Showing results by narrator "Kimberly Wetherell" in All Categories

It's an exciting time in Sweet River, Texas, and the whole town is talking. Maybe, a little too much. Former English professor Ainsley McGregor has gambled everything on her new business: Bless Your Art, an artisan market where local artists sell their wares and teach classes. The bright, white space is filled to the brim with colorful art, yarn, jewelry, pet treats, antiques, and even a few medieval weapons. Oh, and there are wine tastings. Everything is better with wine. Ainsley is surprised by how well things are going—right up until the moment her Great Dane finds a dead body.

Amy, a semicloseted queer baker and bartender in mid-2010s Oklahoma, has spent a lifetime putting other people’s needs before her own. Until, that is, she’s fired from her job at a Christian bakery and turns her one-off gig subbing in for a bridesmaid into a full-time business, thanks to her baking talents, crafting skills, and years watching rom-coms and Say Yes to the Dress. Between her new gig and meeting Charley, the attractive engineer who’s just moved to Tulsa, suddenly Amy’s found something—and someone—she actually wants.

The snow came down faster than train crews could clear the tracks, piling up in drifts 20 feet high. At the Wellington train depot in the Cascade Mountains, two trains sat stranded, blocked in by snow slides to the east and west. Some passengers braved the storm to hike off the mountain, but many had no choice but to wait out the storm.

Claire Raythorn arrives in Florence, Italy, shattered, alone, and anxious to rebuild her life - preferably without men. But she soon finds herself hunted and haunted - literally - when a mysterious stalker dressed like Mr. Darcy from BBC central casting appears in her photos...and only her photos. Who is this man? And what does his ghostly presence mean? Dante D’Angelo simply wants to safeguard his brothers, despite the family curse that hounds his vision. But then Claire Raythorn walks into his life, untouched somehow by his curse.

Jolene Carter lives in Merrylark Lake, a quaint town where neighbors are like family and vacationers become fast friends. With her dream of opening a downtown storefront on hold, Jolene volunteers wherever she can, whether it be at Cat's Coffee Cart or the town's annual tree lighting. It is while she's tending to her neighbor's vacation rental that Jolene meets Luke, a cowboy with a mustang rescue and a past he's hoping to leave back at the ranch.

A forbidden love. Behind the scenes of the popular 1950s Wes Goodwin Show, Kathryn and Alice fell for one another. But love could never be enough.

In the title story, set five minutes in the future where you not only have a credit score but also a dating score, a woman who’s been banished from all dating apps attends a weekly help group with others who have been “banned for life,” and finds herself falling in love. In “Backwards,” a twist on Benjamin Button, a woman reconnects with her estranged father as he de-ages ten years each day they spend together. In “Welcome to Oxhead,” all the parents in a gated community “shut off” when the power goes out.

In the middle of a wonderful Christmas holiday in Dharma, Brooklyn, and Derek receive a frantic phone call from their dear friend Claire in Loch Ness, Scotland. The laird of the castle, Cameron MacKinnon, has just proposed to her! They plan to be married on New Year’s Day, and they want Derek and Brooklyn to be their witnesses. And while they’re visiting, Claire hopes that Brooklyn will be able to solve a little mystery that’s occurred in the castle library—twelve very rare, very important books have gone missing.

Reeling from a breakup with her long-term partner, Gray—an optimistic lesbian Aries—relocates to New Orleans for a new job. Gray wants to meet someone, settle down, and build the loving, accepting family she’s always wanted, but having been out of the dating scene for a decade, she has no idea where to start. After visiting an iconic astrologer, Gray and her best friend, Cherry, draw up a dramatic scheme: Gray will go on a date with someone of each zodiac sign to test their compatibility and get a jump start on creating the queer family of her dreams.

Chaos paints the White Kingdom. Missing children, dead nobles, and a daring escape have created an upheaval that threatens the future of the entire realm. The lords and ladies are armed with a powerful secret weapon as they prepare to make a stand against the crown, but the resistance has plenty to overcome before they can claim triumph.

For Joel and Stella, it’s the trip they’ve been dreaming about. Fresh air, quiet time in the woods, and no work to distract them from each other. Being a new couple, they don’t waste any time with their first full weekend away together. But their perfect getaway turns into a nightmare when an accident occurs and they find a dead woman lying outside their cabin. Clearly, they have to call the police, but what Joel reveals to Stella makes her understand there’s no way they can get the authorities involved.

Ainsley McGregor and the entire town of Sweet River, Texas, are preparing for the annual summer celebration. And thanks to the extra tourist traffic, Ainsley's shop, Bless Your Art, has never been busier. Good thing her new friend, Lizzie, has opened a bakery nearby and provides Ainsley and her staff with tasty treats and daily sugar rushes. It's all cookies and fun, until someone ends up dead in the bakery and her new pal is the prime suspect.

Lady Victoria Hamilton has a supernatural gift, a fiancé, and a guardian angel. She just never expected her protector to be the most dazzling man in England, a devilish scoundrel they call the Blue Bastard. Victoria has agreed to marry for duty, not love, but her unforeseen desire for her mystical angel threatens to destroy not only her plans for the future, but the armor surrounding her susceptible heart.

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.

A crown woven together by lies. A kingdom with the power to unravel them. Four Reaches. Four brides. Only a fortnight separates the young women from becoming reluctant queens of the usurper king, Eoghan Rhiagain. Twenty years earlier, King Eoghan’s father cunningly devised marriages between the highborn sons and daughters of the oft-warring Reaches, sealing the unions before they could protest, shattering existing betrothals in place of forced alliances. Now, Eoghan, the cruel boy king who stole his crown through murder, demands the eldest daughters of these unions.

After surviving a car crash, Kay Smith wakes from a coma with amnesia, a battered face, and no one to vouch for her identity. Her psychiatrist is convinced that her memory loss is connected to the horrific flashbacks and nightmares haunting her. As she digs for clues to her past, Kay uncovers a shady character following her every inquiry. Who is he? And what does he want from her?

When Philo Drax receives a letter from her wealthy grandfather saying he fears for his life at the hands of the vicious Slape family, she rushes to the rescue. But too late! Katie Slape, a monstrous girl with psychic powers and a penchant for smashing skulls with her hammer, has already finished him off and gotten hold of his cash.

New Orleans, 1944. Sabotage—that's the word on factory worker Justine Byrne's mind as she is repeatedly called to weld machine parts that keep failing with no clear cause. Could someone inside the secretive Carbon Division be deliberately undermining the factory's war efforts? Raised by her late parents to think logically, she also can't help wondering just what the oddly shaped carbon gadgets she assembles day after day have to do with the boats the factory builds....

Vivian Ellenshaw is fat, but she knows she doesn't need to lose weight, so she's none too happy to find herself forced into a weight-loss camp's van with her ex-best friend, Allie; a meathead jock who can barely drive; and the camp owner's snobby son. And when they arrive at Camp Featherlite at the start of the worst blizzard in the history of Flagstaff, Arizona, it's clear that something isn't right. Vee barely has a chance to meet the other members of her pod, all who seem as unhappy to be at Featherlite as she does, when a camper goes missing down by the lake.

She wants to steal his Van Gogh. He wants to steal her heart. Clementine Abernathy is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Her latest heist involves swiping a priceless Van Gogh from its owner, who is supposed to be an egotistical, trust-fund brat. Turns out Jack David is more than meets the eye, and Clementine is now the one in trouble. Some people would call Clementine Abernathy a criminal. She considers herself a modern day Robin Hood, who steals from the rich and gives to the poor.