man with a checkered past, and a talking crow named Poe as the ring bearer. There's also a kindly old man dead under his apple tree - one of a series of unexplained deaths hanging over the Wiccan community....

Mattie Fisher's three daughters know that she's been keeping a secret from them. With each item pulled from the beloved family hope chest, they've discovered a new clue about their mother's past. But there's a reason Mattie has been keeping her history hidden, and she's not sure she's ready to reopen old wounds. Will dredging up the past change the way her children view her? Or her marriage to their father? And can she handle the pain of revisiting the memories that preceded the last few happy decades?

A difficult marriage has left the Helmuths' widowed great-granddaughter, Beth, finished with wedlock. She's content to live with her great-grandparents and make a life for herself and her toddler son. But once she turns down handsome Tyler Yoder's proposal, it seems only fair to encourage him to find a suitable wife. Trouble is his gentleness and generous ways are showing her how joyous a real meeting of hearts can be....

Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today's single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for one brief exclamatory period in the 1930s, she was all the rage. Marjorie Hillis was working at Vogue when she published the radical self-help book Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman. With Dorothy Parker-esque wit, she urged spinsters, divorcees, and old maids to shed derogatory labels, and her philosophy became a phenomenon.

In this debut collection from C. S. E. Cooney, a swan princess hunted for her bones, a broken musician and his silver pipe, and a rat named Maurice bring justice to a town under fell enchantment. A gang of courageous kids confront both a plague-destroyed world and an afterlife infested with clowns but robbed of laughter. In an island city, the murder of a child unites two lovers, but vengeance will part them. Only human sacrifice will save a city trapped in ice and darkness.

When Christopher Hostettler comes from Ohio to work at his uncle's shop in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, he gets off on the wrong foot with Emily Fisher. But when he finally opens up to her about his tragic reasons for leaving home, her heart begins to change. When Christopher compliments an old quilt, Emily decides to make a similar quilt for Christopher as a gesture of friendship. Emily knows she must guard her heart, as Christopher is not a baptized member of the church, but she's suddenly found someone with whom she can imagine sharing a future.

Tax cheats, beware: The Treasury Department's Criminal Investigations Division has a new special agent on its payroll. A recovering tomboy with a head for numbers, Tara's fast becoming the Annie Oakley of the IRS-kicking ass, taking social security numbers, and keeping the world safe for honest taxpayers. Or else. Tara's latest mission finds her in hot pursuit of ice-cream vendor Joseph "Joe Cool" Cullen. Along with frozen treats he's selling narcotics-and failing to report his ill-gotten gains on his tax returns. Over Tara's dead body.

Cat Latimer and her neighbor, Dante, are throwing a party the weekend before her monthly writers' retreat starts. Dante had asked her to help find out who stole money from the Covington College endowment fund. The party's going strong until a dead body is found in Dante's conservatory after the desserts are served. With a retreat to run, Cat doesn't have time to find a killer, but when it looks like the dead guy was setting Dante up for the fall, the list of suspects explodes and includes Dante, who's now the primary suspect on Uncle Pete's list.

Christmas lights on palm trees and Santa hats on plastic pink flamingoes are far from the snowy landscape Maureen and her beloved golden retriever, Finn, are used to. But Maureen is determined to make this a holiday to remember—which means finding a way to promote Haven House on a shoestring. Fortunately, Haven's vintage movie theater, the Paramount, has come up with a great "Twelve Days of Christmas" idea. They'll feature an impressive list of the best classic Christmas movies ever made—shown by one-time movie actor-turned-projectionist Decklin Monroe.

When her week begins, Rarity expects the biggest mystery she'll need to solve is how a rare first edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland ended up in her bookstore bathroom. But after book club member Shirley tells her that her husband George, who has dementia, is the prime suspect in a nursing home murder, Rarity feels as if she's stepped through the looking glass.

Ever since the Helmuths' grandson, Ben, abruptly broke his engagement and moved to Florida, Emma Nelson has kept busy tending her vegetable garden and raising award-winning pumpkins. She can put her heartache aside to help Ben's mother with her own pumpkin patch. At least until Ben shows up to lend support to his ailing father.Gardening side by side with pretty, nurturing Emma is a sweet kind of torture for Ben.

In Desdemona and the Deep, the spoiled daughter of a rich mining family must retrieve the tithe of men her father promised to the world below. On the surface, her world is rife with industrial pollution that ruins the health of poor factory workers while the idle rich indulge themselves in unheard-of luxury. Below are goblins, mysterious kingdoms, and an entirely different hierarchy.