Showing results by narrator "Courtney Patterson" in All Categories

Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband's shadow. He controls her every move - what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she's allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are...consequences. And he has all the power. To outsiders, it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she's allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second. Unless she flips the script.

Genie has her hands full. First, there’s her new gelato-making business. Sure, she has a tireless helper in her great-great-aunt Adriana, and the ghostly flapper is also responsible for their recipes. Second, there's her relationship with Matt. So far it's great, but then he doesn't know about Adriana's presence. To make matters worse, Genie stumbles over the dead body of her mentor Pierre.

When Madison Reynolds finds herself widowed and penniless before 40, she does the only thing she knows to do - she packs up her teenage twins and moves back home with her 80-year-old grandmother. To make ends meet, Madison opens In a Pinch Temporary Services. Her first real client is Ronny Gleason, but when she shows up for the first day of work at the Gleason Poultry Farm, Madison makes a gruesome discovery. The dead body she finds belongs to Mr. Gleason. When a local man is arrested for murder, Madison takes on the job of proving his innocence.

New York jewelry designer Genie Darling has returned to her childhood home in quaint Cobblewood Cove for one reason only: to sort through generations of old family heirlooms and hand anything of historical interest over to the local museum. But after a failed mugging attempt, and the appearance of a beautiful but ghostly young stranger in a vintage evening dress, Genie realizes there's something suspicious—and spooky—going on. The glamorous and friendly specter turns out to be Genie's own great-great-aunt Adriana, who died in 1929 in mysterious circumstances.

Her Darkest Secret When a cold-case serial killer returns, FBI special agent Fiona Kelly has one last chance to stop him before he claims the prize he’s always wanted—her. The sight of a goose feather at a murder scene modeled after a children’s poem is enough to make FBI special agent...

Whitney Whitaker has scored the perfect piece of real estate: a ramshackle white Colonial at the top of a hill with views of downtown Nashville. What more could a self-taught home-improvement maven and occasional house flipper ask for? Ideally, the property of Whitney's dreams would not have come with a dead body blocking the entrance to the foyer. But Whitney, always quick to take heavy duty matters into her own hands, also happens to be a skilled amateur sleuth. So that helps.

Carpenter Whitney and her cousin Buck are hot for a historical property that has just come on the market—a fire station in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood that was built nearly a century ago. The cousins have just begun the interior demolition work at the fire station when Joanna Hartzell, who lives in a townhouse around the corner, comes by with a plea for help. Joanna owns the right half of her building, which she proudly maintains in perfect condition, while the left side falls into disrepair: the seven adult children who inherited it years ago refuse to lift a finger on repairs.

After inheriting her uncle's Red River Gorge homestead in Eastern Kentucky - smack dab in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest - Miranda comes up with a perfect business plan for summer tourists: pairing outdoor painting classes with sips of local moonshine, followed by a mouthwatering sampler of the best in southern cooking. To Miranda's delight, Paint & Shine is a total success - until someone kills the cook. As the town's outsider, suspicion naturally falls on Miranda.

Has anyone ever told you that baseball is more than a game, that it's really a metaphor for life? Have you ever wondered what they meant? This story imagines the answer. A single mother moves to Kansas City with her young daughter and notices that everyone she meets - her new colleagues, neighbors, even the mailman - can't stop talking about baseball. "It's more than just a game," they tell the mother. "It's so much more. What you need is to come to a game and experience it."

Reports of burnout, stress, and compassion fatigue are on the rise. Healthy leaders who learn balance can create motivation, confidence, quality collaboration, and enthusiasm among staff and other stakeholders. Principal in Balance offers principals strategies and tools to take more ownership of their lives at work and home, so everyone in the K-12 educational community can thrive. Nationally distinguished principal and author Jessica Cabeen shows you how to navigate leading at work and having a fulfilling life.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey, slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island. These are the facts. Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police - until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

“Like the A-10 aircraft she flew in combat, retired colonel and fighter pilot Martha McSally is a gritty individual who loves our Air Force and personified its core values of excellence, integrity, and service before self, while standing up to make it a better institution for everyone who...

Carpenter Whitney Whitaker, her cousin Buck, and guard-cat Sawdust just scored a hot property near downtown Nashville in a tax sale. While the Music City Motor Court might not be much to look at now, the two plan to transform the motel's 12 units into six one-bedroom condominiums with popular mid-century styling. But surprises await when Whitney discovers a squatter living in Room Nine and Sawdust uncovers a body in the bed next door.

Carpenter Whitney Whitaker and her cousin Buck have successfully flipped houses, but this is the first time they've attempted to renovate a house of worship. Still, the colorful stained glass in the country church has caught Whitney's eye, and she'd love to breathe new life into the abandoned building. What's more, the place has perfect acoustics. Could the worship hall be reborn as an entertainment venue with its parsonage repurposed as a pre-show bistro?

Brady Davis is as happy as he is charming. Usually. Unless he's in the same room with the frustratingly gorgeous antidote to his cheer. Mia Kendrick is headstrong and determined. She's done with men who stand in her way—even if he has arms like Thor and a smile that makes her dizzy. Whenever they're together, sparks fly—both the bad and good kind. When Mia returns home to take over management of Kendrick Place, Brady is worried her focus on big business could be the end of his tight-knit home and the family he's created there.

In September 2011, Erik Weissman and two friends were murdered in a brutal triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts. The case went unsolved for months and then years, with no discernible leads. Erik’s friend Susan Zalkind, an investigative journalist, needed closure and knew that finding it would be up to her. As Susan began digging, and as the Boston Marathon bombing exposed startling new leads, the case led her down a tangled and sometimes dangerous path to the truth.

Carpenter Whitney Whitaker and her cousin Buck are looking once again to rehab and resell a house, only this particular house is made of fiberglass, floats, and has been dubbed the Skinny Dipper. The old houseboat sure could use some work, but the unusual project has Whitney bubbling with excitement. The charming and handsome Grant Hardisty lives on the cabin cruiser in the adjacent slip, but the cousins soon learn he's left a half dozen angry ex-wives in his wake and made enemies of all sorts of unsavory folks.

Omens of impending disaster have the city of Charleston on edge. Tremors warn of earthquake risk, while a potentially catastrophic storm gathers strength over the ocean and heads for land. A last-man-standing promise among elderly veterans creates a dangerous inheritance involving an imprisoned, wish-granting goblin. A sea captain and a swashbuckler worked blood magic to protect Charleston from an ancient evil with a spell that bound their souls and their descendants to the task, but danger looms as its power fades.

Cassidy Kincaide runs Trifles & Folly in modern-day Charleston, an antiques and curio shop with a dangerous secret. Cassidy can read the history of objects by touching them, and she teams up with friends and allies who use magic and paranormal abilities to get rid of cursed objects and keep Charleston and the world safe from supernatural threats. Caribbean ghosts terrorize Charleston and start racking up a body count. Then Beckford Pendlewood, the heir to a powerful family of dark warlocks, shows up raving about a bound demon locked in a lost box and begs sanctuary.