Showing results by narrator "Leah Horowitz" in All Categories

Willow Dupré never thought she would have to marry, but with her father's unexpected retirement from running the prosperous Dupré sugar refinery, she is forced into a different future. The shareholders are unwilling to allow a female to take over the company without a man at her side, so her parents devise a plan - find Willow a spokesman king in order for her to become queen of the business empire.

Swirling snow may have stranded me at this tiny airport in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve, but it has nothing on the storm raging inside me when he walks into the terminal. Artemis Warren. My first love and the man who shattered my world. I thought I locked my feelings for him safely away in the past, but one look is all it takes for me to drown in his icy blue eyes again. So much time has passed. I’m no longer that naïve teenager standing on a beach, wishing the boy would choose me. Now, I’m hiding a secret that could unravel both our lives.

Susie Mast's Old Order life in Lancaster County's Hickory Hollow has been shaped by events beyond her control, with the tragic deaths of her Dat and close-in-age brother casting a particularly long shadow. Now 22, Susie remains unmarried despite her longtime affection for friend Obie Yoder. Believing Obie might never show romantic interest in her, Susie accepts Del Petersheim's invitations - it is only after Obie leaves to take an apprenticeship that Susie realizes her mistake.

In 1942, an impulsive promise to her brother before he goes off to the European front puts Avis Montgomery in the unlikely position of head librarian in small-town Maine. Though she has never been much of a reader, when wartime needs threaten to close the library, she invents a book club to keep its doors open. The women she convinces to attend the first meeting couldn't be more different—a wealthy spinster determined to aid the war effort, an exhausted mother looking for a fresh start, and a determined young war worker.

The one thing Sylvie Townsend wants most is what she feared she was destined never to have - a family of her own. But taking in Polish immigrant Rose Dabrowski to raise and love quells those fears - until 17-year-old Rose goes missing at the World's Fair, and Sylvie's world unravels. Brushed off by the authorities, Sylvie turns to her boarder, Kristof Bartok, for help.

While taking photographs at an exposition in Seattle in 1909, Camera Girl Eleanor Bennet snaps an image of a woman in widow's clothes with deep sorrow etched in her expression and a young infant in her arms. Eleanor longs to study botany at the University of Washington and soon becomes fast friends with botanist Bill Reed, but she can't stop thinking about the widow in the photograph. She is stunned to learn Bill recognizes the woman as the sister-in-law he believed lost in a shipwreck.

Budding artist May Parker is captivated by the Japanese exhibits at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and longs to know more about her mother's heritage—which her mother refuses to speak of because of the heartache she left behind in Japan. Wanting to experience more of the exhibits, May works as a Camera Girl—but her curiosity leads her into danger when a suit of samurai armor becomes the target of an elusive art forger.

For Nikki and Sadie, life at Loch Raven College was supposed to be filled with poetry and days spent trying on thrifted clothes. But there's a dark story that plagues the school halls—that of the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the death of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring girls, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the stories, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. To satiate her obsession, Nikki begins to dig into the deaths, and she soon suspects there's more to the story than just a tragic group of sad girls.

On a golden August morning in 1939, sisters Antonina and Helena Dabrowska send their father off to defend Poland against the looming threat of German invasion. The next day, the first bombs fall on Warsaw, decimating their cherished city and shattering the world of their youth. When Antonina’s beloved Marek is forced behind ghetto walls along with the rest of Warsaw’s Jewish population, Antonina knows she cannot stand by and soon becomes a key figure in a daring network of women risking their lives to shelter Jewish children.

Jewel McKerry is on the brink of unraveling as she heads home to Oregon to help care for her father who has early-onset dementia. Her thirteen-year-old daughter is upset about the move. Her beekeeper dad is a humorous handful. Her mom is overworked and overwhelmed. Finances are stretched tight. And, according to her father, the neighbors are nothing but trouble. Despite all of these challenges, Jewel takes on one more when she convinces her parents to turn their decrepit farmhouse into a B&B in order to make some needed money.

Headstrong Johanna Berglund, a linguistics student at the University of Minnesota, has very definite plans for her future...plans that do not include returning to her hometown and the secrets and heartaches she left behind there. But the US Army wants her to work as a translator at a nearby camp for German POWs. Johanna arrives to find the once-sleepy town exploding with hostility.

Betsy Huckabee has big-city dreams, but nobody outside of tiny Pine Gap, Missouri, seems interested in the articles she writes for her uncle's newspaper. Her hopes for independence may be crushed, until the best idea she's ever had comes riding into town. Deputy Joel Puckett didn't want to leave Texas, but unfair circumstances have made moving to Pine Gap his only shot at keeping a badge. Worse, this small town has big problems, and masked marauders have become too comfortable taking justice into their own hands.

In Gold Creek, Michigan, legend has it that the ghost of a local grave digger still walks the cemetery, swinging his shovel, looking for his next victim to bury. But when the town’s wealthy undertaker dies, his estranged daughter must contend with the ghosts that haunt her own family.

Monreith, Massachusetts, was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. A peaceful, predictable place—until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband, Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too. Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death.

In 1928, the Bonaventure Circus has become a refuge for many, but Pippa Ripley was rejected from its inner circle as a baby and is no longer content to leave the reason for that rejection unquestioned. When she receives mysterious messages from someone called the Watchman, she is determined to find him and the connection to her birth. As Pippas search leads her to a man seeking justice for his murdered sister and evidence that a serial killer has been haunting the circus train, she must decide if uncovering her roots is worth putting herself directly in the path of the killer.

Lives depend on the truth she uncovers. She can’t give up her search. A birthday excursion turns deadly when the SS Eastland capsizes with Olive Pierce and her best friend on board. Hundreds perish during the accident, and it’s only when Olive herself barely escapes that she discovers her friend is among the victims.

In this charming collection of novellas, join three generations of residents from Mapleview, Michigan, who are longing for love—and finding it—during the most wonderful season of the year. Follow schoolteacher Emma Trowbridge and childhood rival Frederick Oberstein in "Hopes and Fears" by Amanda Wen, reporter Eleanor Sweers and family friend Gideon Braum in "While Mortals Sleep" by Janyre Tromp, and high school football coach Caleb Janssen and music teacher Rachel Hamblin in "The Wondrous Gift" by Deborah Raney.

When Esmé Foster left the Boston suburbs to become a professional ballerina, the future shimmered with promise. Eleven years later, her career has been derailed by an injury, and Esmé knows it’s time to come back to Graybridge to help her brother care for their ailing father. But her return coincides with an unthinkable crime. Kara Cunningham, one of Esmé’s high school friends, is found dead in the woods behind the Fosters’ house. Esmé is shocked and grieving, but also uneasy.

Deeply depressed Olivia, whose parents are divorcing, is ripe for manipulation. And swimming star Blake is looking for someone just like her. Although her friend tries to warn her, Olivia falls for his ploys and accepts an invitation to go to the Adirondack resort camp of Lake Endor with him and his family. But all is not as it seems at the 100-year-old resort. Not only does Olivia discover that Blake is not the guy she thought he was, there is something sinister afoot at the lake.

Marriage arrives by mail-order—and just in time for Christmas. In these touching stories of faith and romance in the American West, three women seeking new beginnings find love in unexpected places.