Showing results by narrator "Christa Lewis" in All Categories

When Mallory Shepard discovers some old lace at a Port Quincy antique shop, she knows it’ll make a perfect headpiece. But she’s barely gotten it out of the store before Helene Pierce tears it from her hands. Helene claims it’s a family heirloom that went missing when her late husband died in a hit-and-run 25 years ago. The conflict gets more complicated when the veil is attributed to none other than famed seamstress Betsy Ross. Mallory may have a genuine museum piece on her hands.

In autumn 1942, Anna Goldenberg's great-grandparents and one of their sons are deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Hans, their elder son, survives by hiding in an apartment in the middle of Nazi-controlled Vienna. But this is no Anne Frank-like existence; teenage Hans passes time in the municipal library and buys standing-room tickets to the Vienna State Opera. Hans never sees his family again. Goldenberg reconstructs this unique story in magnificent reportage.

When the Nancy Drew Clue Colloquium converges on Castleton Manor in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts, scholars and fans, dressed as their favorite detective, arrive in their 1930s roadsters. But it turns into a bumpy ride when Nancy A. and Nancy Z. - the good-natured bad girls of Nancy Drew fandom - start pulling pranks. Their group, the River Heights Roundtable, clashes with the Nancy Drew Clue Society, and librarian Faith Newberry strives to keep the peace between the two rival groups.

It's Gatsby Week at Castleton Manor, the elegant retreat for booklovers in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts, and the roaring '20s are in full swing. Charlotte Jaxon, owner of the manor, arrives to put on the ritz and oversee the festivities celebrating the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Faith Newberry is sitting pretty when she receives a brief respite from her duties in the library to assist Charlotte in organizing the events that have everyone jazzed up, including a fashion show, an antique car race, and a Gatsby Ball.

It's lights, camera, action at Castleton Manor, the exclusive literary retreat in Lighthouse Bay, Massachusetts. Faith Newberry's role as librarian expands to include assisting the producer in filming a remake of Alice in Wonderland. Faith and her friends in the Candle House Book Club thrill in the behind-the-scenes drama, and even Faith's loyal cat, Watson, eagerly pursues his big-screen debut. But the production falls down the rabbit hole when the star playing Alice enters the maze to shoot a scene, then vanishes.

It's late March in Lighthouse Bay, and Castleton Manor is undergoing spring-cleaning. Librarian and archivist, Faith Newberry, envisions a little downtime while the manor is closed to guests. But her reverie is cut short when she is pressed into service for the organizers of the Gothic Studies Conference, who are meeting in a nearby seaside home. Though reluctant to leave her cozy cottage on the Castleton estate, Faith agrees, especially since her faithful cat, Watson, is invited along.

Gisela Kreglinger, the daughter of a vintner and trained as theologian, invites us to discover wine as part of a more full-bodied Christian spirituality. She shows us how the soulful savoring of wine is God's way of wooing us back into a great love affair. Indeed, Jesus's first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding. Along with bread, wine is the gift we receive at the table of communion. Through these gifts we experience God's glorious and loving presence among us, feeding and nurturing us in body, soul, and spirit.

It is early 20th-century Greece. Theodosia, a teenage girl and her younger sister, lose their parents in Constantinople and are thrown into a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. They arrive at a refugee camp in Northern Greece, where their choice is to perish or to use the resources at hand in order to survive. Despite all the difficulties they encounter, the sisters decide not to give up, and fight for a better life. Theodosia's story carries on throughout a century and is peppered with horrific events, likable characters, and a great love story.

The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs' clinic to the present.

American Alana Eastwood's grandfather, and her only living relative, has taken ill at his home in Germany. Alana travels to be by his side, and while staying at his country cottage, she finds an unopened letter, postmarked 1945, that thrusts her into one of the most notable unsolved mysteries from postwar Germany. When people turn up dead, the local police are ill equipped to grasp the entire chain of events that the mysterious letter has put into play.

A truck veers off an overpass and falls onto the interstate below, right into the middle of the morning commute. Many people lose their lives, and the city of Seattle reels from the disaster. When an elaborate mural that appears to glorify the event is discovered, it is seen as being in very poor taste. That's until it transpires it was painted two days before the crash. Was it a warning by some psychic or savant? Or the work of a psychopath who played a role in the tragedy, seeking to cause as much pain and disruption as possible?

Set against the backdrop of the construction of the Berlin Wall, The Last Secret Kept explores the beauty of individualism while demolishing the invisible walls built between ourselves and our loved ones.

When a five-year-old girl reports being saved by a mysterious being in the middle of a tornado, her story is readily dismissed. But less so the computer-assisted discovery of a pattern in a series of deaths that suggests they are no accident. Special agent Ilona Farris of the FBI puzzles over how a killer could predict the storm events so accurately, yet stops short at believing they are dealing with the thunder beings of Native American legend.

In 1790 the United States has a new Constitution. George Washington presides as the first elected president. Abroad, France and Britain are at war. And by 1795 seafaring Americans are accosted on the high seas by French privateers and British naval ships. Tensions rise as American merchants continue to trade. Among them, Hasket Derby and Captain George Crowninshield busily build maritime empires while their sons seek a new way forward.

Now capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin rose from insignificant origins on swampy soil, becoming a city of immigrants over the ages. Through a series of ten vignettes, Mary Fulbrook discusses the periods and regimes that shaped its character—whether Prussian militarism; courtly culture and enlightenment; rapid industrialization and expansion; ambitious imperialism; experiments with democracy; or repressive dictatorships of both right and left, dramatically evidenced in the violence of World War and genocide, and then in the Wall dividing Cold War Berlin.

The story of how English became American—and how it became Southern, Bostonian, Californian, African American, Chicano, elite, working-class, urban, rural, and everything in between.

In 1735, Richard Derby, a ship’s master in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, married Mary Hodges, a merchant’s daughter. The alliance was good business, and Mary Hodges was a willing bride. Richard prospered, retired from the sea, and founded his own merchant house. With one exception, Richard’s sons went to sea. Hasket Derby stayed ashore, learning to manage the trading network his father built.

Shelly’s book serves as a guiding light, illuminating the path towards a more positive and abundant life. Each minute resonates with a profound message of hope, reminding us that we have the capacity to create a world filled with love and light.

The Daughters of Marburg follows the story of two young women and their father who, shortly after the tyrannical November Pogroms, inhabit a home once owned by a Jewish family. While investigating their surroundings, Lilly, the main character, discovers a journal left by the Jewish girl who had fled the house with nothing but the clothes on her back. Through reading her entries, Lilly's eyes are opened to the brutality of the Nazi ideology.

Swiss equestrian William "Zen" Griegg skyrockets to the top of the European show jumping circuit. As he sets his sights on the 2000 Olympic Games, his beloved horse Tiger is abducted en route to a competition in the United States. Zen's father, Sigmund Griegg, again teams with American Alana Eastwood to solve an international mystery that leads them from a secret tunnel in the Owl Mountains of Poland, through the art galleries of Zürich, to the Hamilton Farm Equestrian Center in Gladstone, New Jersey.